Lakini's Past, Draka

I thought it would bore people if I told them how I went from a noob who swam from Menethil Harbor to Westfall because I didn't know there was a tram to the pro I am today.  I have played too long for this to fit in one post.  Draka was the server that was "new" and normal (not pvp) when I got the game so that's where I started.

So my first character was a night elf male druid, Chadwickj.  I created him December 24, 2005, a couple of months after patch 1.0.8 hit.  I logged him in to update him on the armory.  One look will show I still didn't know what I was doing.  The weapon enchant was to level enchanting, alright.  It will also show you I never made to 60 on him, much less 70 or 80.

I'm not one to read the instructions or anything like that so I logged in made my druid and went to questing.  I didn't what endgame raiding was or anything like that.  I played Warcraft 3 and loved the Malfurion, he was a caster druid.  So naturally I assumed that druids in World of Warcraft would be similar, not so much.  So I had a few problems, I was confused about finding his body after death and always spirit rezzed.  I also couldn't figure out how to repair.  By the time I hit level 10 I had those things figured out and could beat down the Hogger of Teldrassil, Oakenscowl.

I then went to Darkshore and continued to level and worked on the many druid quests you pick up.  I didn't have trouble with them until it was time to get sea lion form.  I read on some website that part of the quest was done in Darkshore the other Westfall, which I took as Winterspring.  I tried two ways to get myself there, one I went through Ashenvale to Azshara and tried to swim there.  When that failed I went through the tunnel from Moonglade which once I died dropped me in Felwood and I eventually spirit rezzed my way to Winterspring.  This all pretty rough for a level 16.

I played the game solo until I was around level 24 when I saw in general chat in Darkshore that a group needed one more person for Blackfathom deep.  I had a bunch of quests for it, one I tried to solo, it went badly.  A gnome warrior named Ferth invited me to his group, there was a dwarf priest named Sameth, a druid named Reavlin and someone I forgot about a long time ago.  The run took forever and I was up way longer than I should have been.  The folks in the group were pretty nice, I beat that loot whore Reavlin for Rod of the Sleepwalker, noob feral.

I saw Ferth and Sameth around a couple of more times before he asked me to Gnomer.  I had tried it earlier that day with bad results.  He also asked if I was interested in joining his guild, I was level 35 or so and unguilded.  I had never really had an intention of joining a guild.  I still had no clue about endgame and didn't see a reason to be in one.  I checked out their guild forum and it sounded good to me, so I joined.

It was Ferth, Sameth, Reavlin, Mareck and a couple of other paladins who left before I talked to them.  The four of us tried to level together (not Mareck, he was level 46 or so), Reavlin failed to log in some weeks.  We did every instance leveling up, Sameth was shadow and I was balance, we took turns healing and dpsing.  Ferth and I also did our share of warsong.  He would kill people and I run the flag, most of the time while everyone else turtled (failures).

Ferth was able to recruit a few more players, one day he recruited some guy named Nacho, later to be known as Sticker.  His friend Nolio was soon aded to the guild.  I think we added another hunter, and a warlock as well.  The goal being to get enough people to run premade wsg.

Draka is the server where I learned how to make money on the ah.  I remember selling Large Glimmering Shards for 20 gold, a crazy amount of money back then.  I used these tricks later to become rich.  I rarely quested, I just didn't like it.  I would grind for stuff to sell and ran plenty of instances so leveled fast enough for me.

Right after I hit level 50 Ferth went to the realm forums to ask how long bg queue times were at 60.  I knew when I saw he started the thread our time Draka was over.  The answer was too long so we decided to reroll.  By this time we had about ten members, Ferth, Sameth, Sticker, Nolio and I left, the others decided against it.  Mareck had dissapeared much earlier, though he'd back as you'll find out.

At this point I was still pretty noob, I had never heard of macros (well for wow).  I still had no idea how bad balance was.  Those were fun times, things were simple and wow still seemed huge.  That's all, well, not really, but for now it is.