Hail*NOR/

Happy Lunar New Year from the Guild Wars 2 branch! After an extended period of binging on candy canes and eggnog during Wintersday, we’ve waddled into some Dragonball to get back in shape and see what fortunes might be stuffed inside Lucky Envelopes as celebrate the new year with fireworks and revelry.  

While things have been fairly quiet from ArenaNet the past couple of months compared to the summer and fall releases of Living Story 3 episodes, the festivals have been providing fresh activities accompanied with tantalizing loot and achievements. Of special note is the Lucky Great Rooster Lantern backpack introduced this year and the Red Lantern decorations that can be purchased for the Guild Hall with essence of luck. The Red Lanterns can be used by scribes to create additional decorations and you can already see the festive results in our Guild Hall.

Speaking of which, “Have you visited the Guild Hall lately??” So asked Ismene when she posted some beautiful screenshots of its recent changes. We finished our war room restoration and aetherium capacity upgrade to the mine, which will allow us to work on even bigger and better upgrades. The further along we get in making upgrades, the greater the resources required, so we continue to appreciate the effort and self-sacrifice members are making to achieve them.

In between content drops, we’ve had no difficulty staying busy. We continue to run weekly scheduled events with fractals, “Choose your own PvE”, Sunday afternoon pickup groups, and guild missions. Please check out the in game “Message of the Day” from the guild panel, or our consolidated Guild Wars 2 Event Descriptions for specific times and further details. NOR was invited to participate in the Raid Combat Training initiative put forth by our ally guild Project Knighthood (KNHD), and if raiding interests you, please speak to an officer about it. We’ve also seen a noticeable uptick in people doing ranked and unranked PvP and grouping together for miscellaneous open world and instanced content. It’s a delight to see and there are many people who are willing and interested to help each other out, so if there is something you’ve been wanting to do, please don’t hesitate to ask!

We continue to actively recruit and warmly welcome our newest additions of Exphio, Goblinlitter, FinalPantasy, and Eielesa. We hope you find a comfortable home here and get the most out of the game with us. We invite all of our fellow NORbies to pop in and visit us at any time to check out what’s going on. Guild Wars 2 is free to play, or buy to play without any restrictions, so it’s an easy game to visit at your leisure. Happy gaming all!

Duke Windemere
*NOR/DK BL:GW2

Hail*NOR/

Most of you may know that I am back and aggressively playing again as I have a couple of months to catch up on. Long work hours kept me away, but I am very happy to once again be able to play. We have a couple new Recruits, Bones is now 70 and is chugging along through the mess that are/is Boon zones:)
And Baron Dru has stepped up and taken on a very important role with NOR in Neverwinter, that of a Realm Leader. His charm and wit are sure to prove interesting:) I believe that Phel and Dru will help guide NOR in NW to great things. Oh and Tyr? Sorry, I, uhm, drank the tankard I had for you at the Driftwood. What? I got thirsty:)

Our Alliance has changed some members, and we now are full again with some new guilds and Alliance activity has grown as a result. Had some amazing runs with our alliance today and hopefully some more later this evening.

On to Dungeon Chest changes.....

This was heralded on the forums as a bad thing and in a way it could be viewed as such, but I think they added an element of surprise that was lacking.
You used to be able to view the contents of a chest before actually accepting the contents. Now a confirmation window appears asking if you want to use the key (whatever key is used for that chest) by clicking yes or no. You may still get nothing, or you may hit a lick!:)

Today, at the chest(s) in Castle Never...with the daily Epic Key I yanked out a Ring of Rising Lifesteal +5!
At the chest that requires a Dragon Key, I pulled an Aranea. Yes, thats right! An Epic Level Aranea!

Each zone has different rewards that may show up in the chest such as an Energon which is an Epic Companion (Controller) from the Dread Ring Skirmish.
Wanna know what drops? Gotta log in and check the collections page using Ctrl+J and scrolling down to Zone Rewards, choosing an area (Dread Ring, Sharandar, etc...)

Some of the gear is great but with some side effects such as arm pieces that do extra damage but at a cost...lets hope you have alot of Gold....
Some have no useful stats but jack your HP by 40k, you'll have to see it:)

In addition to gear companions are dropping as well, see my Aranea (which I'm still stoked about!) Mounts are dropping as well.

All in all, I think this was a good change that makes this mod, Storm Kings Thunder PT2, a little more bearable.
Now if I can find 4 more Dragonturtle Moults....

Happy Gaming NOR!

Hail*NOR/

Many exciting things have occurred since our last newsletter! Star Wars is 5 years old!  It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were testing the beta.  We hope everyone is enjoying their Star Wars experience and finding new and fun things to do in the game.  We are raiding on Tuesdays and Sundays (and any other day enough of us are on) and welcome those wanting to get the ops experience.  It’s a great way to level your 65 toons to 70 and have lots of fun doing it.  We promise to get you killed at least once!  We are looking forward to gearing up with the new gear drops.  There’s discussion on how the drops could happen however RNG may still be an issue.  Feel free to read up on it here:  http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9180697

We welcome our newest recruits Dobhran and Mallicieux! We hope you love it here as much as we do.  If you need someone to run with or answer questions, feel free to let us know.  We’re always happy to help.

As the Branch moves into the next exciting phase, we invite everyone to keep contributing in whatever ways you can. The NOR Spirit is flourishing here, and we hope that together we all can continue to pull together and take the Branch to new heights. Good luck in your gaming adventures and we hope to see you in game! May the Force be with You!

Countess Galaxiya
*NOR/CS-swToR