Guild Wars 2 plants PvP overhaul into Seeds of Truth update

Alongside the new story episode and sprawling Silverwastes jumping puzzle, last night's Guild Wars 2 update also brought an overhauled PvP mode.

"Player vs. Player infrastructure is seeing massive changes this month," explains the Guild Wars 2 release page. They've merged the Team and Solo arenas into a single "Ranked" mode—allowing parties of any size to participate in the most competitive mode. An "Unranked" arena has also been added.

In addition, matchmaking has been improved to search via a number of criteria, and leaderboards, map voting and disconnection penalties have all been changed. There's a full overview available on the release notes page.

This, seemingly, marks a shift in strategy for ArenaNet's updates. Over the last year, feature tweaks have been held off for large "Feature Pack" releases, with the Living World updates focusing primarily on content and story. Here, they've again been merged—although there's no word on whether this is a one-off for this release.

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.