'Hundreds of thousands' have already bought Guild Wars 2, played beta

The Guild Wars 2 beta opened the weekend of April 27 to anyone who had pre-purchased the title, free from NDAs or embargoes, and "hundreds of thousands" of people signed on to test it out, ArenaNet president Mike O'Brien writes. ArenaNet couldn't handle all of the potential players, but as any practiced spokesman would, O'Brien frames the insufficient server capacity in its most positive form:

"The number of people who pre-purchased the game far exceeded our expectations, and we had to temporarily disable pre-purchases," O'Brien says. "In the end that wasn't enough, and even with 48 worlds we didn't have enough server capacity to meet the huge demand. Fortunately, the vast majority of players were able to get into the game and experience Guild Wars 2 in all its glory."

If a developer has to have a problem, we think "too many people want to play our game" is a pretty good one. ArenaNet will host a stress test tomorrow, May 14, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT, again open to anyone (including us) who's pre-purchased Guild Wars 2.