Help raise cash for suicide prevention with the Icecrown Challenge

In World of Warcraft there are plenty of reasons to run old content — mounts, pets, transmog — but for the past five years, defeating the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel during the holiday season can also help defeat one of the trickiest real life bosses out there.

Since 2014, the WoW community has rallied around the Icecrown Challenge. The concept is simple. Just run Icecrown Citadel on any raid size or difficulty you’d like. Break out a stopwatch and start your timer when Tirion Fordring starts hemming and hawing about honor or whatever the heck it is Paladins talk about. Keep that timer running through the whole speech about how they named him Dranosh, when you try to figure out how the heck to heal up Valithria Dreamwalker as a Rogue, and even when Tirion tries to step to Arthas and gets frozen — typical Paladin. Hit stop when Bolvar Fordragon takes his seat as the new Lich King.

The time you take to complete arguably the most iconic raid in WoW is the amount you donate to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. For example, if your clock reads 23 minutes and 44 seconds, donate $23.44 to AFSP. You can also tag three friends on social media and state your time using #IcecrownChallenge — raise more money for this great foundation, raise some awareness, and perhaps add a bit of friendly competition.

The fifth annual #IcecrownChallenge has begun!

1⃣ Clear ICC on any difficulty or raid size.

2⃣ Donate to the official Icecrown Challenge page here: https://t.co/e9QZ16NsmA

3⃣ Challenge three friends.

Help us meet our goal of $3,000 for @afspnational this year! #Warcraft pic.twitter.com/2LADGOYh5z

— Warcraft Cares (@WarcraftCares) December 18, 2018

If you complete it way more quickly than you’d anticipated or if you already have all the pets and don’t feel like actually running the raid, they’d be glad to have anything you’d like to donate. To sweeten the pot, they’re also adding in some cool perks and giveaways so you may want to donate more than once. This week’s is a custom avatar from QuelFabulous!

The AFSP is a fantastic organization. They do great work, funding not just advocacy and support groups, but research as well. This time of year can be a particularly trying one for those who struggle with mental illness, so the Icecrown Challenge comes around at a great time not only for fundraising, but also to help raise awareness.