[Gaming] Canthan New Year ‘08

Well, it’s time for Chinese, er, Canthan New Year again on Guild Wars. ArenaNet offers up a lot of holiday-based events in GW, but I’d have to say the Canthan New Year ones are my favorites. I can’t explain exactly why, but I think it has something to do with the fact they have the most activities to participate in… as well as the most junk to accumulate from various event quests, mini-games and the special drops you can get from monsters just by wandering around and slaughtering things.

They also seem to take themselves the least seriously, with a lot of light-hearted and some just plain silly quests and dialogue. Other events are a bit more stiff, such as Wintersday and Halloween.

This year’s event is especially nice because they’ve added the ability to actually put some of those novelty items from previous years’ events to an actual use. Firecrackers and transformation tonics now add points toward an entirely new title track called “Party Animal“. For all those people who farmed for days and got at least 5 miniature pig pets last year (and didn’t sell them off or delete them), they can trade them in for a special edition “Celestial Pig“, which is basically just a mini-pig made of twinkly stars.

However, some people aren’t satisfied, even with A-Net going out of their way to make normally useless items somewhat useful. They complain that the new title track is unfair to those working toward more “active” titles, such as farming treasure for gold items to identify, or vanquishers who work to clear areas of every single monster in hard mode. Sheesh, there’s no pleasing some folks, is there?

To be honest, my only gripe about the whole thing is the lag in the town that serves as the host for the majority of the festivities, although that’s a minor drawback that is to be expected, especially when some people only really log on for events nowadays.