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Guild Wars Gold, GW Gold
By Billiard
Special note: Each State of the Game presents the opinions and
insights of one game observer. These observations are personal
in nature and do not reflect the opinions of ArenaNet. While
ArenaNet does review each State of the Game article to assure
that it offers content that is respectful of all players, we
intend to allow our reporters the freedom to inject some
personal opinion into descriptions of the current atmosphere of
competitive play in Guild Wars, and to express views based on
their experience and observation.
Third Party Sponsored Competition Comes to Guild Wars!
Up until now, the major international PvP competitions in Guild
Wars were all sponsored by ArenaNet, while smaller, mostly
regional competitions were for the most part player-run and
sponsored. ArenaNet began with the Guild Wars World Championship
and the Guild Wars Factions Championship, and eventually
switched over to the automated Guild Wars $100,000 Tournament
Series to make competing in tournaments more accessible and
distribute prizes to more players.
While the monthly automated tournaments (ATs) in this latter
series do allow more guilds to compete, the actual number that
regularly participate remains relatively small, due in part to
the guild membership requirements and the qualifying process for
monthly ATs.
This month though, things have changed, possibly ushering in a
new era for Guild Wars tournament play. On December 1, Rebel
Rising [rawr], in conjunction with GuildCafe, kicked off the
2008 RAWR Cup Title Series. The inaugural tournament of the RAWR
Cup ran much like the monthly ATs, with ArenaNet essentially
adapting the AT system to accommodate and automate the RAWR Cup.
Similar to the monthly ATs, the RAWR Cup offered significant
real world prizes to the winners. These included Acer 22"
widescreen LCD monitors, Logitech G9 Laser Gaming Mice, and
special edition Rawr Cup t-shirts. RAWR Cup matches were made
available on Observer Mode, and tournament reward points were
awarded.
The RAWR Cup did introduce some significant innovations that
departed from the usual monthly ATs to make the tournaments more
accessible and enjoyable for players. These included offering
liberal tournament qualification and breaking the field into
divisions, as well as offering "live" coverage of the event.
Qualifying Requirements
The qualifying requirements for the RAWR Cup were simple.
Members for teams were required to register on GuildCafe, and
once six or more signed up, the registration form for the
tournament appeared on their GuildCafe guild page. There was no
cost to enter the tournament and no need to earn tournament
qualifying points. This made it much easier for teams to sign up
for the RAWR Cup than for the usual Guild Wars monthly ATs.
After registering for the tournament, guild leaders were sent a
special access key via GuildCafe private message so they could
obtain the token required to enter the tournament using the
Guild Wars AT system...
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