Guild Wars signs up a million players worldwide

Massively multiplayer title specialist NCsoft has announced that Guild Wars, its online role-playing game which launched worldwide back in April, has now seen over a million accounts registered in the game.

The Korea-based publisher has seen the number of players in the game swell rapidly over the five months since its launch, and hopes to continue to see increases in the in-game population over the coming months - not least because it will be launching in two new territories in the Far East, namely Japan and Taiwan.

Developed by US firm ArenaNet, which is largely made up of ex-Blizzard employees, Guild Wars claims to be more skill-based than level-based, unlike its competitors, and also breaks ranks with the majority of MMOG titles by not charging a monthly subscription fee.

Instead, NCsoft plans to make money from the game by charging for major content updates, the first of which will arrive in 2006.

To celebrate hitting the million-players milestone, NCsoft here in Europe plans to release a Special Edition of the game on October 21st, which will include an artbook, map and soundtrack - all of which are brand new and exclusive to Europe, and are different to what was released in the Collectors' Edition earlier this year - and will also include some in-game items in the form of item and skill unlocks.