ArenaNet has revealed plans for their first Christmas themed event in their Guild Wars 2 MMO, titled Wintersday. Players will find a numerous amount of themed food, toys and dynamic events to celebrate Christmas, including a visit from Toymaker Tixx.

The nights may be long and dark, but Tyrians of all races keep joy alive during the ancient holiday of Wintersday. While each race celebrates Wintersday in their own unique way, children all over Tyria share a common love of one thing: toys.

This year the city of Lion’s Arch will host the asuran Toymaker Tixx as their special Wintersday guest of honor. Before Tixx arrives in Lion’s Arch in his massive airship toy workshop, he’ll visit every major city in Tyria to deliver Wintersday toys and holiday cheer.

Wintersday will begin on December 11th and continue through to January 3rd 2013. You can check out the quite bright artwork below for a sample of what's to come.

In other Guild Wars 2 news, a recent Ask Me Anything on popular website Reddit with Studio Design Director Chris Whiteside was conducted yesterday, bearing some great comments about the recent Ascended gear, upcoming dungeon revamps and making players eager to visit racial cities.

I think grind is repetitive game play leading to a goal where the activity of progression isn't fun whether it not be fun initially or it suffers from diminishing returns over a period of time. Both the reward and the path have an impact on 'The Perception of the Grind'. The one thing I do like about the ascended issue is that it allows us to talk about some of the deeper issues we see in our game,and the genre and for me to be able to recognize this and say it isn't good enough and that we will do our very very best to correct existing issues and make darn sure that new content and progression is best of breed.

So with this in mind it is our intention to ensure that progression is fun and that whilst different type of players enjoy different type of activities they can all appreciate the journey to the reward in their own way and that the outcome/reward of the journey is balanced. The method in which Ascended Gear was rolled out does not meet these criteria, however it was designed to, but it didn't roll out the way we had originally intended.

You can check out the full transcript over here.