Twitchcon and Arenanet Television

September 24, 2015 at 9:12 pm | Posted in Guild Wars 2, mmorpg | 2 Comments
Tags: Guild Wars 2, MMO, mmorpg

So we’re finally getting more details about what is going on at twitchcon and what exactly the big deal about Arenanet Television is. While me and my friends had speculated on a more permanent relationship with community streamers perhaps, or more regularly scheduled Arenanet shows similar to Points of Interest, it looks more like a simple one-off at twitchcon, 16 hours of shows over the weekend where they’ll make announcements, review Heart of Thorns material, and generally talk about the game.

Oh and a live musical performance with Maclaine Diemer, a cooking show called A Taste of Tyria hosted by Jennifer Hale, and a trivia based game show hosted by someone from The Nerdist.

Wut.

There’s plenty of discussion about the schedule and information over on reddit, but I did want to go over a few things myself.

Friday, September 25

Starting Out in Guild Wars 2
First Look at the Ranger Elite Profession Specialization
Musical Performance
“A Taste of Tyria” with Jennifer Hale
Adventures in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Premiere of the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Launch Trailer
PvP Discussion
WvW Discussion
Masteries
Skill Balance Preview
And more!

Saturday, September 26

Designing Raids in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Returning to Guild Wars 2
Making of the Launch Trailer
Legendary Journey
“A Taste of Tyria” with Jennifer Hale
Story Missions
Intro to PvP
Heart of Thorns Maps
Community Showcase Live
Voice Acting in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns: Behind the Scenes
And more!

First look at the druid, launch of a new trailer, we finally get to see more adventures, some people go ape for skill balance previews, the raid discussion should be interesting, I’m definitely tuning in for Legendary Journey, and I think calling them Story Missions (gw1 was all about Story Missions) is confusing. Seems like a fair amount of things to look forward to, lots of game related stuff that people are definitely going to be interested in.

I’m a little less enthusiastic about things that fall outside actual gaming content, but I’m not going to cast aspersions about a musical performance, Guild Wars 2 has some great scoring and people are into that. Nor will I criticize the cooking show, for I am a big fan of Jennifer Hale (I thought she did fine at the Heart of Thorns announcement during PAX South and some people were just dicks about it) and as a human I have to eat food. And lets face it as nerds we either live long enough to win the trivia game or we die trying.

That said I do feel apprehension. There’s a little potential for things to be received negatively here. I made note of this on last night’s Guild Wars Reporter in between technical difficulties. Allona even made me feel better about the cooking show because she has a theory that they’ll announce ascended cooking on the show, which would be awesome, but I am not optimistic about it. My apprehension remained however and I even made reference to a certain taxi related incident.

And then today I was looking through a PR email and read that Arenanet was working with iam8bit to create content for twitchcon. Something I had glossed over yesterday when I originally got the email. So I immediately googled Iam8bit. The taxi people.

A appreciate the effort to not just be a boring, predictable, stagnant, presentation that nobody will care about or be excited to watch. And I really do hope this turns out well.