ArenaNet announced that PvP Leagues are coming with Heart of Thorns.

During the Guild Wars 2: World Tournament Series at Gamescom, ArenaNet announced that PvP Leagues were coming with Heart of Thorns. Today, John Corpening of ArenaNet released an official blog post detailing what PvP Leagues are all about.

PvP Leagues in Guild Wars 2 is all about meaningful and competitive progression and getting rewarded for that progression. During each League Season, players will start off in Amber Division—the lowest of the six divisions. Divisions are then broken down into tiers which are again broken down into pips. Each win—or a show of good skill—will reward players with a pip. Earn five pips and you will go up a tier with the completion of the last tier pushing you up into the next division.

To make it friendlier to players just starting out, losing won't have a negative effect during the starting Amber Division. Once in the second and third divisions you will start losing pips if you lose a game, but you will not move down tiers. The third and fourth divisions will have you start losing tiers, but at no point in any division will you be able to move down a division. Even if you go on a bad streak there is only so far that you will be able to fall. The last division is the Legendary Division which is a repeatable division for top end players to continue getting rewarded.

The first time you rank up to a new tier or division in the season you will be rewarded with bigger and more prestigious items rewarded for ranking up into higher divisions. In addition to item rewards, players will be able to show off their League standing via nameplate badges. Each division will have its own badge to show how high you have reached during the season. However, these badges are just to show off your current ranking within a season and will reset at the start of each new season. Reaching Legendary Division will additionally reward a title that will remain unlocked permanently once earned.

In addition to the normal rewards from ranking up tiers and divisions, Leagues will also introduce a new progression based back item. Ranking up your division will reward League Tokens that can be exchanged to get the initial Wings of Glory as well as upgrades to make the wings progressively more awesome. The newest items will always be introduced at a discounted amount of League Tokens.

The Wings of Glory is not the only new major reward coming with leagues as players will be able to make the first Legendary backpack, the Ascension. Participating in PvP Leagues will allow players to unlock a collection for the precursor that will be used to craft the new legendary item.

ArenaNet also revealed that the new Guild Team Leaderboards—an upcoming feature first announced during the expansion announcement at PAX South—will reward teams based on their position on the leaderboard at the end of each league season.

Matt Adams aka the Mattsta

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