PropheT wrote on Sep 2, 2012, 19:44:
They didn't have to assume, they had some pretty concrete numbers on pre-sales already so they should have known what they needed to support. That system didn't withstand the first day of people they had actual numbers for; it couldn't handle the pre-sales, preorders didn't get in until later and retail box no-preorder people weren't even a factor.

Shutting off their public access when the game went live didn't make me incredibly happy, either. Being forced to sift through 3rd party sites packed with account sniffing trojans for information because their forums were shut down for launch just smacks of a company that doesn't care about you after they got your money. Maybe that's just how these guys do things I guess, I haven't played GW1 in years.

As an aside to all of that, be really careful what sites you get information from. The infections on gaming sites have been rampant since Diablo 3 and they seem to have been repurposed to some degree for GW2, it's kind of nuts. At least the email authentication system helps here so the people whose systems I've looked at have been at least somewhat protected from the worst of it.