The guesting feature has been announced to be released in the January content patch, due 28th Jan. Full post on the ArenaNet site at https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guesting-is-coming/.

With guesting, account transfers to other worlds will cost gems, so it’s important that if you have any friends that join the game you make sure that they’re aware of what server you’re on if they want to play WvW with you.

A summary of how guesting will work:

• At the character select screen, choose World Selection
• Select a world from the list, and choose “Guest”
• That world is now eligible to play on for the next 24 hours
• You can have up to 2 worlds that you are guesting on in any 24h period
• You cannot play WvW for a world you are guesting on – you get put back on your own world if you select WvW
• Guild influence/bonuses/upgrades are still tied to the world you’re currently playing on – i.e. if you’re guesting on a world that is not Jade Quarry, the influence is sent to the other world and you will not get the Jade Quarry guild benefits while you are over there. 🙁
• You can only guest on worlds in the same region (i.e. US worlds when you “live” on Jade Quarry).
• The cost in gems for transfer will depend on the population of the server. Given that Jade Quarry is one of the high-pop servers, it’ll be in the most expensive transfer category – making it more important for new friends to sign up to the right world at the start (if they want to be on the same world, that is 😉 ).
• Even with paid transfers, you will not be able to transfer to a “full” world. Likewise, transfers will still be restricted to once per week.

New ArenaNet news post: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/.

Some additional clarifications:
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Will-existing-achievements-get-converted/1213373
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Will-existing-achievements-get-converted/1214070
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Will-existing-achievements-get-converted/1214179
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Will-existing-achievements-get-converted/1232053

Summary:

• Achievements will start earning crowns, that can be used to buy gear/consumables/etc. (Initially daily/monthly only, expanding to all achievements). These crowns are account wide, and do not take inventory space (show up like karma/money on the inventory interface, but account-bound not character-bound)
• Daily achievements will start having variation, and eventually become a “do 4 of 6”.
• Adding guild quests
• Expanding events throughout existing world areas
• Improving the “looking for group” tool to make it easier to find other players to play with in the game.
• The improvements and fixes to the Fractal dungeons, detailed in Isaiah Cartwright’s blog post here.
• “Improving reward systems” so that players are encouraged to revisit past world areas
• Paid server transfers/guesting
• Culling improvements/reduction of culling in WvW
• “A system of prestige and advancement specifically designed for WvW”
• sPvP observer mode, ranking, ladder, custom/hosted matches

Note that this is the long-term plans for the first 1/2 of this year – not all of it is going to be released this month ;). Exact dates for any of it haven’t been specified…

There’s been more details released about the Wintersday event, so our event page here has been updated with the schedule of events (in Melbourne timezone).

The first five days are going to be a series of 24h visits to one of the Racial cities (visiting all 5 over the course of the 5 days), and while Tixx the Toymaker is in each city there will be special events available in that city.

After those 5 days are over, Tixx arrives in Lion’s Arch, and the Toypocalypse event (instance?) becomes available. All events from the 5 days of visiting are ALSO available for replay from then until the end of the Wintersday event.

Good news: there are NO one-time-only events. Even the 1-day visits are replayable later, so hopefully we won’t have people missing out this time. Low level characters will be automatically scaled to level 80 for the Wintersday events, so everyone can participate!

Snowball fights, a jumping puzzle, a musical event, special instances, Wintersday-specific items and crafting recipes will all be available.

For more details, visit the official ArenaNet page: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/december-2012/.

Details for the final stage for Halloween have been released, and uploaded to our calendar here. This is a heads up – if you want to do the Mad King’s mini-dungeon that opened in Stage 3, you MUST do it before the start of Stage 4 – which pretty much means TONIGHT. The door is in Lion’s Arch where the Lion Statue used to be (Thorn blew the statue up). All characters level 2-80 can enter the dungeon, you’ll be scaled up to level 80 automatically, and it takes about 10-15 minutes (a little longer the first time while you work out what it happening).

To attend the party in Stage 4, log into game some time on Thursday and drop into Lion’s Arch. The party is non-stop, so whenever you get a chance drop in for a minute or two.