GuildWars.com news/Archives/200901

The following lists the January 2009 news from the official GuildWars.com site.

January 23rd, 2009
We're proud to announce the winners of our annual Guild Wars Wintersday Art Contest! It wasn't an easy choice—we received a ton of awesome entries in a wide range of creative media, but in the end we narrowed the list down to these ten talented individuals. Congratulations to our prize-winners, and on behalf of the Guild Wars Team, thank you to everyone who participated!
 * Wintersday Art Contest 2008 Winners

January 22nd, 2009
It's out with the Rat and in with the Ox at this year's annual Canthan New Year's Festival! Join us in the Shing Jea monastery from Friday, January 30 until Monday, February 2 for the big feast. The revelry includes special quests and unique rewards, games of chance, contests of skill, dancing, and fireworks. You can also take part in smaller festivities in Kamadan and Lion's Arch. Find out more and make plans to join the celebration!
 * Celebrate the Year of the Ox

January 22nd, 2009
In honor of the Canthan New Year and the pending arrival of the Celestial Ox, we're providing two beautiful wallpapers by Guild Wars artist Jason Juan! These paintings both depict a nian, one of the strange spirit creatures that bring bad fortune to the Canthan New Year's Festival—choose between the full-sized image and a close-up of the creature itself.
 * New Nian Concept Art Wallpaper

January 15th, 2009
In 2009, the Guild Wars Live Team will be improving the way it handles monthly maintenance and content updates. Monthly builds will be streamlined to focus on the essentials, while content updates will be done separately. Read more about what's in store in our latest Developer Update.
 * An Updates Update: What's Ahead for 2009

January 8th, 2009
Rebel Rising [rawr] is back on top again, adding another GvG championship to their impressive tally after battling with We Want Cookies [NOW]. The Hero Battle tournament saw many top 100 players, and Adorable Telly fought through it all to defeat Hadshi The Ranger in the final round. Congratulations to all competitors! For more detailed rankings, you can find the full GvG and 1v1 results here.
 * December Tournament Updates

We will be adding December prediction points to the Xunlai Agent and updating the tonic in the Zaishen Chest today. If you made December predictions in the Xunlai Tournament House, check your neighborhood Xunlai Agent after the live update to claim your Tournament Reward Points.

To find out the tonic flavor for January, check the Zaishen Rewards Calendar.

January 6th, 2009
Ever wanted to learn more about good game storytelling, straight from the source? The folks over at Joystiq put together a series of developer interviews focused on storytelling in games, and among the luminaries weighing in is one of our own writers, Jeff Grubb. Get the professional storyteller's perspective on what works and what doesn't, what they love and what they try to avoid, and the importance of story vs. gameplay.
 * Jeff Grubb Talks About Storytelling