Servers stretched in latest Guild Wars 2 beta

Another beta event for upcoming Guild Wars 2 took place over the weekend, with "hundreds of thousands" of players scrambling to be involved.

Of course, this almost immediately led to server issues, but that's all part of the fun; the beta is aimed to stress-test the servers, and at times they snapped completely.

Reaction on Twitter has been positive, though, user Dre Chapman, for example, tweeting: "It's very rare that a game lives up to the hype, but man did Guild Wars 2 deliver. And this is only the beta.

The sheer scale of this beta event is testament to how well Guild Wars 2 is likely to do – access to beta events comes from invites, or a serial code that comes with pre-ordering the game, so there are obviously plenty of people out there who want to see more.

The Guild Wars series runs against the grain to an extent in that traditional RPG questing is replaced by a ripple effect, allowing players to approach events in a variety of ways.

Something that has also set the series apart is its lack of subscription fees, a characteristic that is becomingly increasingly rare in PC gaming.

Interestingly, there have been rumours of a potential console version of the game; however, as with Diablo III the emphasis remains on the PC version.

The beta test allowed gamers to comment on the quests they completed and rate them, showing that PC-gaming is still the easiest platform for developers wanting to interact with their audience.

Although developers ArenaNet have only stated that Guild Wars 2 will be out in 2012, the frequency of beta testing is increasing, meaning the game could go public sooner rather than later.