What's this? Nordenwatch Weekend?

"Along the rain-scoured coast of Nordland, spring is not a blessing. For while the end of winter signals a return of the growing season, it also heralds the thawing of the Sea of Claws. Now all eyes turn to the white foamed waves, searching for the first sign of invaders. It doesn't take long.

A sharp shout goes up from the watchtower moments before a harsh bell begins to toll. Norse sails have been spotted on the horizon. War is coming, and the only hope that the people of Nordland have is that their defenders are well prepared."

Great writers. And a whole weekend of Nordenwatch for all tiers? :D A title at the end if you complete quests? Isn't that a mini-live event? Isn't that AWESOMENESS IN A BUCKET? Why yes. Yes it is.

Now all you guys need to do is create something like this for PQs and PvE. It will round out the game a lot.

Beyond the Sands

As you can see from the picture above, today I got the Aviator Goggles from the current Live Event. What's made this particular event interesting is that despite it being a list of quest chains and kill/object counts, there's been a fair bit of organic RVR in the midst of it all. Destruction took to camping/swarming the event area, and Order didn't back down, resulting in pretty realistic clashes, wipes and comeback surges.

Not to mention the fact that there are epic rewards for the three quest chains. I can't link it, as it doesn't seem to be mentioned on any of the Warhammer Wiki's, but look out for the quest reward called the Bone Ward... it's fairly useful and interesting. Not to mention a Pocket item!

My First Pocket Item!!!

I have had the worst luck seeking out pocket items in the natural swing of the game - on my alt, I've "cheated" and looked for directions, but on Kipling, I wanted to keep her pure from such sneaky behaviour. I'm not going to give away any walkthroughs for this item, because it's fairly easy to get, but thank you thank you Mythic for continuing to include awesome fluff to pick up ingame. I was a bit mopey that there were no trophies from Bitter Rivals, but a pocket item? That fits my little interior story for my character? Even better!!!

Night of Murder

Well last night was fun! It took me a handful of hours to hit the second point on the Live Event INF bar, and gleefully did Kipling run to Altdorf to pick up her Murder Fang (which now replaces her disappointingly undersized Ceremonial Dagger). And then I threw her back into the fray, because scenarios and ORVR was buzzing like mad, and who can turn down all that renown?

Now I have days to get to the epic reward, and thanks to the speeds, I can give my alts a chance at getting something flashy too!

Oh! And Kipling hit level 39 this morning. One more level to go!

On Yesterday's Announcement

A quick post because I'm stil jetlagged and haven't managed to put more than a few hours gaming in this week:

• Slayers/Choppas: awesome! Awwwesome! I was never really excited about the Dwarf classes, or in fact the other Melee DPS characters, but who wouldn't want to play a Slayer? Smashing and bashing, and an extra-emo backstory (which is why I chose a Shadow Warrior as my main) to boot.
  

• Night of Murder: can't wait for this event, I like the look of collecting another trophy as a live event reward, as well as any excuse to brutally murder anyone in my path.
  

• Oh man oh man oh man, a free expansion! I love you Mythic! They're treating us so well. If there's one thing I enjoy about MMOs, it's seeing the game shift and grow as the months go by. I swear they keep putting new NPCs in Altdorf without telling us...
  

Keg's End

Live events bring out the worst OCD traits in me. If there's something I want, I have to keep grinding away until I have it. Even if I pass out. Today, I achieved my Keg's End goal, and picked up the awesome awesome beer mug trophy. The best part is that the way it positions on my shoulders, it looks like it's hooked onto my bow:



In order to get to the second notch on the INF bar, you need to do every quest to completion except the "drink 100 Dwarf Beer Kegs" and "Massive Ogres Tyrants Slain" ones, and even then, you still need to do part of them - I have 63/100 kegs drank, and 3/20 Ogres killed. It's a maddening crawl, I was convinced at some points that I'd never get there.

Here's how I look at the moment, I'm running with the green/purple theme. Dying your gear purple is really big on Monolith right now, even though red dye seems the most scarce.


Look at that guy's beard. Fantastic.

While most of the Keg's End quests are quite grindy, it doesn't lessen the fun. The best part of this Live Event? All the explosions. World of Warcraft gave us fireworks, but compared to WAR, they are damp squibs. These suckers go up in the air, and are varied and creative - there's probably a set number of designs, but even the Common Fireworks vary in colours. And firework drops aside, the Explosive Snotlings are made of win - not only exploding when you're finished killing them, but spontaneously exploding when they... just get tired... or something. Anyway. Explosions. Yay!

It's hard to get a screenshot of the fireworks by the way. Still working on that.

So now I have to kill Ogre Tyrants if I want the final reward. Ho hum. Not sure whether I want it or not - it's not permanent, and it's a pain in the ass to corral other people into a group to go hunting around the RVR areas for mobs.



Also, Monolith's Destro has been running riot through the RVR zones, blitzing all the Objectives and locking out everything. Bless their hearts. We're expecting them to hit Altdorf in the next few weeks, and I hope Deathclaw obliterates their faces for taking away my scenarios. I can't really participate in defence because the lag inside keeps and in large groups renders the game unplayable, and I get killed almost instantly anyway. To Order's credit, we did get a bit of the old to-and-fro battle going on outside Dragonwake's warcamp last night which lasted an hour or so, so I do have some Tier 4 INF built up, but nowhere near even halfway to the first epic piece.

[PS - congratulations to Grirmind for being the lucky jammer that got the Tier 4 epic drop!]