After closing the doors on a weekend sneak peek at the forthcoming Guild Wars Factions, the game's publisher and developer, NCSoft and ArenaNet respectively, are righteously pleased to reveal that their invitation-only sneak peekers responded in record numbers.

More than 500,000 players participated in the preview event, held online from 12:01 am on Friday, March 24 until 11:59 pm on Sunday, March 26. Cumulatively, those players/peekers spent more than three million hours playing the preview, making the Guild Wars Factions Preview Event one of the largest preview events in gaming history.

The extraordinary weekend was another highlight in a string of successes for Guild Wars. The wildly popular game, of which Factions is a forthcoming expansion/sequel (of sorts), is critically acclaimed for redefining the online role-playing experience. The Guild Wars Factions pre-order pack, made available on Feb 9, 2006, offered key code access to the Factions preview event, and that alone - basically a coupon - ranked in the Top 10 sales lists right alongside full retail titles at some stores and chains around the world. In other words, a coupon for a game sold more than some games. How crazy is that?

Guild Wars Factions is set to hit store shelves on April 28. More info at guildwars.com.
 
 

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