Opening the gift of a world...

I couldn't find a GW2 Christmas tree.  Apparently 'tis NOT the season yet.

Imagine that you are standing in the living room, in front of a huge Christmas tree. (I know, I know, it's only August - how dare I talk about Christmas - but bear with me!) And beneath that tree, in all its festive glory, is a brightly-wrapped Christmas present. Just one present. With your name on it. It is from the one person in your life that has ALWAYS given you the best possible gifts - the kinds of gifts that are practically life-changing. Now imagine that you don't get to open that gift for five years.

Oh, you can pick it up, you can shake it to see what noise it makes. You can feel the shape of it through the wrapper. But you can't open it. (No, you really can't. Its wrapping-paper is protected by a force-field too powerful for even your impressive Jedi skills.)

"Well, five years is a long time." I can hear you saying. "Maybe I'd just get used to it sitting there. Maybe I'd forget that it was meant to be unwrapped. Maybe eventually it'd become a part of the scenery of everyday life, gathering dust."

But no! No. Every so often - perhaps over intervals of days, or weeks, or even several months - someone will dust off the gift, peel away a tiny section of the wrapping, or give you a tantalizing hint of what you MIGHT be able to do with the gift. They'll tell you a story, or reveal a little clue about it. Just to make sure that you don't forget - that you stay excited. Until you're going half-crazy, imagining yourself with the power to rip into the gift with your greedy little fingers!

That is what the last five years have been like for those of us waiting for the moment when Arena-Net would stop tantalizing us with peeks at the re-imagined future of a world we already have learned to love. Next week, on August 28th - Guild Wars 2 will officially launch.

Don't misunderstand me - our impatience has not grown into rage against the game that we've waited so long for, or the people who built it and have teased us with beautiful art and backstory and even given us limited entry to that world for hours or days at a time before shutting us out again. We understand that they want our experience to be as perfect as possible. I'm just trying to explain how much ANTICIPATION is finally being rewarded.

So if you are a gamer, or you know a gamer who already is in love, or about to fall in love with Guild Wars 2, be aware that it'll be a while before we'll be able to fully participate in the real world after the launch. New and amazing adventures await us - and we've been waiting five years to set out on them. It may take us a while to even want to find our way back.

Some of us - scores of us, rather - can't even wait until the 28th. Our patience has been worn too thin. We pre-bought the game - and will throw ourselves headlong into the 3-day head-start that comes with it. Our countdown is only shorter by 3 days. Three. Three glorious, glorious, shredded-wrapping days!