[the_logos]

Guild Wars is 8 figure budget, in fact!

Just a point: I'm slightly dubious as to the truthfulness of the author of the article Steve (from Playnoevil) quotes (as is Steve). It could be true, or it could be just a smear-job by a disgruntled ex-employee or, more likely, ex-player.

(Incidentally Threshold: I don't have enough expertise about databases to really get into a discussion about it but there's always a balance to be struck between speed, cost, and robustness. I'm a little surprised they don't have atomic db transactions myself given that I know our text MUDs do (and presumably so do many others) but they also have performance demands that no text MUD has ever had to even think about dealing with. The Arena.net people that I've met in the past all seem like pretty smart people so I'm sure there is at least some rationale behind their decision.)

--matt