Guild Wars 2

I’m still kind of new to sPvP and I was wondering what is a tournament is and how do I play in one.

I’m also under the impression playing tournaments will advance tournament-related achievements? Will solo que count?

So tournaments (or as they are now called “arenas”) are the more competitive form of PvP. In order to play in one you need to open up your PvP menu, then I believe on the second tab is the place where you can queue up for arena games. Solo Queue will count toward the same achievements as Team Arena. In Solo Queue you enter the arena as a solo player and are matched with 9 other solo players to go against each other in a 5v5 on any of the maps (excluding capricorn). When you have a friend or a full group of players you can go into the Team Arena where the group you enter the queue with will be paired with another premade group to go against on any one of the competitively viable maps (Forest, Khylo, Temple, Legacy).

Hope that helps ^.^

There are 2 kinds of “battlegrounds” (or however you want to call it) in sPvP:

“Hot Join-PvP”, this are the games you join via the “PvP-Browser”.
If you already played in one, you will see, that you are able to join and leave a game at any state, that teams might not be full, and that sometimes you can even switch teams.

On the other side, there are the “Solo-Arena and Team-Arena”, also known as “tPvP” (tournament PvP).
This Arenas are far more competitive and you can’t directly join a game, you have to sign up via the menu and when enough players have signed up, the game starts.
Those battles are always 5 vs 5 (except somebody doesnt show up) and usually the battles are on a “higher level” then Hot Join.

Yes, solo que counts and will advane you tournament-realted achievements.

HOWEVER, I recommend you, that if you are new to sPvP, you should not play into tournaments, as probably, you will be matched up against far better players and maybe also your own team gets mad at you, if you don’t bring any / little experience in PvP with you.

And, if there should be some missunderstanding:
There are of course, also the tournaments hosted by the community, like the “vVv-tournament” yesterday, this tournaments usually have their own rules and ways to sign up and there are no achievements related to them.

tournaments were this weird gametype that got scrapped from sPvP awhile back. Basically you had “free” and “paid” tournies, all in a bo3 format. Placing 1st in a free tournament would grant you tickets that allowed you to enter paid tournaments, winning paids gave you gems and QP (a REALLY inaccurate leaderboard currency). QP was supposed to be used like tickets for teams to enter monthly tournaments, but they never got around to adding those in.

The “tournament” game achievements are achieved by playing any form of rated games (solo queue, team queue). They just haven’t gotten around to updating the achievement text.

Thanks guys this was very helpful.

On another note, I really, really suggest getting to be familiar with all map mechanics before starting tournament play. Otherwise you will let your team down