How PvP Tournament Season Two Works

PvP Tournament Season Two starts on February 14 and runs for a month, culminating in an Invitational Event on the weekend of March 21, 2015. This article explains the basic structure of the season and how you can compete to earn an invitation to the Invitational. Points that are significantly different than Season One have been underlined.

American and European Seasons
We are running both American and European Tournament Seasons. Everything in this article can be assumed to run in duplicate across the two seasons/continents, including the final Season Two Invitational Event. Tournaments will run at appropriate times for the timezone of their continents.

Because the two Seasons have separate Season Point totals, it's possible to play on both if you want to try for two sets of Alternate Art Unique Items. Players should expect to win less while playing on servers outside of their continent due to the increased latency. Players will only be eligible for the first invitational event that they qualify for.

Torment and Bloodlines
All events in both American and European seasons are available to characters of either challenge league. Torment and Bloodlines characters fight in the same events and you can enter with a character in either league.

Blitz Events
Blitz tournaments are a series of rapid-fire duels where you're quickly matched against a new opponent as soon as your last round finishes. Your goal is to get as many victories as possible within the time limit.

In addition to 1v1 Blitz events, we support two types of 3v3 Blitz events. In Party Blitz, you bring a specific three-person party that you will play with for the entire tournament. In Non-Party Blitz, which is new this season, you are given a random team each match and are scored as an individual.

We've improved the resistance calculation to take into account all matches rather than just ones that have occurred already.

Blitz events are run as both level 28 and open (no level restriction) events. Blitz has been very popular and there are more Blitz events in this second season.

Free-For-All Events
Free-for-all tournaments take place in the Sarn Arena. They're a massive brawl where you get a point per player kill. If you die, you're sent to a new arena to continue the massacre.

Free-for-all events are run as both level 28 and open (no level restriction) events. We are running fewer Free-for-all events in this season than we did last time.

Capture the Flag Events
We'll be running one 3v3 Capture the Flag event.

Competitive Swiss Events
On the weekends we'll be running the most competitive of the event types - tournaments with Swiss Matchmaking. These run in a regimented series of matches, where victory is about defeating your opponent at any cost rather than winning rapidly.

There are two Swiss tournaments run each weekend - one on America and one on Europe. Like other events, players from Torment and Bloodlines play in the same events.

In Season Two, all of the Swiss events are comprised of a series of level 28 1v1 duels. The winner of each of these Swiss tournaments will be invited to the Invitational at the end of the Season.

There is also one Open (no level restriction) Swiss event that doesn't lead to an invitational.

PvP Points and Prizes
Like our Race events, each of these PvP Events awards you with Season Points for ranking highly.

The Season Points contribute towards a set of Alternate Art Unique Items that are awarded in a similar way to our race rewards. Torment and Bloodlines points contribute to the same pool. Top competitors in the Standard and Hardcore points ladders are awarded an Alternate Art Talisman of the Victor Unique Item (which is like a Demigod item).

Each event awards a Talisman of the Victor to the highest ranked Torment player and the highest ranked Bloodlines player.

Alienware is sponsoring this season and has provided some awesome prizes for winners of the invitationals. We'll post more information on prizes soon.

Ratings for general queues
We've created new ratings queues for this season. We've also combined Torment and Bloodlines together for ratings this season.

These ratings start at 800 and increase/decrease based on your win record and the quality of opponents you face. Beating a better opponent is worth more rating than beating a worse opponent.

Ratings now degrade slightly every day, in order to prevent people from lodging themselves at the top of the ladder and then not playing any more.

Having a very high rating can get you invited to the Season Two Invitational event!

The Invitational
On the weekend of March 21-22, we'll be running special double-elimination tournaments for both America and Europe. Like much of the rest of Season Two, matches in the invitational tournament will also be level 28 1v1 duels.

Each of these invitationals consists of 8 players from the challenge leagues. It doesn't matter whether they were in Torment or Bloodlines.

The 8 slots consist of the following, in this order:

• The top player in each of the four weekend Swiss tournaments.
• The top two players measured by Season Points.
• The top two players measured by level 28 1v1 PvP Rating.

To play in the invitational, the player must be available at the appropriate time. If players are unable to attend or already have an invite from another entrance criterion, then the next player in that group will be invited. For example, if the top PvP Rating player isn't available and the second place one already has an invite from winning a Swiss tournament, then the next two players will be invited from the PvP Rating ladder.

A player will be invited to the first invitational that they qualify for. Being invited to a PvP invitational doesn't exclude you from being invited to the Racing invitational. If you win an invite and don't want to play in that Invitational (so that you can try to win an invite in the other) then contact us immediately to reject the invite. It'll go to the next person on the list.

Note that these invitationals occur on both America and Europe. There are 16 players in total who win invitations.