400,000 people played Guild Wars last weekend

We took advantage of the Guild Wars preview event last weekend to take a look around at the state of the game. Apparently, over 400,000 other players were on during the weekend, which makes the performance we experienced that much more remarkable. The game itself is like an MMO hack-n-slash RPG with many quests designed for teams of players. In a game like WoW, quests frequently will find multiple parties camping spawn points in order to complete the quest. Guild Wars solves the issue by spawning an isolated instance of quests for each group producing a consistent experience. Grouping for a quest takes place in a holding area that notes the recommended group size. This prevents lone players from rushing into an area designed for large groups of players and getting killed, which seems to happen a lot to a certain friendless Joystiq blogger. More details about the upcoming beta weekends at the game's site.