I've put about 200 hours into Warband. As soon as I figured out how to play the game it never got boring. I also never actually played it with any mods either, It was just a great game. TIt will remain in my heart forever!
Now the most epic battle I've had? Well, It was when I decided to wait in a castle to read a book, suddenly, the castle was under attack by about 1000 Nords. So there was about 300 of us in this castle, with about 1000 nords outside the walls. When they started attacking, we somehow managed to stop them from getting up into the walls, there was around 75 of us left an we managed to break most the enemy waves. They eventually decided it wasn't worth the losses, so they broke off the siege. I had to use the arrows of dead allies just to kill enemy archers. It was pretty insane.. My character was pretty famous after that..So yeah the game is completely amazing...
P.S... King Gareth is demon spawn..