From a conversation a friend and I had a few weeks ago, and my lingering curiosity about this...
My friend and I are each in extremely small guilds. My guild is me, my husband and my best friend. Her guild is her, another mutual friend and another friend of theirs who rarely logs on.
If we were to play against each other, in what the Wiki describes as a "New Unrated Challenge," would we earn faction from those matches? The discussion page mentions that you don't earn faction from scrimmages - but the breakdown under "Access" sets "New Unrated Challenge" and "New Scrimmage" as two separate things.
None of us know anything about GvG or PvP, and we're all pretty reluctant to just wander into a battle against an unknown foe... pretty sure they'd wipe the floor with us, we're just not that good as players or that well-educated on how to fight against other well trained teams. I'm not sure playing against each other would necessarily help with that either, since we're all the same sort of casual players... but it would at least be a start.
Since we're also interested in obtaining faction towards unlocking skills and other rewards, I'm curious if we can do that by pairing our guilds against each other. It seems logical that our wins/losses would not count towards our guild ratings - that would falsely skew the ladder and be very unfair to other guilds who are playing GvG. But being able to earn faction while going up against one another would certainly be useful to us.
Obviously we do NOT want to do anything that is against the EULA, or that would cause another guild to lose ranking. I only want to know if this is a legitimate way to earn faction, by actually fighting each other like other guilds do in the real tournaments & matches.
GvG & Balthazar Faction question
TheGizzy
Shayne Hawke
I'm fairly certain that unrated matches give no rewards for playing them. That would include Balthazar faction.
fowlero
You don't gain anything in unrated challenges.
No xp, faction or rating.
No xp, faction or rating.
xhappy feetx
A good way to earn faction in order to participate in PvP (Including GvG, specifically the Guru Series 
) Is the Zaishen Challenge, all foes are quite easy to defeat using a wide variety of builds and yield a fair amount of faction.
) Is the Zaishen Challenge, all foes are quite easy to defeat using a wide variety of builds and yield a fair amount of faction.
Still Number One
To further clarify what it means by "unrated challenge" and "scrimmage" :
A scrimmage takes place within your guild hall. It can be from anywhere to a 1v1 and a full on 8v8 battle. One side selects to start the scrimmage, and when the other side goes to select a battle, they will have the option of selecting the other teams scrimmage. You can only access this from the guild hall of the team doing the scrimmage. So it is mainly between guildmates or guildmates + guests of the guild. Everyone must be inside of the same guild hall to participate.
An unrated challenge is more similar to a GvG, except rather then finding a random opponent, you must actually type in the name of the guild you wish to challenge. They then set up in their own guild hall and accept the challenge and the two teams will then battle.
Like the posters above said, you get no rewards from either of them. To get any sort of reward you must participate in a ranked match. And don't be afraid of getting your butt kicked at first. Everyone does. The key when starting out is to gather a group of like minded individuals who enjoy each others company and the 8 of you just play and grow together. If you are serious about getting better, then you will with time. If you don't care and just want to casually spend time with friends, then you can do that too. Like just about everything in life, the more you do it, the better you get. If it ever stops being fun to you, then stop. But I highly recommend giving it a shot if you can find a group of 8 cool people to just play with. It can easily be the best experience you have in guild wars.
A scrimmage takes place within your guild hall. It can be from anywhere to a 1v1 and a full on 8v8 battle. One side selects to start the scrimmage, and when the other side goes to select a battle, they will have the option of selecting the other teams scrimmage. You can only access this from the guild hall of the team doing the scrimmage. So it is mainly between guildmates or guildmates + guests of the guild. Everyone must be inside of the same guild hall to participate.
An unrated challenge is more similar to a GvG, except rather then finding a random opponent, you must actually type in the name of the guild you wish to challenge. They then set up in their own guild hall and accept the challenge and the two teams will then battle.
Like the posters above said, you get no rewards from either of them. To get any sort of reward you must participate in a ranked match. And don't be afraid of getting your butt kicked at first. Everyone does. The key when starting out is to gather a group of like minded individuals who enjoy each others company and the 8 of you just play and grow together. If you are serious about getting better, then you will with time. If you don't care and just want to casually spend time with friends, then you can do that too. Like just about everything in life, the more you do it, the better you get. If it ever stops being fun to you, then stop. But I highly recommend giving it a shot if you can find a group of 8 cool people to just play with. It can easily be the best experience you have in guild wars.