Ainx, Part 8

Chalae messaged me inquiring whether I would be interested in participating in a hardcore 10-man aiming to progress quickly through Icecrown Citadel. I'm pretty sure she knew that was a rhetorical question. The catch was that we would only be raiding two nights a week, 4 hours a night - Friday and Saturday. I could do that! I quickly dropped everything else I was doing (except raiding with Nerv) and finished gearing my Paladin up the best I could before Icecrown Citadel (ICC) opened on December 8th.

With this raid dungeon's release, Blizzard thought it was a smart idea to artificially block progress by locking the four different wings of the dungeon up and opening them one per week. This, of course, enraged a lot of raiders, but it gave my hardcore 10-man group to pick up extra gear from Heroic Trial of the Crusader to fill out any gaps we might have had since half the raid was alts. We cleared one wing a week until finally killing the Lich King on February 14th. Yes, Valentines day, who cares... We cleared the Heroic modes of ICC (except Lich King) on March 26th. Although competition on Kilrogg was scarce at the time, Temporary Insanity was running their own 10-man which was much more progressed than their 25-man. TI actually ended up getting the Meta achievement for ICC done the same evening as us! Surprisingly, nobody else came even close. Without Conquest to compete, Kilrogg felt deflated.

ICC was a great feeling. The fact we raided merely two nights a week and managed to achieve so much made me feel alive again, not to mention stuck a needle in my heart and pumped adrenaline all throughout the race to the finish. And what a glorious race that was...

This awful, awful achievement...	Still Life and TI on Frostwyrms

Meanwhile, I finished Heroic ICC10 and Regular ICC25 with Nerv on Vek'Nilash slightly after my Still Life group did the same on Kilrogg. In fact, Nerv managed to get deep into Heroic ICC 25 and clear all the way up to Heroic Lich King, but never did kill him as far as I can remember. I don't think I've killed him to this day on Heroic mode.

End, Part 8