Celestial Tournament Wrap-Up

Our largest tournament ever (at least so far) is over and we have crowned our newest tournament champion, Team Everfrost from Finland. Congratulations to them!

At the end of the single elimination finals, here is how the top 16 guilds ended up in the final standings:

Finish Guild Totals OP-Match Guild-Battle OP-Battle
Match Win % Win % Win %
1 Team Everfrost (winner) 33 64.37% 88.46% 59.46%
2 Esoteric Warriors 33 70.76% 85.19% 67.42%
3 Idiot Savants 27 77.27% 66.67% 67.92%
4 Listen To 24 70.05% 66.67% 66.17%
5 Mostly Harmless 24 69.57% 68.42% 64.81%
6 Ominous Latin Name 24 66.26% 70.00% 59.26%
7 Battery Powered Best Friend 24 63.31% 80.00% 60.87%
8 Time Is Running 21 70.42% 61.54% 65.70%
9 Winners Remorse 21 66.24% 72.73% 63.78%
10 Rus Corp 21 61.58% 70.59% 54.90%
11 Bambis Don't Say 21 59.15% 71.43% 57.95%
12 Serious Sin 18 81.45% 57.89% 78.82%
13 Supernova Jpn 18 68.40% 61.90% 64.61%
14 Temporal Flux Reality 18 68.40% 55.00% 61.63%
15 한 얼 18 66.98% 52.38% 60.40%
16 Zero Files Remaining 18 66.00% 53.33% 58.48%

Did you make your Xunlai Tournament House predictions? I ended up scoring 23 out of a total of 40 points. How well did you do?

Because this was the largest and most complex tournament ArenaNet has ever run, up until now, I wanted to share some of what we learned from it.

In the Beginning
When we realized that automated tournaments were more complicated to create than we realised, we wanted to offer an exciting event for old and new competitive Guild Wars fans.

We wanted this event to act as a transition between our existing tournament systems and many of the changes coming up in our automated events system.

As we've already discussed, it is time for Swiss tournaments to become the competitive standard for Guild Wars. In addition, we learned that larger tournaments with graduated prizes are more exciting for the participants and for the fans. Finally, we knew that we wanted to start offering exciting, real-world prizes for these tournaments (more details on this to come later this week). So we had the basic structure for the Celestial Tournament laid out.

When it came to creating the rules, we knew that we would have guilds from all around the world and from different time zones entering, so we had to come up with a system for the guilds to schedule and report their matches. We knew it would be difficult across time zones but made a balanced set of rules before registration began.

Here in the office we had an unofficial pool as to how many guilds would end up joining the Celestial Tournament. Most guessed between 40 and 100. I had the largest guess at 210, and even I ended up short as the Celestial tournament started with 282 guilds entering!

With the allowed tournament roster updates before round 4, we ended up with nearly 3,000 players competing in this single tournament. This event included players from:

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Bosnia
Brazil
Brunei Darussalam
Bulgaria
Canada
Czech Republic
Denmark
England
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Guam
Holland
Hong Kong
Hungary
Ireland
Isle of Man
Italy
Japan
Kazakhstan
Korea
Mexico
The Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Russian
Federation
Singapore
Slovak Republic
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Turkey
Ukraine
US


The Celestial Tournament was truly a global competition!

The Long and Winding Road
With 282 guilds joining the tournament we had to run at least 8 rounds of Swiss competition to get clear enough separation to pull a top 16 for the playoffs. With 8 rounds running over less than 6 weeks, each round had to be only 96 hours long. This meant that some rounds took place over weekends, and some did not.

Once the tournament started we learned yet again how hard it was for guilds to schedule and play matches with opponents from around the world under our old system of running matches over a long season. As you can expect, players have school, work, vacations, and so on in their lives, so there were cases where matches weren't able to be played and the ArenaNet Tournament Team had to adjudicate the match results. Fortunately this happened for a very small percentage of the matches, but anytime it happens is unfortunate.

We saw many examples of great sportsmanship between guilds who offered to wake up early or stay up late to make the match time easier for their opponents. We also heard of guilds who gave strategy advice to their opponents after matches and many new friendships forming.

I have to say these sorts of results make running a tournament worth it.

As the tournament went on, some guilds had to drop, while we removed a few for breaking the rules, but in the end 229 of the guilds that started the event earned prizes and gained valuable tournament experience.

Tell them what they've won, Johnny!
Every one of those 229 guilds won something for their effort, from one of the upcoming Roller Beetle transmogrify potions all of the way up to exciting graphic cards from ATI, a contributing sponsor of the Celestial Tournament.

Place Prize Per Player
1st ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Video card ($459.99 retail value per video card)*
100 special transmogrify potions (per player)**
Permanent Gold Cape trim for guild
2nd ATI Radeon X1650 PRO Video card ($199.99 retail value per video card)*
50 special transmogrify potions**
Silver Cape trim for guild***
3rd - 4th Logitech G5 Laser Mouse ($69.99 retail value per mouse)*
40 special transmogrify potions**
Silver Cape trim for guild***
5th - 8th Thermaltake Gamma Pad Gaming Surface ($19.99 retail value per gaming surface)*
30 special transmogrify potions**
Silver Cape trim for guild***
9th - 16th 20 special transmogrify potions**
Silver Cape trim for guild***
17th - 32nd 15 special transmogrify potions**
Bronze Cape trim for guild***
33rd – 48th 10 special transmogrify potions**
49th – 64th 5 special transmogrify potions **
65th – 96th 3 special transmogrify potions **
97th – 128th 2 special transmogrify potions **
129th – lower 1 special transmogrify potions **

* Maximum of eight items (video cards, mice, or gaming pads) per guild
**Virtual items are permanent (for the duration of the account) in-game prizes (which have no retail value).
***The Silver and the Bronze Cape trims last until the end of the next announced season

In addition, we are awarding good sportsmanship prizes to the following 5 guilds who received the most good sportsmanship nominations from their peers during the Celestial Tournament:


Forsaken Wanderers – wins permanent transmogrify potion and skill pin set per roster member

The Shadow Knights – wins skill pin set per roster player

Legion of Losers – wins skill pin set per roster player

Bruderschaft der Verdammnis – wins skill pin set per roster player

Storm Bearers – wins skill pin set per roster player

We are sending these players the complete first set of Guild Wars skill pins as a thank you for being such good sports in the tournament.

And did you notice the permanent transmogrify potion mentioned? In addition to the most-nominated guild for good sportsmanship, the members of the winning guild of the tournament (Team Everfrost) AND the 8 fans who earned the highest score in the Xunlai Tournament House will receive one permanent Roller Beetle transmogrify potion that they can use as often as they want!

What have you done for me lately?
Now that the Celestial Tournament is in the history books, watch for news of an exciting, new competition series to be announced later this week. More chances to compete, more chances for glory, and more chances to win!

ArenaNet wants to thank all of the players who participated in the Celestial Tournament, the various web sites and fans who discussed this event and made their predictions in the Xunlai Tournament House, and ATI Graphics for being the exclusive contributing sponsor for the Celestial
http://eu.guildwars.com/pvp/article/ct_wrapup/