Dragon Festival 2008

The Dragon Festival 2008 is an event taking place over the weekend of July 3, 2008. It is announced in the Guild Wars login announcements:

Cantha Commemorates the Dragon Festival ''This weekend, Canthans celebrate the historic Dragon Festival. Enjoy quests and games and prizes, oh my! Visit the Boardwalk, jump into the Dragon Arena, score cool prizes, too. The event takes place in Shing Jea Monastery starting at Noon Pacific (-7 GMT) on Thursday, July 3 and it wraps up at 11:59 PM Pacific on Sunday, July 6.''

Details
Just like the previous years, this festival follows the same mission arc of recreating the first year's festival.

Once again Victory Tokens are dropped and can be traded for a unique mask at the end of the event for 250 tokens. Extra tokens can be exchanged for  various consumable items. This year's mask is the Grasping Mask.

Redecorated towns

 * Shing Jea Monastery
 * Kaineng Center

Minigames

 * Dragon Arena
 * Rollerbeetle Racing
 * Shing Jea Boardwalk
 * Dragon Nest
 * Nine Rings
 * Rings of Fortune

Quests
Imperial Guard Hanso (in Shing Jea Monastery)
 * The Rampaging Yetis
 * The Shrine of Maat
 * A Strange Request
 * Darkness at Kaitan

NPCs

 * Captain Rujiyo
 * Imperial Guard Hanso
 * Sheng Yi Victory Token Rewards
 * Seiji Victory Token Rewards
 * During Dragon Festival 2008 Finale (Sunday July 8th, see times below)
 * Emperor Kisu
 * Imperial Sorcerers
 * Monday, July 7th to Sunday, July 13th, 2008
 * Imperial Supply Master Kagno appears and remains in Shing Jea Monastery to exchange Victory Tokens for the Grasping Mask.

Missions
The missions, which are available at the times listed in the external links, are obtained from Captain Rujiyo in Shing Jea Monastery.

All times are listed in Pacific Daylight Time, which is -7 GMT. Missions will be available for 30 minutes.

Dragon Festival 2008 Finale
The finale for the 2008 Dragon Festival starts on Sunday, July 6 and is held every two hours beginning at 2:00 AM (-7 GMT). The last event or rotation will be held at 11:59 PM.

The emperor arrives and speaks for a bit. During this time if you have 250 tokens in your inventory, they will be exchanged for a Grasping Mask, even if you already have a grasping mask.

A short time later, Celestial Charges will start raining down. The goal of this minigame is to get the charges to the Imperial Sorcerors before the actors dressed as ((?? wraiths)) intercept you. Intercepted characters will be killed for about 30 seconds and resurrected in the open field by storage. For each charge you collect you will receive a Victory Token. If you are in a district where the players collect more celestial charges than the ((?? wraiths)) you will receive approximately 1 Festival Prize each minute for the next ~12 minutes (in a range from 12-16).