Blog Carnival: Memories of waiting for Guild Wars 2

This entry is part of Guild Mag’s 4th Blog Carnival. Just because I’m hosting this blog carnival over at GuildMag doesn’t mean I’m not participating this time. ;) So far, the blog carnivals have always been written by both of us together and we’re going to keep this tradition especially with this topic now.

2006-2008

The first Bookahneer

As we have previously written, we do not exactly remember when we first heard about Guild Wars 2. What we do remember is that we have not been waiting for the whole 5 years since its first announcement. In 2007, we were still actively playing World of Warcraft. Its first expansion, “Burning Crusade” was released on January 16, 2007. We drove to a city nearby to be there for their midnight sale. Of course, after returning home, all I could do was install the game, create my blood elf and then I went straight to bed because I was too tired… but I digress. This was the one expansion where both of us were playing actively in raid groups doing the game’s endgame content. At the end of 2006, I had bought my first Guild Wars campaign (Nightfall). After bookahnerk had seen me play, he soon bought the game for himself as well. We both enjoyed it, but played the game differently than World of Warcraft, for example. I, especially, have always used Guild Wars as my “get away from random strangers and annoying people”-game as the instanced areas in Guild Wars means I will not run into other players.

So, in 2007, we were happily playing World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. But we were not – yet – looking forward to Guild Wars 2. Another game had been on our radar: Warhammer Online. It got released in September 2008, but long before that, we were reading every little news bit that we could find. Bookahnerk had shown me Syp’s Waaagh Blog. This was the first time I noticed gaming blogs in the internet! Back then, I had already wondered if I could do the same.

As Warhammer Online had not managed to meet our expectations, we returned to World of Warcraft for a bit while searching for a new MMO to call our “home”. It was probably at this point that our attention got drawn to Guild Wars 2. All we do remember is that we had known that ArenaNet were working on Guild Wars 2 and that Eye of the North had been the last piece for Guild Wars.

2009

In 2009, the first Guild Wars 2 trailer got released at GamesCom. We clearly remember seeing it as we had been watching the stream. In fact, we had been looking forward to GamesCom and the possible news about the game for days and were excited when it finally started! We also remember that we were both thinking about driving to Cologne to visit GamesCom. We decided against doing it, though, as it was just more comfortable to watch the gaming streams instead.

Other than that, I spent my time playing Lord of the Rings Online and even got myself a lifetime subscription. Bookahnerk was still involved in World of Warcraft, but he, too, started playing Lotro. As pretty as the game was (and still is), we knew we were waiting for something… better. Or, just different from the usual standard that MMOs had become already at that point.

2010

In 2010, we finally went to GamesCom, and that was also the start of my short-lived blog (don’t mind the layout, I’m using it now to test the layouts before we activate them here on this blog). So, no, Carvious, you’re not the only one who started blogging because of Guild Wars 2! :) If you go through this blog, you can see that I wasn’t taking it “seriously”. I posted a few entries but something was missing.

2011

The new Bookahneer

On March 12, 2011, we started “Nerdy Bookahs and their travel-guide” – this very blog here. Even though almost all entries are written and posted by me, we are two people working on this blog. Bookahnerk’s strengths obviously aren’t writing the actual articles, but he’s the guy working behind the scenes, reading through my entries, giving me feedback, doing some layout stuff, making the videos for our YouTube channel, etc.

From the beginning, our blog had been intended to be about Guild Wars 2 sooner or later, but we added the “and their travel-guide” bit because we knew we’d be around in lots of different games until Guild Wars 2 releases and we’d want to write about these games as well. We still do and probably will in the future, but the focus on Guild Wars 2 has been increasing steadily over the last few months.

Of course, we were at GamesCom again in 2011. Our first stop, just as in 2010, was at the NCsoft booth. This time, however, we also met our first fellow Guild Wars 2 fans. For all the years I have been online, this has always been a part of the fascination for me: Getting to know people online and then, sooner or later, also meeting them offline. It’s just a really great part of the internet that you get the chance to meet people from all over the world that you simply wouldn’t have met otherwise. What GamesCom 2011 also brought us was the realization that the folks at ArenaNet (well, the community managers, at least) apparently read what the blogosphere has to say about the game and the company as our report about ArenaNet got retweeted by them.

2012

Group Picture at the EUFan Day in Brighton

Let’s skip ahead to 2012. In March, we got a message from Aidan, the European community manager, inviting us to the EU Fan Day in Brighton. Bookahnerk told me to go and silly me, I’d been very close to declining the invitation because I don’t exactly love flying and I am very shy around strangers – yes, even though I love meeting people that I got to know online. It doesn’t make sense! ;) But I went, as you probably know and even though it was basically just a stay of 30 hours, I enjoyed myself a lot and got to meet lots of great people! When we started this blog, we never expected to be invited to something like this just a year later. Now, we are both proud members of the Dragon Season guild and I joined GuildMag as a writer.

In short, thank you, ArenaNet, for not just making a – hopefully awesome – game, but also for caring about the community and making it possible to meet new people and form new friendships! Let’s hope the next years will be as great as the time leading up to the game’s release! The last few years have been lots of fun and we’re curious what the next years will bring.