WoW Patch 3.1 shuts down the Iron Council

After players got a taste of Hodir yesterday, Blizzard earlier opened up another Ulduar boss encounter on the Patch 3.1 PTR. The Iron Council were ready and waiting for raiders eager to have a shot at them -- and as you can see from the screenshot above, they don't look like pushovers. However, numerous crashes and related problems prevented full testing of the encounter, and Blizzard shut down Ulduar testing for the meantime. We had some of our team from WoW Insider who tried to take a crack at the Iron Council but were repelled by various iterations of server fail.

[UPDATE: According to some reports, well-known raiding guilds Death & Taxes, Method, and Fusion all managed to stay inside Ulduar for some time after Blizzard booted everyone else out of the instance. This is sort of expected, considering Blizzard wanted to truly test the encounter -- numerous players formed 2-man raids just to be able to enter Ulduar, thus maxing out the instance limit.]

Players who can't get on the PTR or who have similarly given up in frustration because the world server isn't exactly in the stablest of conditions, you can live the encounters vicariously through the streaming video of other intrepid players such as the folks from Rawrcast or Thelastrace on Justin TV. You mileage may vary. In the meantime, you can enjoy the screenshots of the encounter below. We guarantee they won't crash.