Guild:The Nephilim (Talnivarr EU)


 * Guild Name: The Nephilim
 * Server: Talnivarr EU
 * Faction: Alliance
 * Website: http://www.thenephilim.eu
 * Guild Leader: Retovia (Dillis)
 * The Nephilim is a mature (we try) PvE guild. Our main focus has and always will be end-game content.

History - The Merge:
Before the release of TBC, Talnivarr EU was home of some top-guilds, such as Decimation, Dawning, DO, To Die For, Justice, The Blood Souls, Industrial Strengh and Moonlight Council. Outside of this company, was a small guild, who just had cleared MC and started BWL, The Pretorians. The guild i was in, and at some point was appointed to be class leader. We killed Razorgore in BWL and were hoping to bring down Vaelastrasz. But after a few nights of wipes, people stopped showing up. And left the rest still in MC farming bosses we had killed several times.

In the end of November 2006 The Guild Master of The Pretorians made the decision to disband the guild until TBC would be released. Our plan was to re-unite, with as many of the good people as we could. After the disband, the guild was scattered all over the server, and many of the officers at that time were given a chance to see the remaining BWL. But for many patch 2.0 ruined PvE and so there was noting left but to wait for TBC to be released in January 2007.

So the expansion came and in the start off February, the old core of The Pretorians got together again and formed a new guild called Incognito. We were sad to see, that many people didn't want to join again, and looking at our numbers, we knew alot of recruitment would have to be made. We did not really have any alternatives, when Laurathansal proposed a merge between The Pretorians and his guild after our disband, Industrial Strengh, who seemed also to be in trouble. At the beginning, we had alot of doubts, if it would work, but some meetings were arranged, and after some time, the final decision was made to merge. The members of Indistrial Strengh, that were to join, joined us in Incognito, as a temporarily guild, while we were discussing a suitable guild name. It was decided, to start of with a "heavy " staff, with too many officers, to have both guilds representive at start, it was however the plan to thin out this amount of people later on, when we were fully up and running. In the end the guild name, The Nephilim was decided, and hence The Nephilim was created 2nd of March 2007.

The Karazhan Period: Setting up the guild
Our start in Karazhan was abit slow. Several bosses gave us trouble, but they did so to every other guild aswell. We spend in general 1 night on each boss to kill it, like Moroes, Maiden of Virtue, until we got abit stuck on Romelo and Juliet. In the end we got past opera event, but only then to get stuck on Curator. The rest of our trip in Karazhan, was also abit slow at times, with especially Terestian Illhoff and Shade of Aran giving us trouble. However in the end they got down, aswell did the Prince. (Nightbane and Netherspite were killed abit later, Netherspite died at the start of April).

During this time in Karazhan alot happend between the officers. Already some small fights had started to occur. Some of them was based on differences and others were based on personal gaining, since we were already planning to find the best suited officers/CL's and demote the rest.

Personally I didn't take much part of these discussions. My very good friend throughout Vanilla, Ainia started to play again (he even joined the guild), and I spend alot of time playing with him and playing with new/old friends like Kazdûl, Olsson (still remember our heroic runs in UB). However these fights between some officers led to some of them leaving, such as Lindarkblade, Promise and Ayachan. The GM: that was Soopalicious at that time, felt responsible for some of these troubles, so he decided to demote himself to trial (and to give GM to Danielle). Soopalicious however was soon taken back in as officer. New officers were assigned; for example Denbuteo was promoted to rogue CL. Somehow, even though I had done very little, I was elected to be Paladin CL, while Kadûl was appointed to be officer. The Karazhan period was however not just all about arguments in between the officers and progress. We also got in some of this guilds keyplayers at that time, such as Gibbs (did not join the guild right away even though he had been in Industrial Strengh), Dreamflower and Fakeon to mention a few.

The Starting of 25 men raiding: Summer 2007
The members felled that the summer of 2007 was quiet period. However from an officer PoV, this was not the case. But to start at the beginning: One day at the 4th of april to be exact (at that time we still had not killed Netherspite in Karazhan), we suddenly saw we had the people online for making a 25 men raid. So the guildmembers rushed towards Gruuls Lair (I myself was not there, but I joined it later on the evening). I was lucky enough, that they needed a healer at the time I logged on, and I was dragged in the fight against Maulgar. That night we succeeded in killing him, and for alot of us, it was a relief to see him go down, to know that despite the trouble we had in Karazhan we still had the potential to progress. One should think this would lead to a massive attack on Gruul, but it did not. The already mentioned trouble among some officers continued, along with some members leaving. During May the arguments of the officers reached a boiling point and Soopalicious left the guild, the exact reason as to what happened I only partly remember. It was a simple discussion, that totally got turned around to a post with mutual flaming and personal attacks. When Soopalicous left the air between the officers seemed to clear. However the fire would flame up again later on. Other people then Soopalicious also left the guild at that time while others went inactive. So we did some recruitment and in the end of May we were finally ready to start going on Gruul. However the general focus at these raids was bad, so after some nights of pure wiping people stopped showing up. One nigth, a saturday night we actually had enough people online, so we pushed everyone inside Gruuls Lair to do one more round with the big Ogre-boss. And this night was our night, at the 3rd try of the evening, he went down in one of the most memorable kills of this guild. The MT (Alki died at 2-3%) so Gruul started to run around killing everyone, until Dujith with like 5 people left, put an end to Gruul with a well timed Smite. This let us hungry for more. That same reset we pushed people into the Lair of Magtheridon (he was at this time still a hard boss only 2-3 other alliance guilds had killed him at this point). The few tries in there were however deeply horrible and people started not to show up again like they did on Gruul. We decided to call off the progress for the rest of the summer, and gear up people, since we reckoned from our tries on Magtheridon, that we needed more dps, more healing and better geared tanks. So during that summer, Alkiviadis and Danielle along with Tragopapas went on holiday, so the one running the guild were me, Laurathansal, Denbuteo, Dujith (whom Trago had promoted when he went on holiday, he himself was chosen to be an officer so he made Dujith the new priest CL), Daslider, Firrhos and Kazdül. We farmed Gruul and Karazhan for a while, until the end of July, when we agreed to pull the brake. We had been trying to see if people were interested in Magtheridon, but as soon Gruul was dead (on Wednesdays) people did not show up. So in one meeting we agreed to call off the summer and on the following reset day, we would surprise the guild, by ordering them to Magtheridons Lair. At the same time we also agreed to make Gibbs the new warlock Cl and Khalispure the Cl for shamans. During that day, the wednesday in the end of July, Laurathansal logged on (he was also on holiday at that time) and we dragged him in to Magtheridon where we had been all night, and in that same try he went down. Unlike last time, people now seemed eager to progress and we took our journey into one of the most progressive periods this guild had, the days in SSC. However in the background the biggest power struggle happened. Tragopapas who was an officer at that time, me and Laura had a big argument (was basically me and Laura (also Denb at at time) who was very unsatisfied with Tragopapas and his way of doing his job. It all ended up in Tragopapas demoting himself to member and Kazdûl also demoting himself, since he did not wish to be an officer.

The Happy days in Serpentshrine Cavern
The days in SSC is the days where The Nephilim for the first time showed Talnivarr its true colors. The guild ran smoothly and despite our raids sometimes lacked focus from some players, we at this state manged to rush past guilds like Do, Vilohemmet, Domini and even Redemption at some point. The Nephilim was the 3rd alliance guild that reached Lady Vashj. After our kill on Magtheridon we forced the guild inside TK where we finished off Void Reaver (free loot). We then decided, looking at the bosses, to go for The Lurker Below in SSC. If I recall right we killed Lurker below at a Thursday (the reset after we had killed Magtheridon). So we ventured onwards in SSC and in that same reset we managed to kill Fathom Lord and Morogrim Tidewalker. In the next reset we didn't really kill much, due to wipe nights on Morogrim Tidewalker, whom despite the fact that we had killed him, continued to impose a big problem. At Leotheras we had a few problems getting him killed, where we several times had wipes at 1% or 2%. We did however manage to kill him, and in the same reset, the 9th of September we finished off Hydross on the first night we were on her, making us as mentioned the 3rd alliance guild to reach Vashj. Vashj however proved to be the biggest challenge this guild have ever had and will in my memories still stand as the hardest, but also most enjoyable fight, I have ever encountered.

Lady Vashj and then downfall
At start we did not go too heavily on Vashj. However we quickly saw, that this boss was our greatest challenge to that point. After some nights with horrible progress on her, we decided to let her chill abit, and instead we went to TK to do the 2 unfinished bosses there; Al'ar and Solarian. In the middle of October they were both dead. Up till this time and after, we had only had a few nights on Vashj, mostly due to us having severe problems at Tidewalker, reset after reset he imposed a problem, making us loose time on Vashj. But finally we started to kill him fast, and as the 2 bosses in TK died, we started going full out on Lady Vashj. After 2 weeks of more constant wiping we finally had her on phase 3, and one Tuesday we had her several times at 2-3% but she refused to die, so we had to call off the kill till next reset. That kill was made Thursday 1st of Novemer 2007, after all the time we had spend on her, seeing her finally go down was to date, my personal best experience in WoW. What we learned, looking back at this, is that at a fight like Vashj, good leadership is one thing, but you need to have 25 people with 100% focus as well to achieve to kill such a hard boss. Ironically killing Vashj, made The Nephilim to enter its biggest crisis ever. We had spend so much time and energy on Vashj only now to watch an almost equally hard boss in Kael'Thas Sunstrider looking down on us and laughing made some people leave, some of them officers to proceed other goals in WoW. The weeks after the guid slowly but surely crumbled (we still raided SSC, just not Vashj), which in the end made me leave and join DO, where I was for 3 days, until I realized that it was in Nephilim I belonged and where I wanted to be. So I left Do again and re-joined. Alot of people had left, important people. Gibbs had left, so did Laurathansal. Alkiviadis had stopped playing and so had Danielle more or less. Also Firrhos stopped. We picked a new officer staff, which actually came to consist most of old Pretorian members; Me, Denbuteo, Fadia (who recently had started to play again), Kaninen and Kngrichard. We decided to make one last stand, and accepted that we would need mass-recruits and mass gearing up. Alot of bad players joined the guild at this time, but in amongst them was also the people we wanted, people with real skill. We took our newly assembled guild to TK (during December), and actually had 2 wipe nights on Void Reaver. This made me personally realized that the guild needed a solid hand (to repair the flaws), so I decided to cancel all raids until after New year.

The Rebirth: Revenge on Vashj and annihilation of Kael'Thas
During that Christmas, we went alot in Zul Aman and Karazhan. Alot of people were geared up, and those that we found not good enough were removed. At the start of January, the first raid was planned. I wanted to start abit safe, and so we started off with Gruul who was killed very easily. This made me believe that we were at least more then ready for SSC again, and so a few days later we ventured back in to SSC, killing both Lurker and hydross at first try. During the rest of January month, everything in SSC was re-killed, along with the 3 bosses in TK. In February, I felt that the guild was ready to face this guilds nemesis; Lady Vashj. It started off with mass-chaos, which we had already anticipated. But people seemed to get the point much faster then i thought. On February the 18 (after around 6-7 nights on her), we found ourselves suddenly in phase 3, which was nice, but phase 3 had wiped us long when we killed her first time. But all the sudden that same night, we again reached phase 3, this time with a full raid alive and down she went. Things started to go fast after that, and people started to return. Laurathansal returned (on his Shadow Priest for starters; Inem), he joined us for our 2nd kill on Vashj (2nd re-kill if you prefer calling it that). The video can be found in the media section, and stands to me, as the best Vashj Kill I have ever seen. We then started on Kael'Thas Sunstrider in TK, and those raid stands for the best raiding period we had in TBC. Everyone was focused, we could always muster a more or less perfect setup every night. And with only Laurathansal that had ever killed him before, we got him down on our 5th (or 6th) night of tries. Quite impressive for a guild who 2 months earlier had been close to a disband. What made the kill even more epic, was the fact that the reset after, Blizzard implemented Patch 2.3 (think it was 2.3 atleast), removing all attunements to MH and BT. However we managed to become "Hand of A'dal" first. That same reset as Kael'Thas died, we ventured into SSC, to finish it for good. In a true speedrun led by Laurathansal, who had re-joined on his druid after migrating back, every single boss was cleared in 3 hours, a task most of us had seen undo able. Tuesday night, before the patch, 21 Nephilians were attuned to MH, ventured in there and killed Rage Winterchill. The reason The Nephilim was able to make this comeback, is something I personally think is due to the players that did not leave in our crisis, players like Templeton (even though he joined and left do with me :p), Welanor, Dreamflower, Jsanko, Denbuteo, Olsson, Kazzeh, Víc, Antiportal (on his warlock) and several more. Many of these people also finally showed the skill, that nobody in Nephilim had shown before, the ability to adapt to new fights really fast and to improvise, doing stuff you aint normally used to (I still remember Welanor kiting at Vashj).

FUN times in MH/BT and the Coma-effect
As Patch 2.3 went live we started going all out on MH first and also BT. That very first reset we managed to kill the first 4 bosses in MH and the first 3 in BT, with only a bit of problems on Najentus. In the next resets Teron Gorefiend and Gurtogg Bloodboil also had to give in (Gorefiend died in one night of tries and Bloodboil died with a total of 3 hours on him). We then faced Archimonde, the last boss in MH. This boss proved to be a real pain. people weren't staying alive, the healers reacted too slow, people stayed in fires. Sufficient to say, that eventually people started to not show up, mostly due to the upcoming exams, and with the poor recruits available on Talnivarr at the time, we decided to not disband the guild. We however decided to put the guild in a coma, while the ones who wanted to see the rest of BT and maybe see Sunwell too, could leave and try find the experience. However most of us, had already planned to bring The Nephilim alive again when Wrath of the Lich King would hit us. Many of our members were scattered. Some joined Domini, some joined Paradigm Shift (like me), some joined Torment while others joined some lower ranked guilds (such as Lemuria, MLC). Time went by and alot of us got loads of experience and alot of those who had switched guild were quickly established as some of the better players of their respective guilds. However even the "big guilds" could not stop the tide. Wrath of the Lich King was approaching, people started to loose interest in PvE and these guilds progress was also put aside. And then it happened, the release of Patch 2.4.

The Regrouping
The patch made us decide, that it was time to put the guild alive abit sooner, then expected. We regrouped up, and basically everyone (or almost) joined again. We did some recruitment, and recruited a few players that wanted to play with us in Wrath of the Lich king. With the help of some friends the guild, we ventured back into BT and MH while we waited for the expansion to release (patch 2.4 nerfed the bosses aswell). We managed to finish of Archimonde, and also cleared BT. We even later on that reset ventured in to Sunwell, and killed 3 bosses there. With the kill of Felmyst, we ended TBC, together again ready for the upcoming expansion.

The result of this long history is the guild you see currently. The history we make is the one happening now, and so far Wrath of the Lich king has been a success so far.