ArenaNet has quite a bit in store for Guild Wars 2 fans in 2013. The team has already began discussing their plans for updates we’ll be seeing early on in the year, including custom arenas, leaderboards, and 1 team vs. 1 team PvP matches for tournaments. On the PvE front, we also received an update from Colin Johanson who talked about the January and February game updates as well as some future plans to make fighting mobs out in the world a little more interesting. Here’s the first bit of news:

Originally posted by ColinJohanson (Source)

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There will be a blog post in around week or so that summarizes the high level plan for the first 6 months of 2013 for Gw2.

Then each of the individual releases for January, February, etc. will have their own release pages on our website, as well as blog posts describing specific important new features where appropriate.

More info coming in about a week once it’s all edited and localized!

Keep reading to see the other dev tracker announcements.

ArenaNet revealed more information about Temple of the Mists yesterday in a new developer blog. Temple of the Mists is the new PvP map (in its beta version) coming in November’s update, and besides the new map, we’re also going to be seeing some other changes to PvP, including the addition of daily and monthly PvP achievements which grant rewards, qualifying leader point boards, and some revisions to the current tournament entry fees and rewards. There are also going to be some minor PvP changes, including the following:

We’ve reorganized the PvP browser hot-join maps so that some are 5-on-5 and some are the current 8-on-8. We’ve made this change so that people who want to play 5-on-5 instead of 8-on-8 in public maps have the option to do so.

Players will also be able to use /rank in the PvP lobby to show off their PvP rank! While this can’t be used in matches (we don’t want people confusing them with finishing stomps) we wanted people to be able to show off how awesome they are in PvP.

For a full list of all PvP changes this patch, please check out the patch notes right here.

For the full November PvP update developer blog, check out the official site.

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.

Jonathan Sharp, Content Designer at ArenaNet, shared some interesting PvP news in a developer blog published yesterday. Guild Wars 2 is going to have a much larger structured PvP scene, and in the near future players will not only be able to take part in normal (free) PvP tournaments as they can now, but also more competitive, paid tournaments that will offer a different set of rewards:

As the name implies, paid automated tournaments have an entry fee. You’ll need tickets to enter a paid tournament, which you can purchase in the gem store, find in reward chests from free tournaments, and receive when you rank up!

These tournaments reward ALL teams that play in them, and offer better rewards on average than free tournaments. Successful teams can earn excellent rewards from paid tournaments, but you’ve got to be good to finish in the top prize slots. We expect that more experienced PvP players will start to migrate to paid tournaments because the risk/reward is much higher than in the free automated tournaments.

There is also no matchmaking in the paid tournaments. You have to come in with a premade team, which means the teams will ALL be organized teams – you won’t have premade groups fighting pick-up groups as you would in free paid tournaments.

Players will most likely need Tournament Tickets to take part in these tournaments, which are already available in the Black Lion Trading Company for gems.

ArenaNet is also working on a custom arena system, where players can set up a private, password-protected area for friends and guildmates, and use it to arrange custom challenges. The team also has additional PvP features in store for Guild Wars 2 players, but some of those plans are tight under wraps for the moment. Read the full developer blog for all the details.

Player vs. Player is always a hot topic when a new game comes out. Arenanet has been talking about their player vs player in Guild Wars 2 for quite sometime and I decided to dive in and start to poke around their matchmaking competitive systems.

In Guild Wars 2 all inter-player battle takes place in a special realm called the Mists. Ironically enough, based on some lore digging and NPC chatter, the Mists are also the after-life (uh-oh). There are two ways to take part in player vs player while in the Mists. They are as separate and distinct from one another as PvP and PvE.

MMO Reviews has an interview up with Eric Flannum, Lead Game Designer, where they discuss a myriad of topics on Guild Wars 2. The interview opens up with these two questions:

What are your plans for the WvW content of the game in the long run?

One of the coolest things that we’ve added to WvW recently is a persistent mini-dungeon that can be accessed through the three keeps in the center map. This area is designed with multiplayer PvP in mind and players can do things like activate the traps in the mini-dungeon to defeat enemy players. Of course, at the end of the area there’s a chest full of rewards.

We also have some exciting plans for WvW post-launch, but of course we don’t want to talk about our post-launch plans until after we ship the game and have had some time to implement things.

Will there be PvP tournaments or some other kind of scheduled competitions?

We fully plan to support tournaments in competitive PvP. We will have a variety of tournament types, from automated tournaments to more competitive scheduled tournaments.

We are still talking about whether or not we want to support any type of WvW tournaments after we launch. If player interest is high, then I think it’s definitely something we’d consider.

Make sure you read the rest of the article over at MMO Reviews.

Source: Exclusive interview with Eric Flannum the Lead Game Designer of Guild wars 2