Guild Wars has been in the alpha process for well over a year and a half, and development has been tremendous since it began. Servers have been up for nearly the whole duration, with only a few hours of down time every couple of months due to maintenance. The testing team has been expanded greatly over the past 6 months, as actively involved community individuals have been brought in. The current tester estimate is thought to be at nearly one thousand and it is expanding every week.

Testers who are participating within the alpha have been very dedicated individuals, helping the development team in terms of design, game balance and bug finding. Not to mention the continuous support they have been able to offer to the community, as the ArenaNet non-disclosure-agreement is very lax and allows fansites to supply the fans with an enormous amount of new information.

As it is, ArenaNet is inviting numerous guilds to participate with the alpha testing (mostly due to their need for testing of their newly implemented guild features). The process is run by official and elite fansites, each choosing a guild they believe as being most serious and deserving about an alpha spot.

For those who are not lucky enough to be participating within either the alpha or beta, they have most likely had the opportunity to play in either the E3 preview or the worldwide preview (may and October respectively).