Yesterday we received an update to ArenaNet’s first structured PvP blog detailing some of the PvP additions coming to Guild Wars 2. In the update, Jonathan Sharp delves into some new information regarding the Qualifying Point system that will be used in paid tournaments, and also talks a bit about some of the new UI changes tournament players will be seeing. Here’s a snippet:

Qualifying points (QPs) are gained in paid tournaments – each person on a winning team in an 8-team paid tournament gets 1 qualifying point. QPs lead to rankings for larger tournaments, and allow you to measure yourself against other players.

Because you must have a full team in order to join a paid tournament and it takes tickets to enter, we know that the best teams will be playing paid tournaments. So while you do compete for better prizes than in free tournaments, the thing you’re really competing for are QPs. Think you’re actually good at competitive GW2? Hit the paid tournaments and prove it. We’ll be adding more features that build off QPs, so once that’s ready, I’ll give everyone another update!

Check out the full developer blog here.

Mike Ferguson, systems designer at ArenaNet, had a few words to say about the current state of WvWvW yesterday in an official news article. In it, he talks a bit about Guild Wars 2′s queuing system for WvWvW, and how to make the most of it. He also discusses matching and the timing of matches, and how those times have chanced since headstart.

Here’s a snippet:

One reason some people experience long wait times is that we are still seeing extremely high concurrency rates, which makes queues longer on worlds that have a large number of players focused on WvW. We also discovered a bug that was allowing people to queue up and enter maps ahead of players who had been queued for much longer. Please check on our forums for an announcement when the fix has been implemented. This should fix the problem of some people staying queued for hours while other people can queue up for the same map and enter within a matter of minutes.

Make sure to check out the full news article to read the rest.

Today we received news that we’ll be able to finally play as the asura and sylvari races in the next beta weekend event, which runs from July 20th to July 22nd. Along with the news, we also got a sneak peek at some screenshots and details about the lush landscapes these two races call home.

For asura players, this means beginning your tale in Metrica Province, a vivid, exotic jungle area full of high-tech laboratories, quirky golems, and competing krewes of mad scientists. Nearby, the massive monoliths of the asuran capital Rata Sum hum with technomagical power. These diminutive geniuses may seem cute at first glance, but never underestimate an asura…

Sylvari players begin their story in the Grove, a luminous living city nestled in the shade of the Pale Tree, the “mother” of every member of this young race of plant humanoids. The sylvari are an enigmatic race of chivalrous explorers who are driven by an insatiable curiosity and guided by a collective Dream.

The two starting areas sound amazing. Make sure and check out the full developer blog and the accompanying screenshots!

Oh, and if you’re curious about some in-game asura footage, check out this Gamespot video.

Hey, everyone, Lead Game Designer Eric Flannum here. As most of you know by now, it’s a very exciting time for all of us here at ArenaNet. We just finished a huge beta event weekend, and we’ve got beta events just around the corner. We have a lot of work to do to get the game ready, but we’re definitely up to the challenge and eager to show off the game to a larger audience. With that in mind, we’ve been adding all sorts of new things to the game, as well as revising and improving on as many aspects of the game as we think need it.

In this blog post, we’ve got Randy Knapp explaining improvements to the compass, Devon Carver discussing some of the additions we’ve made to our open-world content, and Jon Peters talking about changes and additions to our boons and conditions. But first, I’d like to talk about some changes to being downed and defeated.

Eric Flannum, Lead Developer for Guild Wars 2, has posted a new blog post discussing last week’s beta press event. Along with a large slew of updates that have been popping up across the internet, today’s Developer Blog post gives us a ton of insight into what is going on with the game’s development. They discuss Meta Events, Boons and Conditions (buffs and debuffs), and hidden areas. Make sure you read the whole blog post here.