Farewell, Twisting Nether (and Ravenholdt)

Nearly thirteen years ago, on September 16, 2005, the Necromancer, Maledictus, began writing what would later become known as the Mandate. Wishing to see the destruction of the races of the Alliance, The Grim formed under the tenant – Peace Through Annihilation. The founding members of The Grim were: Ayabba the Forsaken Warlock, Grainger the Steward, Laughingcrow the Tauren Hunter, Pincus the Forsaken Warlock, Snowfeather the Tauren Druid, and four others whose name and deeds have been lost to history.

Since those very early days of the Twisting Nether server, The Grim have remained a heavy RP guild, IC determined to see the complete destruction of the Alliance and any other enemies of the Horde. Our echoed cries of “Peace through annihilation!” rang throughout every corner of Azeroth (“like a damn wolf pack” according to one person). We’ve also done our share of world PVP and battlegrounds, and we’ve managed to obtain every AotC achievement this expansion while still keeping a casual feel to our raid team.

One of the earliest events that was popular on the server, so popular, in fact, that it crashed the server, was the King of Rats storyline. King Varian Wrynn was once found in the sewers of Alcaz Island, and The Grim made a storyline about discovering him and using him as a lab rat for plague experiments. When we came back to check on the results, we were accompanied by other Horde. An Alliance force, led by the Ironforge Regiment, was there to meet us. The battle was short-lived; apparently the servers back then couldn’t handle two full raid groups of Horde fighting against four full raid groups of the Alliance.

Cristok’s Challenge was a popular event that started in Burning Crusades. A formal dueling tournament among Horde members, the purpose of the Challenge was to both prepare the heroes of the Horde to fight the forces of the Alliance and as a show of force. Also during this time, The Grim began weekly assaults on the fortress of Theramore. Fabled Order, an Alliance group of Paladins, stood as the main defense for the last living citizens of the kingdom of Lordaeron.

During the Wrath of the Lich King, we led a massive assault, later known as The Drums of War, which raged across the capitals of the people of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Despite the threats from the Lich King in Northrend, the heroes of the Horde and the Alliance finally faced each other in open conflict. In the end, the Horde was successful in a coordinated attack on the Exodar, Ironforge, Darnassus, and Stormwind – seeing to the defeat of both hero and civilian alike. Arguably, the Drums of War was the start of the downward spiral of Alliance heroes until the discovery of Pandaria.

During Cataclysm, Cristok and Leyujin led Onslaughts–various RPPvP storylines and events. One was “The Doom of Stormwind.” In an attempt to destroy Stormwind from afar, The Grim had developed a plan to use Ragnaros’s energies, contained within a cannon shell, to be fired from Bilgewater Harbor against the White City. The plan was derailed due to the efforts of the Praetorian Guard, a highly trained Alliance military outfit that struck several successful raids against Grim depots that housed the materials needed for the superweapon.

During Warlords of Draenor, members of The Grim participated in large storylines led by other members of the Twisting Nether & Ravenholdt community, such as Eclipse, Quorum, and Hollow, just to name a few. There was also the informal war between The Grim and Sanctuary.

Unfortunately, since the launch of Legion, the server community population has greatly declined, or at least gone mostly absent from the game. RP guilds have disappeared, whether to leaving the game, disbanding, transferring to other servers, or just becoming less active in-game. For The Grim, Legion has been an expansion of struggles to find people to play with. Roleplay in-game has been scarce, attendance at Grim planned events was a mere handful of people, we often had to struggle to find a sufficient number of people to raid, and our Rated Battleground Team disintegrated with the loss of a few people, because there was nobody to replace them. Recruiting has been extremely painful due to the lack of population remaining here on the server.

After a very long period of consideration, and trying to come up with other ideas, The Grim has made the difficult decision to move to a more active server where, hopefully, we can once again be part of an active roleplaying community in the game.  On Sunday, July 29, 2018, The Grim has transferred to Wyrmrest Accord.

Farewell, Twisting Nether. We hope you have lots of fun and success in BfA.

“I can’t stop now. The War demands much of us all, and this is no time to falter.”
– Cristok, former Hand of the Mandate.