The Future of Competitive Guild Wars: Updated

Hello again, Guild Wars fans!

In a recent article we discussed the upcoming competitive improvements for Guild Wars. However, as Leonard Bernstein once said, "To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time." We here at ArenaNet are trying to achieve great things and thus have ended up needing a little more time.

We have already implemented many of the announced changes, such as 1v1 competition and the 1v1 ladder. However, the automated tournament system has proven more complicated to implement than we originally thought.

It is important to us that we release a solid system. While we are almost there with automated tournaments, our programmers and testers have found a few issues that we are working to iron out. So, I am here to give you an update to our previous announcement.

First, we still hope to roll out the automated tournaments this month, but only just barely. We hope to have them up and running next week. This means the official start of qualifier tournaments for the May championships in the ?100,000 Tournament series will begin a bit later than we originally anticipated (most likely May 9) so we can do live testing during the first week of May.

The announced May season will still happen. We are offering guilds and individuals the chance to qualify for the May championships where they can compete to win a share of that month?s ?10,000 in prizes. As previously announced, all guilds or players who earn at least 20 QP during the season can participate in the monthly championship. Because the season is shorter than planned, it may prove harder to qualify. In the event that at least 64 participants do not reach 20 QP, we will invite additional guilds and individuals from those who have earned the highest number of QP until we have a minimum of 64.

Also, we have listened to your feedback about the proposed automated tournament schedule and have decided to update it.

As you can see in the new schedule below, we?ve made the schedule run Wednesday through Tuesday so that the two hour bump between weeks takes place mid-week instead of on the weekend. We also changed the times to be friendlier for players in the major time zones for tournaments throughout the week.

This schedule will continue weekly with occasional special events and monthly championships.

The in-game prize system and real world prizes offered in the ?100,000 Tournament Series are still being finalized. Watch for an upcoming article with more prize details.

As ever, we are striving to push Guild Wars to the fore of competitive e-sports, and are always open to your ideas and suggestions. Please write to tournament@arena.net with your comments.

Michael Gills
ArenaNet Tournament Coordinator