About

Important Information

About the Clan

[DkR] is a long established UK & Ireland based gaming clan with an abundance of experience drawn from numerous games spanning multiple genres.

Although we aim to be highly skilled and thrive on competition, our priorities are enjoyment and a strong sense of community and friendship, and this will not change. Ensuring that all members feel welcome and valued is hugely important - we never want anyone to feel like they are just a name on a list or an anonymous follower.

Many of those who join [DkR] are considered members for life, and will always be welcome to participate in the clan even if they play in other clans at the same time, or if they decide to return after a long absence.

We normally only accept applicants aged 18 and older, and want members who take gaming seriously enough to play competitively, but not seriously enough to rage or get upset about it.

Our rules are mostly common sense and we ask for a reasonable level of activity from all of our members.

Clan History

The Dark Reavers clan was founded on September 21st 1999 by Darkademic, Insathius and Metaphoric for the game Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. This small RTS clan played Tiberian Sun for a few months, then decided to switch to the popular Half-Life mod Team Fortress Classic. The clan recruited many new members and had a great time playing TFC competitively. In November 2000, due to a declining interest in TFC and the ensuing difficulties arranging matches, the clan retired from TFC and many of its members moved on.

Over the next few years the remaining [DkR] members focused on playing various online RPGs, most notably Diablo II and Neverwinter Nights. Some great times were had playing these games, including the tragic yet hilarious one-shotting of Darkademic by Mephisto in Diablo II's hardcore mode. The clan also played Command & Conquer Generals and had a small internal league.

Counter-Strike: Source

In Febuary 2005, Darkademic decided that the time was right to return to competitive FPS gaming and the clan began playing CounterStrike: Source which had been released a couple of months earlier. The [DkR] members Insathius, Metaphoric and Parquay had been operating the clan Nailed for around a month prior to [DkR]'s return and had already played several ladder matches. On Febuary 6th, Insathius and Parquay joined with Darkademic to reform [DkR], leaving Nailed in the capable hands of Metaphoric. The clan had a successful six months, then at the end of July 2005 the clan was temporarily closed due to Darkademic going away for 2 months. During Darkademic's hiatus, members from [DkR] and their old rivals Nailed joined together to form #ltts (Lambs to the Slaughter).

Once Darkademic returned to the UK he worked towards getting the clan back into action. The clan reformed on the October 31st 2005 and continued playing Counter-Strike: Source, bringing on board several new members from #ltts who had previously been part of Nailed. The clan played well over a hundred matches in the EnemyDown ladder, but by July 2006 many of the clan's members had grown tired of CS: Source causing the clan to retire from CS:S permanently.

In a similar fashion to when the clan stopped playing TFC, the remaining members started to play online RPGs once again, specifically Guild Wars and World of Warcraft, which were played relatively casually over the following year. During this time Team Fortress 2 and Fortress Forever were announced, and Darkademic decided [DkR] would return to its roots by jumping into TF2 and FF as soon as they were released.

Team Fortress 2

The competitive clan officially reopened on September 13th 2007; the release date of Fortress Forever, which marked a renewed focus on competitive FPS. Unforunately Fortress Forever wasn't successful as it was expected to be, so [DkR] focused solely on TF2. The clan played competitively in the EnemyDown TF2 ladder at first, however due to a dwindling number of clans participating there, the clan began to primarily play spontaneous matches arranged over IRC. Many members came and went over the following year, but ultimately a strong core community was formed and a lot of good times were had.

In September 2008, Warhammer Online was released and the clan took a break from TF2 in order to play it. [DkR] became one of the top guilds on Karak-Azgal and had around 70 members, however the game itself rapidly became deserted, leading to the WAR guild being disbanded and to a renewed focus on TF2. The clan continued where it left off and mainly played matches arranged via IRC.

In the latter half of 2009, the TF2 clan closed due to a lack of free time on the part of the clan's leadership, making it nigh-on impossible to arrange matches. The core members played World of Wacraft, Command & Conquer 3, StarCraft II and Sins of a Solar Empire whilst waiting for a new game to focus on.

Guild Wars 2

In November 2011 [DkR] began preparing for Guild Wars 2. By the time the first beta weekend was announced the roster was already more than 100 strong. With the release of the beta server list, the big fansites and non-English communities all began claiming servers, so [DkR] took the initiative and claimed Desolation as the unofficial UK server. Big names such as PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun chose Desolation shortly after, and eventually the server became the most popular choice for pre-launch English-speaking guilds.

[DkR] played on Desolation for all of the GW2 beta weekend events, which ended with Desolation being the only server in the world to have an undefeated score of 6-0 in WvW. After forming a tentative alliance with The Unnamed and Semper Dius who had also been on Desolation for the beta events, the decision was made to roll on a server other than Desolation for launch because the server had become extremely popular, and it was feared that there would be enormous queues resulting from a mass influx of players hoping to join the "winning server".

The available options were considered, and after discussions with various other guilds (initially MARA and Sarcastic Malevolence, and also with CIR who were old acquaintances of The Unnamed) the then yet-to-be-named "Initiative" alliance started to form. The PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun guilds were brought on board, and the alliance continued to grow until it eventually contained over 40 different guilds (more than any other pre-launch alliance). Darkademic hosted some hidden forums through which representatives of each guild could communicate, and after a lot of negotiation (mostly revolving around the distinction between the community that had been formed, and the WvW alliance it contained) the decision was made to populate a server that had been relatively empty throughout the beta weekends; Gunnar's Hold.

The Initiative alliance rolled on Gunnar's Hold as planned and everything seemed to be going very well. The server had some amazing fights, most notably against the unofficial Russian server Blacktide and its largest guild [Xaoc] which would rampage across the maps in the very early morning. After around six weeks the server's WvW activity—outside of the three main WvW guilds (DkR, ThUn and CIR) and a handful of smaller guilds—started to dissipate. This unfortunately meant that the it no longer provided the consistent WvW activity that [DkR] and its WvW oriented allies required, causing them to accept an invitation from [Xaoc] to join Blacktide, which lacked the significant late night presence we were known for. Blacktide quickly rose from Tier 4 to Tier 1 where it remained for seven weeks (in 1st place for four of those).

A combination of recruitment problems (due to Blacktide being the unofficial Russian server) and a mass influx of guilds jumping on the bandwagon led to us deciding to leave Blacktide on new year's day 2013. We returned to our original beta server choice, Desolation, which was no longer as overcrowded as it was at launch, and remained there for the remainder of our time playing the game.

On the 12th of June 2013 [DkR] officially retired from Guild Wars 2. We had some great times, but felt that the game no longer offered enough activities for an organised guild to participate in. A few members continued to play, but most of the guild looked towards future releases.

Elder Scrolls Online

On March 30th 2014 [DkR] made its way into ESO. After initially being skeptical of the game and leaning more towards WildStar, some good experiences in the betas caused a surge in interest amongst our members. We decided to prepare for ESO quite late relative to most pre-launch guilds, but still managed to start off with around 100 members. The roster grew rapidly to around 350 members, but inactivity started to rise as more and more people hit the level cap and the lack of engaging endgame content became apparent. We had some great AvA events, but AvA had major issues as well.

WildStar

WildStar was launched on June 3rd 2014 (31st May for headstart) and it became our new focus. The ESO guild carried on for a short while longer, but was ultimately closed. The WildStar guild equalled the ESO guild in size with ~350 members at its peak. The guild remained strong for 2-3 months and had decent success doing 20-man raids. Unfortunately, like so many MMOs before it, WildStar suffered from issues that would ultimately lead to us retiring from it at the end of September 2014. While the raids were excellent and provided a substantial challenge, very few people had the time and/or capability to commit to a raid schedule. Outside of raiding there wasn't a whole lot to do on a long-term basis, especially as a guild.

Archeage

In 2014 we also had several members very interested in Archeage. This gave rise to our Archeage chapter which was founded officially in September that year when the game was launched. Under the leadership of Omimace Archeage proved to be one of the most successful MMO's for us, remaining highly active for approaching two years at the time of writing. We were a prominent guild on the Kyprosa server and have had a lot of great times in the game.

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

October 2015 saw us make a brief comeback in GW2 for the Heart of Thorns expansion. We had a couple of months of decent activity and tried to get into raiding, but unfortunately it didn't last.

Black Desert Online

Black Desert Online was released in March 2016 and we currently have a solid core of active players playing it. After several months operating as a successful PvE focused guild it was apparent that to participate in PvP sieges we would need to join forces with another guild. We decided it'd be in our best interest for our PvP focused players to join the guild Morghulis while some of their less PvP oriented players would be welcomed into the [DkR] guild. Currently the arrangement is working out nicely.

World of Wacraft: Legion

Having been focused on various MMOs since Guild Wars 2, our membership has become largely composed of MMO players most of which who've played WoW at one time or another, however [DkR] never previously had its own presence in it. We decided to give Legion a shot and had a great time raiding three times a week alongside plenty of dungeon running and world questing.

Since Legion, [DkR] has been relatively dormant. No games have come along that have galvanized the community enough to warrant a full return. Lots of members frequent the Discord still, and there's some hope that Ashes of Creation will provide a new game to focus on, but for now [DkR] quietly bides its time.

• Archeage Unchained: ? / Nuia/West
• WoW Classic: Shazzrah / Horde
• WoW: Chamber of Aspects / Horde
• Guild Wars 2: Desolation (Retired)