Desperate to defend his land from advancing hordes of bestial charr, King Adelbern summoned the all-powerful Foefire to repel the invaders. But magic can be a double-edged sword—the Foefire burned both charr and human alike. While the charr corpses smoldered, the slain Ascalonians rose again, transformed by their king’s rage into ghostly protectors and charged with guarding the realm—forever. The once mighty kingdom became a haunted shadow of its former glory.

Centuries later, the descendants of Ascalon, exiled to the nation of Kryta, are besieged on all sides. To save humankind, Queen Jennah seeks to negotiate a treaty with the hated charr. One obstacle remains. The charr legions won’t sign the truce until their most prized possession, the Claw of the Khan-Ur, is returned from the ruins of fallen Ascalon.

Now, a mismatched band of adventurers, each plagued by ghosts of their own, sets forth into a haunted, war-torn land to retrieve the Claw. Without the artifact, there is no hope for peace between humans and charr–but the undead king who rules Ascalon won’t give it up easily, and not everyone wants peace!

Ghosts of Ascalon is scheduled for release in North America and Europe in the summer of 2010.

ArenaNet has posted some behind the scenes footage from the voice recording session for the Races of Tyria video.

The latest Guild Wars 2 trailer, The Races of Tyria, was released today. Click here for more information, and visit the official website to download high resolution versions of the trailer.

The first Guild Wars 2 trailer premiered today. For more information, visit the official website.

Eurogamer and IGN have posted previews of the game.

An MMO without monthly fees? Who’d want to play that? Millions of you, apparently. Beautiful worlds and characters plus a novel system of instancing – only towns are truly massively multiplayer – make this a pleasantly different MMO.

Tim says “Every time the devs put out one of their standalone expansions, they raise their own quality bar. It’s a credit to their commitment that, even today, they refuse to charge a fee.”

In the process, I found out that it is now impossible to have cake in the office without someone referencing Portal.

This is a little more tentative than many games we’re talking about in this series. ArenaNet have talked about starting to Beta-test thing in late 2008. While that probably won’t be a public, someone will hopefully be playing this before the end of the year. So why, with it that far off, is it worth talking about?

I guess it’s because that, after Guild Wars 2, there’s a chance of everything changing and that nags at me.

NCsoft Europe set up shop at the London Film and Comic Con earlier this month. In a meeting of my past and present, Jack Sparrow stopped by to pose for a quick photo with the Gwen and Dervish models that were working at the booth.

Unfortunately, it appears that their encounter ended with the photo as I can find no evidence of a duel to determine the better. That scythe looks rather menacing, but, then again, Jack does tend to have a rather undying quality. I guess we’ll have to wait until next year.

The full gallery is up on Flickr.