The Queue: +VLFBERH+T

Okay, one of the things I really like about Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are the weapon drops, which are pretty sweet looking. I’m especially a sucker for the Carolingian Longsword, which is a greatsword in the game, and when fully leveled up is a +VLFBERH+T sword, as you can see from the screenshot accompanying this Queue. The Ulfberht swords (as they’re known today) are found in graves across Europe and date from the 9th and 10th centuries, so right during the period of the game, and tended to be made from large blooms of steel forged in a pattern welded fashion, sometimes with edges of even harder metal forge-welded to the body of the blade. The inscription +VLFBERH+T or +VLFBERHT+ derives from a personal name, possibly the smith who first crafted one somewhere in modern day France.

The Ulfberht was an extremely popular weapon in Norway, where the protagonist of the game is from, with 44 of the known Ulfberht found in Norwegian warrior graves. It’s a nice detail that Eivor can find and use one, and I also like that the sword’s Frankish origins are preserved in its name, as the Carolingian dynasty was the royal house descended from Charlemagne himself. WoW needs weapons like this — the Ulfberht were prized weapons, although they were also crafted with a variety of techniques and materials over the hundreds of years of their prominence. There should be a blacksmith or two in the game that sticks a little flourish like the engraving here onto their work.

People die, go to Ardenweald, and then turn into animals. They remember their old lives, but they’re squirrels and foxes and cats and bears now.

It just weirds me out.

I also have trouble with the entire concept of an Afterlife that doesn’t really seem to account for things dying within it. How does Margrave Krexus die? I mean, he’s already dead, isn’t he? What happens to beings who die in the Shadowlands, do they then go to the land of the even deader? Is it Shadowlands all the way down?

I’ve deliberately avoided it because I was afraid I wouldn’t like it and I’m really not feeling like I made a mistake when I read comments like yours. I miss being able to do whatever zones I want in whatever order I want, but if Threads of Fare are really that bad, I’ll just keep on with my quest to level these alts through the same quests as the main.

I felt like the way they did it in Battle was the real issue. We were pretty well separated from the opposite faction while leveling in Warlords of Draenor and I didn’t have a problem at all, but when you open an expansion with an entire starting zone going up in flames and a capital city getting attacked in retaliation, you set up expectations that your story will deal with all that in some fashion by the end of it.

I didn’t really feel like the end of Battle for Azeroth really did a great job with that. I’m happy to just be done with it for now, and if we go back to faction separate stories I’d prefer if they were separate in the way they were in Warlords or original WoW, where some of the content is the same but you get the quests from different people and a lot of it is unique to the faction, without it being about how much the other guys do bad stuff to you and yours.

I mean, seriously, doing Stormsong Valley and being surprised by the Horde sticking farmers on their own pitchforks just didn’t feel great. I could do with less of that.

I’m more interested in how Unique items are going to work out, to be honest, but I think the Legendary Affixes are interesting. Once we have more variety to look at I think we’ll know better how it’ll all shake out, but the idea of ‘stand in the bad to make the bad worse’ has a certain appeal, depending on if it does damage to you, too. Kind of a trade off there, if so.

Maybe they originally went to Ardenweald, decided to be a bee, died there, and then went to Maldraxxus? I mean, since you can apparently die in one of the Shadowlands, which still seems weird to me. You’re already dead! How can you be more dead? I’m just used to life and death being binary states, not a gradient.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. Take it easy and I’ll see y’all next week.