Guild Wars 2 Gets One Million Beta Signups in 48 hrs

In just over 48 hrs, ArenaNet received 1 million beta signup to its closed beta testing phase. It is quite the milestone, but does that really mean anything anymore?

Over the last few years, just about every triple A title has hit the million beta signup mark including: Age of Conan, SWTOR, Warhammer Online, Aion, RIFT, and others, I’m sure. So does the fact that GW2 hit 1 million really mean anything?

I’d like to think that it still does; that players are excited for what GW2 is bringing to the genre, and that the era of theme-park MMO’s is fading away; but then again, SWTOR easily had a million beta signups as well.  While there’s no doubt players are excited for Guild Wars 2, this whole beta signup bragging thing is a bit meaningless these days.

While hitting 1 millions signups might no longer be as big of a deal as it was years ago, not hitting it would have been. Then again, it’s GW2, of course they were going to hit the million mark.

3 Comments

  1. Hitting 1 million beta applications does mean there is a lot of interest, just like those other games. The trick will be keeping them all interested after it comes out, unlike a lot of those games you listed.

    Arguably though, since there is no subscription fee, once someone buys the game, Arena.net would not really mind near as much if you never even bother to install it or quit early. True there is no income on micro-transactions and less word of mouth. But also no cost to support a player that might have already spent everything he ever will.

  2. However, since there is no subscription fee, a player is much more tolerant of growing pains in GW2 than in, say, SWTOR. If the gameplay is solid and ArenaNet is committed to correcting flaws and improving end-game, then I expect GW2 to do quite well.

    And I suspect that is the hope of those 1 million beta applicants as well.

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