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Reset day arrived with a new minor patch to herald the release of the Lich King for those suitably progressed. Missing from Blizzard's patch notes were details of their biggest new game features that they've been phasing in these past weeks: Interminable, infuriating, impossible, incredible, inordinate LAG. Grrrr.

It's making raids to IC somewhat irritating but when the going gets tough, the tough go to VoA. That's a fact!

Led by messrs. Xén and Zmall, the evening's raid split itself between the proper 'IC' content of our main push and the new boss in VoA released today. Everyone, meet Toravon the Ice Watcher. Toravon, meet everyone.

Being properly hard, our raid struggled and struggled time and again to kill him on their first attempt. And they succeeded. They tried to make the kill look difficult but it was too challenging for that so they made it seem easy instead and settled for killing him after less than two attempts. It was all very confusing.

Finally, they gave up on trying to res the downed boss in order to have another go at making it look hard and disappeared instead to the local drinking hole where cold milk and cookies were left in the fridge because somebody said the beer needed drinking first. Damned "best before" dates. How come milk never threatens to go off as quickly?!

Report posted by: Lacto Intolerante.

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After banishing the Morris Dancer to another evening of bangly brutality, the rest of the raid team proceeded to pursue some genuine raid progress, unburdened as they now were from the weight of a true modern slacker!

On the very first attempt of the new (to Converge) Blood Prince Council fight, the raid found themselves still mostly alive with the combined pool of Princely HP at the 35% level. Then the dieing began. By 20% HP remaining, nearly half the raid had died and thinking they might be gnomes, two of the tanks snuff it too. That left just one Epidemíc to fight the good fight, tanking all three Princes simultaneously. Something had to give.

Still, stubborness abounded and the HP pool dropped to a lowly 4% before something finally clicked and Epidemíc realised he was contractually obliged to die. He mumbled something about tripping on a dead gnome but you all know what that's a euphemism for.

After that, it only took another two tries to whittle that last 4% off the tri-party council members. Call it 2% per try, diminishing returns or whatever takes your fancy. They even gave a combat res to a gnome on the final attempt to avoid the ignominy (geddit?!) of crossing the finishing line with blood on the carpet.

The evening therefore ended much as the 10-man party earlier on the weekend had done in terms of results against this new encounter. Converge 2, Blood Prince Council 0.


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Following that success, the team spent a little while playing with the next boss in the wing. It's all top-secret for now but if you're really lucky, we might publish some of the details here on this page at a later date. Well, you should be so lucky!

Report posted by: Flava!

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Rotface died last night.


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It was epic.

Report posted by: Less is more.

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Did everyone have a really great Christmas and New Year?! Put your hands in the air and shout "OH YEAH!!" It's 2010 everybody and that means it's time to go raiding again! (Hope you all had a superb time while we were away taking our annual break by the way.)

For our first week back Blizzard has seen fit to furnish us with a new wing of Icecrown bosses to attempt. This time around, it's the Plagueworks. Foul stenches and nasty oozes are the flavour of this little expansion to our menu.

First we spent the regular raiding portion of the night in the 25 man version of the instance, where the team approached the new content with our now familiar Zero Advance Tactics approach that means we avoid learning the boss strategies from external sources but rely on our own powers of observation to learn and overcome the different encounters from the front door to the final bosses.


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Having had a great run that cleared the first four bosses leading up to the newly opened Plagueworks area, we enjoyed working through the new trash packs, which includes the pair of monstrous dogs 'Stinky' and 'Princess', on our way to looking at the first two bosses; Festergut and Rotface.

Normal raiding hours could only accomodate a scant handful of tries on each before it was raid end time. To compensate, the time-rich and eagerly keen rushed straight back in as a 10-man group to do it all again.

Incredibly, not only did they repeat the same clear from the start but they also managed to use the knowledge they had gained in the earlier raid to topple Festergut and Rotface both. I'm told the raid then proceeded to look at the next boss, "Professor Putricide" and only ended when everyone was so tired they couldn't stop giggling. Personally, I fall asleep when I'm tired so I'm not sure what they're putting in the Kool-Aid dispenser for those raiders but it's certainly potent!

By the time you read this, they'll probably just be waking up and thinking about going back in to work on the grown-up 25-man versions of the fights. Until they do though, let's just give them a small cheer of congratulation. Quietly though, just in case they're still sleeping!

Report posted by: Dozer Chuckles.

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The Official Converge Christmas Raiding Vacation, 2009 has begun and so from now until Tuesday 5th January, 2010 everyone in Converge is enjoying a well-deserved break from our normal raiding schedule.

You'll still see them around the place and they may indeed get together for the odd ad-hoc raid as well. However, the burden of normal raiding has been lifted so that we can all enjoy the game whilst also attending to our friends and families at this important and incredibly fun time of the year.

Until we return to normal business in 2010, the officers of Converge would like to wish everyone in the guild and all our friends outside the guild, both on Silvermoon, Anachronos, Doomhammer and a handful of other notable realms a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Member note: Full details of our vacation are available to all those with active forum accounts in this post.

Report posted by: Aspthal, Badlimp, Banasea, Broliant, Jawa, Xén and Zmall.