Half a million players spent more than 3 million hours in the Guild Wars Factions weekend preview from March 24th through March 26th. ArenaNet and NC Soft execs were relieved that at least some of the Warcraft servers were operational or it would have been 6 million players logging 36 million hours, which would have left their server farms a smoking ruin. When the hell does that thing come out anyways? Oh, April 28th. That’s kind of a new game and I assume their servers can’t be any worse than Warcraft’s. Maybe I could try that. Why am I thinking out loud? I have no idea.

NCSoft announced the upcoming release of the first expansion for Guild Wars, ETA second quarter of 2006, Guild Wars: Factions. Players can try it out, free, January 20 through January 22 — access keys for those without GW accounts are available at their site. Two new professions are in the expansion: Assassin (I’m guessing that means rogue) and Ritualist (I have no idea what that is, maybe shaman?).