In the upcoming patch on February 26, Paid Tournaments are going to be replaced by Free Tournaments.

One of the reasons we initially introduced Paid Tournaments was to create a place for hyper-competitive, highly skilled players to find matches with other players of comparable skill, leaving the Free Tournament system available for more casual competitive play. However, now that we have a ratings and matchmaking system in-place that matches players of similar skill levels, we’ve decided that the ticket cost barrier-to-entry of Paid Tournaments is no longer necessary.

Instead, we’ll have 1-round Free Tournaments and 3-round Free Tournaments. Both of these tournament types will use a separate rating for the purposes of matchmaking.

If you have any unused Tournament Tickets you may exchange these for Gold, Silver or Copper Tournament Reward Chests at the new Ticket Merchant NPC who is located next to the Tournament Master in the Heart of the Mists.

We’re also updating the rewards for the 1-round Free Tournaments. A new Match Win Chest will be awarded to the winning team. The losing team will no longer get a chest.

Also, now that we are removing the entry fee for Paid Tournaments, we are removing Qualifying Points (QP) as a tournament reward as well. In the future, top QP earners will receive a valuable in-game prize, which will be detailed in a later blog post.