Arenanet continues to bombard their fans with information on Guild Wars 2. One of the big appeals of this franchise besides the fact that it doesn’t carry a monthly fee, is the player-versus-player. The original game was praised for its competitive player-versus-player that offered players the ability to use strategy/skill to beat opponents in a wide variety of player-versus-player game modes. At times it even felt like the system harnessed a more first-person-shooter style to player-versus player. Now though Guild Wars 2 is slated to keep the player-versus-player that made it a hit and also offer a more traditional experience.
Below you will find all the facts that I have pulled from Arenanet’s overview of their organized PvP. Their is still another form of PvP called The Mists that will be a lot more free. Anyways I organized it nicely with screenshots to entertain your eyes, so enjoy:
HOT JOIN PVP
1. The casual side of structured PvP is called “Hot Join” PvP
2. “Hot Join” is a place to experiment with builds, learn the maps, and try out a PvP game against other players. Hot join PvP can be played from 1v1 all the way up to 10v10.
3. Players can browse through a list of available games, each displaying the current map, the number of players, etc.
4. Players can search by server population or friends list. Even if a game is in progress, you can join or leave at any time.
5. If one side loses players, the servers can auto-balance the number of players on the teams.
6. Once the current round ends, the server loads the next map in the rotation, players can reselect teams, and the fight starts again. This kind of setup allows players to find favorite servers and build online communities by playing more than one game with the same settings and people.
TOURNAMENT PLAY
1. Tournaments are the more organized side of structured PvP.
2. Tournament play is 5v5, but matches take place on the same maps that are used for hot join play.
3. Tournaments will run with varying frequency, and different reward levels will allow some players to get their feet wet in the smaller tournaments while more-organized teams battle it out in the larger tournaments.
4. There are four types of tournaments.
- Pickup Tournaments: These single-elimination tournaments wait for 8 teams to join before starting. Once they start, they go through 3 rounds of eliminations, with winners receiving qualifier points.
- Monthly Tournaments: For monthly tournaments, you’ll need a certain amount of qualifier points to join.
- Yearly Tournaments: These grand tournaments feature the winners from the monthly tournaments slugging it out for the right to call themselves the best PvP players of the year.
- Player-Run Tournaments: These tournaments will be customized by players, allowing for great flexibility and unique bragging rights.
CONQUEST GAMETYPE
1. Guild Wars 2 PvP features different maps that all dramatically alter a single game type called Conquest.
2. Conquest format, teams compete over a certain number of capture points. Holding a capture point and killing enemies improves your team’s score. The first team to reach the score limit—or the team with the highest score when time runs out—wins the match. (similar to the Battlefield format)
3. Control points are strategic areas on the map that are captured by standing within them. A point must be neutralized before it can be captured, and it can only be captured if no enemies are around.
4. This game type is varied by creating important secondary objectives. Things like trebuchets, repair kits, and destructible environments, like those in the Battle of Kyhlo map. In another map, for instance, a secondary objective takes the form of a giant dragon flying overhead, blasting portions of the map and killing players who are fighting below.
MISCELLANEOUS
1. Characters are set to the maximum level, putting everyone on an even playing field. This makes player skill more important than time invested in a particular character.
2. When you take your character back to the PvE environment, you return to the skills and gear you had there, but the game will save your last PvP setup.
3. You can kill a downed player just by attacking them, when you are near a downed enemy, you will also see a prompt: “F – Finish Them!” Hitting F at this point starts the animation for a finishing move that sends your opponent straight to their defeated state.
