Per Guild Wars preview part one, one of their design requirements for guild wars was “it needs to give a reward you can’t get anywhere else.” If it ends up being unique content (eg. troops), then the mode will be looked upon as “required” by many. I don’t like competitive features as a whole in games like this and I don’t want to be essentially hamstrung into it because it is the only way to get a certain thing required to progress in the game. I can put in my time per week with the game’s reward structures as they are now, but even five battles daily (considering they have to be specific, tailor made teams that would likely be much slower than normal PvP battles) could be a dealbreaker for me.
However, this seems at odds with another one of the design requirements:
I’m not seeing yet how it could possibly fit both those criteria at the same time. Unless, of course, the “reward you can’t get anywhere else” could just as easily be another way to get stuff you can get everywhere else (eg., a token that you can use in place of any arcane would technically fit into this but still not very valuable because Arcanes are already readily available).
One last thing, on the subject of bonuses. Might I suggest that a full single color team give at least double the bonus as three on a team? You don’t even have to sacrifice anything to slap three blue troops in a Valk team (which is true for about anything that can be fed by a universal converter), but using four blue troops at least has you thinking somewhat outside the box.