Guild Wars 2

Immediately,
1. Announce there will be a tournament at the one-year anniversary of GW2. $1 million for winner (and probably another $1 million spread among runners up—yes, totally just using same amount Riot used). This will keep the good teams playing now, even though all the core features are not finished yet, so that they can hone their skills to take that prize.
2. Offer sPvP-only edition of GW2 for cheap (<= $20) to further bolster playerbase.

Shortly thereafter, scratch all methods of mathes. Replace with the following:
1. 5v5 hot-join (designed for goofing off, killing a bit of time, testing new builds, helping new players)
-a. Greatly reduced glory rewards.
-b. No penalty for leaving
-c. Minimal matchmaking with hidden ELO.
-d. Add mentor system. Experienced players can volunteer to mentor a new player. They will be rewarded with glory based on feedback from mentoree. Mentoree must be below rank 10
2. solo/duo-queue tournaments (for players without organized teams to progress)
-a. ELO matchmaking with visible rating to other players
-b. Add penalty for leaving
-c. 8-team tournament is okay, but consider increasing to 16 with greater rewards for last round
3. ranked team skirmishes
-a. Single round matches
-b. ELO matchmaking, with rating decay
4. daily team tournaments
-a. 16-team tournament (one during EU prime time, one during NA prime time)
-b. ANet should stream and shoutcast the tournament on Twitch (and hire a couple of great casters)
-c. Participation would be given to those with highest ranked team ratings that sign up for one of the two tournaments (rating decay would force teams to continue to play ranked skirmishes to qualify for daily tournaments)
-d. Top placing teams would receive prizes (cash, gems,etc)
-e. Results in daily tournaments would qualify teams for quarterly/annual tournaments

I am quite certain that gw1 had 100 000 tourney. Where the prize was 100 000 worth or retail goods, can’t be money due to lottery / gambling laws. I’m sure anet will do something similar again.