System Run Tournaments
A few to the people helping me with my game have been asking about the possibilities of creating server run tournaments, monthly as a way to give out special prizes. The idea has seemed quite daunting to me and I can't seem to think of a way to manage this kind of thing myself, as you would need to make sure all the players are online etc at the same time and things which could take some time and battles are obviously at varying lengths of time.
My battle system is a turn based model, and I would probably disable items and boosts from being used to help keep battle time minimal and fair. I was just wondering if anyone else has ever considered doing something like this? Do you have any decent ideas to actually go about implementing it too? Anything relating to all aspects of the server managing such a thing really
I'm really at a loose end on this one, and would really appreciate some pointers to get me on my way with it 
The hardest part about tournaments has always been about turn out. You can guarantee even really good players on a popular game, that 3/4 of them will be 2 hours late or not turn up at all.
well we are considered a very Guild Wars-typical system.
People are on the pvp map and sign up with their party.
then the system checks for closely ranked opponents and action.
this would be for parties (registered pvp teams)
and guilds
we will also have 1on1s, but without ranking (offensive classes would own it, duh)
ranking from 2on2 to 8on8, so even healers are important.
oh and yeah, instanced maps all the way.
there would be no scheduled tournament as in "Zanval vs Bake on *insert date and time*" for the reason bake mentioned.
have PVP Days each wednesday and saturday, for example.
Some simple PvP could do the trick.
You create physical brackets on a map, warp people into their respective ones, on death => go to save point or on a spectator part of the map.
Once there's only one person in the bracket you can continue to the next bracket and so on.
Click here for my Netgore Content Editor Tutorial video