Brighton, UK. — NCsoft, the world’s premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and ArenaNet, developer of the renowned Guild Wars franchise, are delighted to announce the launch of Guild Wars 2.

Even before today’s launch, more than one million fans had paid for the game in full to enjoy a three-day Headstart. Additionally, demand for the game during this Headstart has been record-breaking, with a peak concurrency of more than 400,000 players online at once.

Whether it’s because of the vast and dynamic world that changes based on player actions, the engaging, customisable personal storyline, or the visceral, highly-mobile action, it’s clear that online gamers are eager for Guild Wars 2.

“This is the culmination of a five-year journey and to be greeted by this level of enthusiasm by our fans is truly amazing”, said O’Brien, president and co-founder of ArenaNet. “But really our work is just beginning. Now our focus is shifting to building on this living world we’ve delivered, continuously refining our game and improving services to ensure our players have the best possible experience”.

For players that have yet to purchase Guild Wars 2, it is now available at buy.guildwars2.com as well as from numerous online and retail partners.

For more information on the game and to purchase Guild Wars 2, visit www.guildwars2.com.

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Helsinki, Finland — Umbra Software, the provider of state of the art rendering optimization middleware, have announced that Guild Wars 2, the highly-anticipated MMO from ArenaNet, is taking advantage of Umbra’s occlusion culling technology. ArenaNet has integrated Umbra’s technology into its rendering pipeline early on in the development process to make sure that the beautiful world of Tyria where Guild Wars 2 is set in is realized in the most optimized fashion possible.

“Umbra 3 provides an excellent solution for our expansive, open world environments. We are very happy with the choice we made with Umbra and the support we’ve been given by the Umbra team” said Patrick Laukaitis; the Senior Software Engineer at ArenaNet who has worked closely with Umbra’s engineering team throughout the production of Guild Wars 2.

“ArenaNet are one of Umbra’s earliest clients and closest partners, so we are excited to see the game nearing completion. Guild Wars 2 is epic in scope, so it’s been a fun challenge to meet the technological needs of Patrick and his team; they’ve really pushed us to take our middleware to the next level” stated Umbra’s Chief Technology Officer Otso Mäkinen.

Guild Wars 2, which has already garnered several most anticipated games of the year awards, is currently in beta and will be released on August 28, 2012.

Umbra 3 is a rendering and performance optimizing middleware that is used to improve frame rates and help to create visually striking game worlds.  Umbra 3 does this by optimizing critical parts of a game such as rendering, audio and game logic. Umbra automatically generates portals for game environments, no matter how large or continuous – completely taking away tedious manual work from artists.

Developers taking full advantage of Umbra’s technology include: Bungie, BioWare, Giant, Guerrilla, IO Interactive, Sony Online Entertainment, Square Enix Inc., Tripwire, NetEase, Remedy Entertainment and many others.

Umbra 3 is available for evaluations from http://www.umbra3.com

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