GuildWars.com news/20090709

News - Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wintersday in July Next Week!

As summer heats up, don't miss the chance to chill out at our Wintersday in July celebration! The festivities start at noon PST on Friday, July 17 and last until 11:59 PM PST on Sunday, July 19. Mark your calendars for next weekend, and head over to our event page to find out the rest of the details.

June Tournament Results

Congratulations to History Repeats Itself [Cry], who defeated Edible Granite Pencil [yumy] to become June's GvG champion. For the complete list of rankings for June's monthly tournament, see our full GvG and 1v1 results.

If you're looking to turn into a Norn this month, we're updating the Zaishen Chest after today's live build and replacing June's Automatonic with July's Boreal Tonic. To see the full tonic rotation, check out the Zaishen Rewards Calendar.

EU News
'''Developer Update - July K-value Update

This month we opted not to make any skill balance changes. Since the last skill balance was only a couple of weeks ago, we want to keep monitoring the changes we’ve already made before we adjust any more skills. However, we have increased the K-value of rated matches in GvG and Hero Battles from 5 to 15.

K-value determines how much your rating can change in a single battle. Two years ago, we lowered the K-value of rated matches to encourage participation in Automated Tournaments where the K-value is much higher. The competitive nature of these tournaments makes it difficult for mid-level and casual players to build their ratings and, at such a low K-value, rated matches weren’t offering a compelling alternative.

By increasing the K-value of rated matches, we hope to make rated play a friendlier environment in which to increase your rating.

For more news, see GuildWars.com news.