Guild Wars Mini-Interview #60

ArenaNet has answered another set of questions about Guild Wars, this time finishing off their post-update questions from last week. The second installment discusses PvP options, community involvement, and more. Here we go:
Q: Players crave variety. Two requests we've seen are additional tournaments like Tomb of Primeval Kings and a 4-player tournament. Will we see these offered in the future?

A: We are hard at work on the next chapter of Guild Wars, and will be introducing a new type of PvP play in that release, plus adding more variety within the existing forms of PvP now offered.

But I'd like to directly answer your question of why we don't duplicate the 8-player tournament and make a 4-player version. We're conservative about how many different types of PvP we add, because we don't want to fragment the community to the point where there aren't enough players in each type to keep it lively and fun. The fewer teams, the longer the wait to get a match and an even longer time taken to find the opponent who is truly "worthy."

As you may have noticed, there are times when there are not enough teams in the Tombs and GvG scenarios. This is why we removed six-team maps from Tombs and changed the GvG matching system to allow it to match high-level guilds against lower-level guilds if it can't find any other opponents. As more guilds become confident at PvP and as the ladder grows, the numbers will increase and we'll have less need to have matches that involve teams that are far apart in their ladder rankings. In the meantime, we've heard and responded to the fan feedback that players would rather play than wait.

As we add new PvP types, we're careful to design all PvP as a cohesive unit so that the system has a natural progression. We want to provide a clear way for new players to get into PvP by giving well-defined choices, not a bewildering array of different options. As we continue to expand the PvP system, we work hard to make sure that PvP is understandable for new players but has enough variety to keep veteran players committed.