Guild Wars 2 paid tournaments, rentable arenas are first steps towards eSports goal

ArenaNet wants Guild Wars 2 to do eSports. And the first baby steps have been made.

Coming in "the near future" will be paid tournaments and custom arenas, the game's website announced. These are considered elements of structured PVP (sPVP).

Currently there are free automated tournaments where both pick-up and organised teams are welcome, and prizes only stretch to fourth place.

Paid tournament rewards are better and they stretch to eighth place. But you will need to pay to join paid tournaments, and you will have to be part of a group.

The price will be a ticket, which can be bought at the gem store or found in a free-tournament chest or earned by ranking up.

First place earns one gold tournament chest, 360 glory, 360 rank points and 180 gems. Those are the gems you buy at the real-world money store. 180 gems translates to £2, roughly.

To help guilds and organised groups practice for the tournaments, ArenaNet will offer custom arenas for rent. These will be customisable and you can even host your own tournaments there. Better still, you can password-protect the arenas if you so wish. No rental fees were shared.

Those are the features ArenaNet is ready to talk about. Other features are obviously in development, but the team doesn't want to shed light on them until they're more solidified.

"Guild Wars 2 competitive PVP is taking its first steps..."

Jonathan Sharp, ArenaNet

"There's a ton of stuff we want tell you about - just not yet," wrote ArenaNet's Jonathan Sharp. "The features we're adding now will go a long way in helping the sPvP community grow, but there's still more to do.

"Again, we don't like talking about features until we're ready to show them. We don't like empty promises and we know you don't either. But at the same time we do want you to know that other features are coming!

"We know leaderboards are important," Sharp teased. "We know the ability to spectate matches is important. We know larger tournaments are important. We know streaming is important."

"Guild Wars 2 competitive PVP is taking its first steps; teams are starting to organise and some key features are about to start showing up. But are we done working on it? Hell no."