To become a legend in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, you need to achieve quite a lot. Or provoke the right reactions at the right time. One who could do this particularly well is the Undead Rogue Grim.
Who is the player? Grim was playing as a Rogue in Vanilla WoW, so back over 17 years ago. Similar to the legendary Angwe, Grim is also a PvP talent. However, he doesn’t rely so much on nasty assassination tactics.
In the community, Grim is considered one of the best Rogue players of Vanilla. It cannot be compared to today’s skill leveling, but back then, his name did evoke respect.
However, his handling of the class and his skill in PvP was not the only reason Grim became so well-known. He was one of the first to showcase his talent so effectively.
Viral videos before there were viral videos
What makes Grim so special? Unlike the feared Angwe, Grim recorded his fights and duels and posted them online. Some of his first recordings are from 2006, just before Google bought YouTube.
There weren’t many WoW recordings at that time, and those that existed often had a miserable resolution of 240p or 360p – so quite poor. Accordingly, it was hard to see how exactly some of the top players played so well, as the videos didn’t show the key presses.
Grim was among the first to present his skills in montages, known as “Compilations.” On his YouTube channel, you can even find the re-up of his first compilation in HD:
Where does the success come from? One of Grim’s first and most well-known videos features a PvP fight against the Paladin Zalgradis. He was a well-known name at the time, astonishing many players with his PvP skills.
Grim managed to quickly spread his name by showcasing his own successes, compiling his highlights, and collaborating with other well-known players.
Even before Twitter and YouTube algorithms existed, his videos circulated within the World of Warcraft community. Today, Grim even runs a Patreon page, but he is only minimally active now. Still, his name keeps resurfacing among WoW fans.
“Grim was an extraordinary player”
When Grim publishes a new or old video, at least a small group of his fans celebrates the day. In a reddit post from 2019, some community members explain what fascinates them about Grim:
“For the standards of the time, Grim was an extraordinary player […] he was ahead of his time. His movement in general was one of his outstanding skills; everything was fluid and he was also mechanically skilled.
After he stopped making videos, he started playing Arena at a high rank in Burning Crusade. He was one of the best in his battleground group. Gladiator and higher in every season he played, not just some flashy video maker. There were many of those, but Grim was not one of them.”
rondo420 on reddit
Another praises that he was far beyond the knowledge level of most players at that time. Hardly anyone knew about proper key bindings and such. With the then-availability of Google videos and WCM, it was difficult to acquire such skills. YouTube and widespread information about WoW were not available to that extent back then.
All of this was a long, long time ago. In the meantime, many games have tried to dethrone WoW – and have failed:
Grim still uploads videos today, but rather rarely, and he is not particularly active on social channels. How intensively he still plays WoW is unclear. He seems to be fading a bit into obscurity, similar to the famous warrior Kungen:
Kungen was the most well-known player in WoW – What happened to him and his guild Nihilum?
