Custom PvP arenas with much of the functionality of FPS dedicated servers are to be added to Guild Wars 2 in limited beta form in the Retribution update due next week, alongside a spectator mode. They’ll be accompanied with new World vs World abilities, guild missions, guild siege weapons and back banners. Meanwhile, Arenanet will conclude their Frost and Flame storyline with a brand new dungeon.
Guild Wars 2’s next major content update is heading your way tonight, bringing with it a brand new PVP map. Spirit Watch is a mix of conquest and capture-the-flag, set in the primal land of the Norns. Intense brawls are found at the control points, while high cliffs, bridges and valleys shift the focus to vertical play. 
As a way of avoiding some of Battlenet’s matchmaking shortcomings: namely the inability to name your own rooms and chat channels, Diablo 3 players have organically created their own fight club: Inferno Act 1 Q9 games are now being used as a de facto arena system. 
In a high-spirited new blog update, BioWare’s Jeff Hickman has said that SWTOR’s outlook is anything but bleak post-free-to-play. The game is reportedly “incredibly healthy with an ever increasing number of players who are actively playing (the servers are rocking!)". Nonetheless, the exec producer knows BioWare “haven’t gotten everything perfect".Our Spotlight units plug content our journalists have made, that our advertisers want to promote. Sometimes the promotion is paid for, but the content they go to is always independent with no client oversight or approval.
We've got a new button! The previously greyed out 'Download Public Test' button on the Diablo 3 launcher is now aflush with colour and verve, flickering in highlighted anticipation as you mouse over it teasingly. Clicking on the new button doesn't actually do anything right now, but it suggests that preparations are being made to open up Diablo 3's public test realm, the online back-room in which Blizzard test-run new Diablo 3 patches and updates. And what update would require the help of players to test it, if not the Player vs Player update due to arrive in Patch 1.1? Clues!
With World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria now only weeks away, here's what Lead Producer John Lagrave told us about the changes coming to PvP, and how Blizzard are addressing issues players have had with matchmaking and PvP gear.
The next major Rift content patch, Conquest, is going to land in the patcher next week, bringing with it a slew of new features, enhancing, PvP, end game content, and letting you mince about with your lower level friends, showing off your fancy armour without ruining their game thanks to the new mentoring mode. There’s also a few more minor additions, detailed below the jump. 
You can read all you like about Guild Wars 2’s World vs World vs World, the player vs player punching matches between three different server shards over the course of two weeks, but it’s not going to properly prepare you for the chaos of stepping out of the gate and into the fray. A few hundred people on each side, each trying to seize towers, survive sieges and disrupt anything and everything that might give their opponents an edge. It’s overwhelming, that first half an hour. Nothing makes sense. No one, either. Just random words burped into chat like an afterthought. 
Sensing that we'd all like to know a little more more about dead pandas, World of Warcraft's game director Tom Chilton has kindly detailed the changes being made to PvP realms around the release of Mists of Pandaria. Turns out we're not killing each other enough, and that's all about to change.
So you’ve signed up for EVE Online, you’ve done the tutorials (you have done them, right?) and you’re ready to find your place in New Eden. But you’re not here to fire mining lasers at asteroids, no no. You’re here to fight! So where does a newbie find a piece of the action in these parts?
Being alone in EVE isn’t very fun or rewarding and finding player versus player action can be hard on your own, especially if you’re a new player. The easiest way would be to poke around in low security or zero security space, but if you do chances are that you’ll be on the receiving end of the action and find yourself in the sights of pirates or pilots protecting their territories.The solution is to get organized and save yourself from a lot of trouble. Except for factional warfare, which in Inferno looks to (finally) become a viable place to find good fights, you have a couple of other options to choose from as a brand new pilot..
There’s always been something of the saviour about Guild Wars 2. False prophets have come and gone, and each time the thronging masses of the gaming public has held their collective breaths, wondering if perhaps this would be the one to free them of the tyrannical, all encompassing rule of World of Warcraft. Whether this would be the one to break past the first few million subscribers and cast them free of those heavy shackles that they must bear. The thronging masses of the gaming public always were prone to melodrama. 
Those lovable chaps over at Rift Junkies have had a chat with Rift’s design developer Hal Hanlin about the MMO’s upcoming expansion Conquest. As you may already know, it contains epic battles between three factions at once, something which excites us as much as it makes us glad we’re not game designers.
Patch 1.1 will be Diablo 3's biggest update so far, introducing the PvP arena mode that was missing at launch as well as a host of other changes and fixes. It's a tidy bag of surprises and treats, and we've no idea when it's due to appear. But here's what we do know about Diablo 3's PvP update.
Bioware have already sniffed around Ranked Warzones in The Old Republic, the stats tracking version of their level 10 and above instanced team battles, but a late change in patch 1.2 scuppered it. Since then there's been the a lot of noise from PvPers looking to keep track of how many people they've Force Nipple-Tweaked and Jedi-Annoyed. Hush now: they've just announced that patch 1.3 will bring the Ranks. 
Rift is getting a big update in the form of triple faction battleground combat, with three sides duking it out across an new version of the Stillmoor area, reclassified as a PvP warzone and letting players fight over the new ‘Sourcestone Extractors’. Or as you and me might know them, control points. It’s a big shift for Rift, which has previously been a very PvE focused game, but if you’re going to do PvP, a three way is always the best way. Ahem.
