... Why on earth should Anet remove the ability for people to play in a competitive game mode with their friends? Yes, ATs exist... But the downtime between matches in it is long, and they're only available every few hours. This is an MMO. Removing the ability to play with friends eliminates the point of the game mode. Yes, the people playing with friends have a bit of an advantage, via VoIP, and being used to playing with each other. ... If its that big of a problem for you, than join an SPvP guild, make some friends, and get some DuoQ buddies. The solution to your problem is really fairly simple. I think I at least see one SPvP guild advertisement per day put out in Heart of the Mists. ... And to be clear, I mostly queue up solo. But I'm not the sort of person who wants to prevent people from playing with their friends, because I occasionally bump into a skilled duoQ. ... Especially since those matches that I do lose, I typically lose because both people in the duoQ were better than me. And I can't complain about people better than me beating me. (And hey--sometimes I get that good duoQ on my team. Mathematically speaking it should happen just as often for me as it does against me, balancing things out) And for all of the people suggesting that Anet just add in team and solo arena... They used to have that. Unfortunately, the SPvP population isn't big enough to actually support that. And its only shrunk since then. Its not a plausible option. Removing people's ability to play with friends will only continue to shrink the population. If the SPvP population gets a massive surge, then maybe it can be revisited again. But unless that happens... Its not a viable solution.