The necromancer class was big news at Gamescom. When we spoke to Jeff Grubb back in July, we asked about classes. Jeff said "We are currently in the process of revealing those on the website, and there should be one more revealed before we go live at GamesCom and PAX. Before Cologne, before PAX, we''ll know a fourth."

As always, speculation and anticipation spiked, and the mention of both a mesmer and necro in Ghosts of Ascalon narrowed the possibilities down nicely. Sure enough, the day before Gamescom opened to the public, the ArenaNet team in Cologne casually mentioned the necromancer class as part of the demo.

It was an unusual reveal in that it didn''t include the description, screenshots, and videos that we''ve had with the other class reveals. However, those at Gamescom got to see the necro and his skills firsthand, which is even better. Unfortunately, an overenthusiastic fan did some digging, found some of ArenaNet''s unreleased skill video files, and shared them on a fansite, forcing ArenaNet''s hand.

Community Manager Regina Buenaobra stepped into the (now deleted) video thread to clarify things a bit: "Well, now the surprise has been spoiled for when we do release the necro website content. I hope I do not see complaining that people have seen those videos before, and that they are ''old news''. Since you''ve already seen those skills, I''m letting you know now that we will release the necro profession on Wednesday. (We''re all a bit disappointed that you found those skill videos. We wanted it to be in context, with the necro web page, and we wanted all the info to arrive at once in a nice, impactful package. Ah well.) "

As ArenaNet has been requesting that people remove the leaked videos from YouTube, I decided to avoid them completely until they come straight from the source. Keep your eye on Massively Wednesday when the necro class is officially revealed and I go over it with a fine-toothed comb!