Wow! Some 1,500 account activations streaming in a second. It blew Mr Jonathon Sze's mind.

"We were expecting 400 activations a second, not 1,500," said Mr Sze, the product manager for Granado Espada,which made its English debut on May 17.

His team acted fast: in half an hour,they put four extra servers up to handle the overwhelming numbers.Fast forward two weeks, and more than 100,000 players have signed up for a taste of the hottest new online game out of Korea.

Winner of the Grand Prix, the top prize at last year's Korea Game Awards,Granado Espada is the brainchild of celebrated game designer Hakkyu Kim, who was previously responsible for the smash-hit game Ragnarok Online.

Local game company Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH) has the exclusive rights to operate the game in this region - and it has every intention of making the experience a talking point.

For example, the community gave feedback that the two game worlds (really,servers) they were playing in were overcrowded, with players rushing for space so they could kill monsters and get good items.

"(That) affected our decision to open more worlds for our players," explained Mr Yeo Yeok Chuan, vice-president of marketing and strategy at IAH.So the team rolled out two more game worlds for players to explore.And there are more to come.

"We have two more worlds ready togo if we need them," revealed Mr Sze.The ready-to-roll mentality even extends down to the individual servers that IAH runs the game on.

"Each area of the game runs on a different server, and we have a system in place that automatically brings new servers online to replace faulty ones," explained Mr Sze.

Another aspect of the launch which the team concentrated on was the community.This included appointing a dedicated community manager to post updates about the game on the company?s website,and organising real-life events to bring players together.

The partnership has certainly paid off for IAH. Posters on the official game forum shave put up everything from game guides to fan-written stories involving in-game characters.

As Mr Yeo put it, "We want to encourage players to not just play Granado Espada all day, but get away from their keyboards and meet up with their in-game friends.

"That's what community is about."