Fun Times in Patch Day ICC

What's a patch-day raid without server instability?

The night started off seemingly normal. Dalaran lag afflicted a few, but nothing out of the ordinary. We were hopeful for a smooth patch. No one spoke of it, of course. Never jinx your raid. Alas, our precaution didn't save us.

Mid-fight with Deathwhisper, the entire raid locks up and DCs. Some log in and find themselves in Dalaran. Others log in and find themselves at the front of the instance. All of Deathwhisper's trash has repopped. "...more rep, yay?" I say tentatively.

We were hopeful that was a single incident, rather than a harbinger of more to come. We clear through the lower citadel and gun straight for Valithria's chamber. The trash filling the hall is easy--too easy, I think, and I grit my teeth on each pull just waiting for a huge spike of damage to surprise the tanks. The spike never comes, and we relax some, staring forth at Valithria and talking tactics.

In a few pulls, we rescue Valithria (we used a 2-tank, 3-healer strat with one raid healer and 2 dragon healers, each trading every two portal spawns). Grateful, Valithria ports out to her freedom, leaving us to continue on our way. We descend the elevator shaft, reminiscing on Serpentshrine Caverns, and gather warily at the entrance to a vast room. Looking up, one of our raiders warns us not to move in until we're all ready: they have spotted the ambush of undead spiders clinging to the ceiling.

Once together, we run in and fight the wave of descending spider-guys.

We rejoice in defeating the swarm of spiders and comment how easy it was.

And then we go to the gate.

And then we look around for a lever to maybe open the gate.

And then we check out the side nooks, thinking they might lead somewhere.

And then we circle the whole room for a while.

And then we explore up to Valithria's room to see if we missed something there.

And then I pop onto Stratfu's IRC chat and ask if we're nubs that missed something on how to get to Sindragosa.

Apparently, according to those in the chat, the room *was* supposed to be a multiple-wave event, and the next wave just never spawned for us. ......

Okay fine, we'll leave her to try the wave thing again tomorrow after a soft reset, and we'll go poke some of the other bosses tonight.

We clear the insane trash into the blood wing (I tend to cyclone the spare mobs here, keeps my tanks safer), and we start up combat with the princes. The tanks and healers line up together, the dps spreading out among us, all facing the 3 prone princes in their columns of red light. Lana'thel orders them to rise, while she herself ports away. We wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And Scythe-bear runs up and starts t-bagging Keleseth, joined shortly by the rest of the raid.



At the same time, from the IRC chat, I hear reports of bosses despawning, some RESPAWNING (they got the same loot when they killed him again), and others just never initiating combat. And all reports seem to be coming from servers within the Stormstrike battlegroup.

Fun times.

We decided to at least go kill Festergut, if possible--luckily, he proved stable for us, and didn't give us any trouble. We killed Precious for a chance at her ribbon-shirt and called it an early night.


On an unrelated note,