Been away for a while...a long while...

So I haven't touched Guild Wars in close to 2 years. I decided to come back to it because I enjoyed it when it first came out; I've been so busy the last 2 years on the road and so forth that I haven't played it. The genuine lack of (quality) PC gaming these days is a big let down, so I'm back to Guild Wars....

I have a couple of questions to catch myself up on what's going on.

1. Who/what are these giant sized players I occasionally see around town?

2. mini-pets...I found one waiting for me upon my return. How do I aquire more of these guys (besides purchasing them)?

1. They are called tonics, a new one is dropped from the z-chest every month, and upon completeing the quest for M.O.X you receive ten.

2. Every characters birthday you will receive a gift with a minipet in.

There are a whole bunch of special mini-pets that are released through special events and in-game activities too, be sure to check out the wiki article.

Well, since you are away for so long, I'm sure jiggles' answer to your first question still doesn't make a lot of sense to you, so I'll go into more depth.

1) Anyway, those are tonics. They are just an invintory item that is one use (or, there are really rare and valuable ones that have unlimited uses) and they last for about 50 miniutes or until you change zones. Most of them can only be used in towns, not in combat.
Most tonics come from the zasishen chest (z-chest), a chest that you can open by earning faction in PvP. There are also holiday tonics giving out during Halloween and Christmas.

2) Minipets are given every time a charcter turns 1 year old, for all your characters. You get a random pet from each year's collection. There are different possible pets you can get for different birthdays. They come in a variety of rarities.

Minipets also come from various promotions. For example, PC Gamer magizine had several Guild Wars promotion articles that gave you a minipet code with the purchase of the magazine.

1, their tonics like from the zaishan chest which has a really low % of dropping it.
Heres a link to the title
http://guildwars.com/competitive/tou...ds/default.php

And heres a link to the tonics so far
http://guildwars.com/competitive/tou...ishencalendar/

2, wait a year to get another one. And don't get upset if you get the same one more then once lol.

2. Mini-pets - an annual birthday gift for each of your characters. It sounds like you only had one character. If he is over two he should have 2 gifts.

Also as Hawk said, there are also special minis from promotions and one from a special multi-campaign quest.

The mini-pets are sold between players and can be displayed in your Hall of Monuments (something else you won't know about).

You need to visit the wiki (which I assume was barely started when you left. We now have two.) The original wiki http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page which is great. But when ArenaNet offered server space, the wiki could not under their licensing accept it without contacting everyone who had so much as added punctuation to the site.

So we also have the Official wiki http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page which is also great. It is available in-game by pressing F10, using Help in the Menu, or typing /wiki in the chat bar.

I mention these so that when explanations leave you as confused as you started, you can look up things and wipe away the fog.

Enjoy the game and glad to have you in guru.

Zaishen chest is a new added chest btw. It's located in Great Temple of Balthazar, and go to Isle of the Nameless exit. As for the key into opening it, it requires 5k Balthazar factions. The tonic itself, especially the everlasting (unlimited) version, is rarely drop.

I take it you don't have the eye of the north campaign yet? (well, more like a chapter than campaign) If you do, that minipet you got, you can display it on your hall of monument (HoM). It will carry over to Guild Wars 2. About the info on HoM, please check guild wiki.

Hope that helps,

and,

Welcome back!