Gaia Rocks! TSW's Anniversary Event

So Funcom pulled out a great anniversary event, at least at the start. We had an awesome time putting on the "Stir of Echoes" Investigation Contest on Beyond the Veil last Wednesday evening as part of the anniversary celebration kickoff. Some most excellent prizes were given away (Read that like Bill & Ted would). The devs had a little thing of their own going on, too.

It seems that the Bees and their chosen have not quite been working hard or fast enough, so Gaia is taking things into her own hands to combat the Filth, sending out massive Guardians to eliminate the problem. Unfortunately, that risks exposure of the whole Secret World to the general population, and the various secret factions can't have that. So the Council is coordinating efforts to eradicate this additional threat to the safety of the human population.

I gotta say, it's been pretty spectacular. Scooterz and I had a lot of fun all weekend, running from fight to fight. Or rather, "Meeting up" from fight to fight. You see, the fights are in every zone across all dimensions. The only way to jump dimensions is through a meet-up with someone already there. So a special chat channel (#anniversity) was set up by players (as far as I know) to call out locations and arrange for meet-ups. I now have a couple dozen extra "friends" with whom I have met up and fought the beasts together. Brothers in Arms, so to speak. I don't think I've ever seen such coordination across an entire community to respond to a special in-game event. That alone is pretty awesome. And let no one tell you that nobody plays TSW. Plenty of folks do, I've got the pics to prove it.

There are several different special items, like minipet versions of each Guardian, rare eyewear, and drops of Black Bullion (end-game currency) and signets (gear boosts). I actually got two signets for major talismans; which like bullion, normally only drop in Nightmare-mode dungeons as I understand it.

Killing each Guardian in all eight PvE zones nets you an achievement and an awesome T-shirt, as modeled above by the deadly LoneStarBelle. There is a ninth Guardian in the PvP warzone Fusang Projects, but the queue is crazy, so they removed it from the required achievement. Check in tomorrow for the not-so-greats of this anniversary event.