AreneaNet has announced the winners of last year's Design-A-Weapon Contest, which they will be using to create new weapons for Guild Wars.

The 2007 Design-A-Weapon Contest was the most popular Guild Wars contest ever! We received well over a thousand entries in the contest, and the Dev Team agrees that the quality of the art and the concepts is simply amazing—the best fan art we've ever seen. In the coming months, the player designs selected by the judges will serve as inspiration to the Guild Wars Art Team for the creation of new weapons, shields, focus items, and more! [You can find the original contest rules page here.]

About the Judging

From the more than 1,000 entries, through multiple levels of judging, approximately 100 concepts were selected as finalist entries. Then, the entire Guild Wars Development Team judged the finalists. Eleven concepts were selected as winners, and those concepts will be the basis for new items that will be added to the game in the upcoming months. Another fourteen item concepts were selected as Honorable Mentions, and it is possible that those concepts may also become items in the future. In two instances, design concepts from multiple contestants were combined to form a single entry for judging and those combined concepts would be used as the basis for one new item, although each of those contestants will receive a prize.

Read more here.