Okay, I reckon it’s been about six months since my last visit to the IC. If you were with me at the time, you’ll remember I was totally traumatised by it’s yawn factor and decided that it wasn’t something I wanted to be involved with again.

However being the weak-willed male I am, I relented and returned on Friday (3rd July). Basically I was on my KotBS when I logged on, so when asked, I thought why not. So off to the Chaos Wastes and into the Maw I went (Ho Hum). Before I knew it, I was in the PQ for Stage I of the capture of the IC (Stifles a yawn). As you can imagine I wasn’t overly enthused at this point.

Now Stage I went relatively smoothly, with apparently no real challenge to orders forces. Maybe destruction were just lost in the Land of the Dead and just couldn’t find their guild recall scrolls. By the time I had finished, I had picked up a piece of invader gear and a few warlord tokens. A  few more destruction players would have definitely caused more sticky moments, especially if they had co-ordinated their attacks better with the arrival of the hero mobs, but having to get through the archway from their camp into main area, provided a nicely constructed killing zone. Maybe going around the side of the order forces, would have proven more viable.

As I said, Stage I went well. Stage II, now that wasn’t so impressive and it certainly wasn’t anything to do with the order players. I think it’s worth remembering that this part of the game has been live since September 2009, so in theory should be a rock solid part of the system, a smoothly oiled gear in the grand machima. To remind you, there are 2 PQs in stage II and both screwed up, in a manner that was strangely familiar to one of my more experienced guildies, which implies it wasn’t a random stroke of bad luck.

We started with the Sacellum PQ, which was proceeding nicely until we got to 2 giants (Torgun was one). Over voice comms one of the guildies was already saying it was going to bug, but heh we could get lucky!!! Got to the 2 giants, the first one dropped like a bag of nuts and we all proceeded to the 2nd giant, that seemed to be always out of range. After a friendly told you so from my guildie, the zerg moved to the Monolith PQ, with the faint hope we could save something from this IC raid.

Okay, so all of us went into the base of the pyramid (Monolith), with the warning ringing out, don’t let the white lion pet attack anything. Relatively easy don’t you think, seems not, a white lion lets it pet off the lease and the portal into the main PQ becomes bugged. So if you get kicked off the main platform, which is relatively easy if you aren’t familiar with massive knock back of the hero, who’s name I don’t know and don’t really care about, then you die and respawn. So if you have worked hard and try to get back into PQ, you are basically stuffed (No portal you see). What I did notice, is that when I died again on something else within the IC and returned to the Monolith, the portal was visible again. Did it fix itself or maybe I just didn’t notice when I returned to monolith after my first death.

Anyways we finally brought down the hero mob in the Monolith. Unfortunately for some people, who had been awarded PQ loot from the kill, whom had died and were now stuck on the wrong side of an invisible portal, weren’t overly happy about being denied they loot, strange that. Well a small crumb of comfort was that at least one of the stage II PQs had been completed.

More good news was to follow, the 2nd Giant from the Sacellum PQ was attackable, tally ho. We all descended on the giant like a horde of locusts with the prospect of Stage III being dangled infront of us all. 2nd Giant down like a sack of spuds and then NOTHING. The PQ hadn’t ticked over to the final mob…. tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, still nothing. People contacted the CSRs pretty damn quick,  in the hope of some kind of divine intervention. Tick, tock, tick, tock, 15 – 20 minutes had passed and nothing had happened. At which point I logged for the night, with more than a tinge of disappointment at the sad state of affairs. Next day, I asked someone what had happened? A CSR had managed to force the final mob of Stage II Sacellum to appear, however the stage II timer had ran out. A good reward for a lot of time invested by a lot of people, I think not.

How is it possible, that after all this time, the supposedly crown jewel is still bugging out? It’s simply not acceptable. If you put all your eggs in one basket, it better be a bloody good one.