The second patch for Guild Wars 2’s Flame and Frost is coming today, bringing the second part of the living story (The Gathering Storm) as well as bug fixes and tweaks all over. What has just been announced recently is the additional changes that will be implemented for the game’s PvP.
What we already knew was that the new map, Spirit Watch, is being added to the list of available maps for static Player vs Player. What we did not know yet was that sPvP itself is getting some changes.
The two-team tournament format is still going to stick around in Guild Wars 2, but now is having the paid requirement removed. In fact, the paid tournament system is going to be entirely gone as of the patch. All tournaments, both two-team and eight-team, will be free. Since the original point of having free and paid was to separate the elite players from the noobies, having matchmaking now would seem to make the paid system obsolete.
The rewards are being retooled, with a new form of chest being granted to the winner of a two-team match and the loser getting nothing. Those of us who still have tickets for paid tournaments can redeem those tickets for chests at a new vendor in the Mists. The patch should be dropping any minute, now, so get logged in to Guild Wars if you want to look longingly at the Paid Tournament signups before they’re gone forever!
