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Guild Wars 2 will celebrate its first anniversary on August 28, and game director Colin Johanson has revealed some of the ways ArenaNet plans to celebrate this in game.

In an interview with IGN, Johanson revealed that characters will receive a present on their birthdays as was the case in the original Guild Wars, and also explained what the team hopes the anniversary patch will show players about the game's future. Additionally, it's set to change the world forever; something the team are keen to see happen more often.

"We’re going to do a release on the 20th that is intended to be our big anniversary release celebration," he explained. "That release is intended not only to provide a lot of awesome content for people to experience, but to also set the tone for what they should expect for the living world and the types of things we want to do with events in the year to come.

"It takes the story of the last year and brings it all together. It makes it clear where everything has been going and really closes a lot of open questions that players have had. It’s a story that really affects the entire world and permanently creates content and change for the entire world game-wide, which is really something that’s important to us and we want to showcase that that’s where stuff is headed.

"I think we have some really ambitious plans for next year for what we want to do with the event system, and this kind of showcases a little step of where that can go."

Alongside the new content, Johanson explained players could expect to receive a present on their character's birthday, as was the case in the original Guild Wars. While Guild Wars 1 saw players usually receive mini pets on character birthdays, it's unclear just what members of Guild Wars 2's community will be gifted.

"We will offer a gift to players; it’s something we did in Guild Wars 1 and we’ll bring it back in Guild Wars 2 when their character turns one year-old," Johanson revealed. "There’ll be a gift that becomes available, so that’s something for them to look forward to, and we’ll compliment this with a lot of other exciting stuff as well."

Guild Wars 2 recently announced some of its plans for the future in terms of content, as well as switched to a two-week cycle for major update releases. How do you feel Tyria's first year has gone? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.