AHHHHH! The pain...
ArenaNet posted new information for Guild Wars 2 today; it covers the third class revealed so far – the Ranger.
Looks like I’ll be wanting to play a Ranger in Guild Wars 2 even more than I like playing them now in the original. My main avatar in Guild Wars is a Ranger/Elementalist (though I’ve thought about switching up the secondary once that becomes available). “Main” is a bit misleading here, as I abandoned all of what I started when I first purchased Guild Wars so many years ago.
I have to say, the Ranger looks even more enticing after watching the videos. They didn’t need to convince me, but check out the video for Serpent Strike. The picture below just doesn’t do it justice.
That green trail? Pure Awesomeness.
Man, that skill is just cool looking, especially followed up with that knife-throwing trick. And the rest of the videos are just as good. Just about the only thing ArenaNet could do to make me want to play Guild Wars 2 even more is introduce a class that actually, fully uses stealth (like Burglars in LotRO or Rogues in WoW). And the only thing they could do to make me want to play Guild Wars 2 even less is to have those voice-overs as a part of the game. Seriously? If those are in the game, I need a way to mute myself. (Note to ArenaNet: These videos are already Pure Internet Joyfullness™ in video format. They stand on their own, you don’t need “witty banter”.)
I never played the Assassin class in Factions (mostly never found the time to play through Prophesies so I would feel “okay” about starting a new character in Factions – I know, I’m weird like that…). So I don’t know if stealth is an option for me now. If it becomes a class in GW2, I’m going to…well, I don’t honestly know what I’m going to do. I better figure out how to get paid for playing these games!
There’s a lot of great information about the class in the reveal, and a really nice summary and discussion over at Massively; there’s not much more I could say that isn’t already pointed out there.
I will say this: I’m beginning to agree with Syp that Guild Wars 2 could be the game that completely dominates the next round of MMOs.
pix'led life 
I think i screenshotted the same green trail, if thats where you got that image.
There is no stealth currently in gw, and there is little sign of it in GW2, but, they did mention snow leopards having stealth. a pet. not stealth for players but its a start? have to wait until assassins are announced i guess.
I don’t know if you’ve read about the witty banter at all, but they’ve said that when its toggled on it doesn’t banter as much and yeah, you can toggle it off.
Oh. Thank the powers that be.
Yeah, I did a quick capture of the video. Crazy stuff. If only they’d give me stealth with that kind of combat…wow. They’d be scraping my brains off my monitor.