Then and Now: Drau

February 29, 2012 Kelley Actual Content, Drau, Screenshots, 7

I think I’ve explained me playing WoW to most anyone, but it goes like this: I started playing a couple of weeks before Wrath launched.  Zable had been playing for a while, and the battle chest was on sale, so I got up really early on Black Friday, ran down to Circuit City, and when Zable got home, we started playing.

I always usually go with a hunter or priest when I play an MMO, so I decided on a hunter because I heard you could pick out your own pets!  omg.  Looking over the Alliance races (had to be Alliance- Zable was human), I went with a Draenei because I liked how they looked.

We spent pretty much the whole weekend playing, and by Sunday I was in Darkshore.  Zable ran his way out to Wailing Caverns and I got a raptor, because I really, really wanted a dinosaur, and raptors were supposed to be good pets for damage.  It was fun!  I named her “Yaga” after the Baba Yaga who eats people.  >_>  I still have her in my stable, and have named lots of trolls after her because I think trolls would be kinda cool with that.  I kept going, and I finally made it to Ashenvale after a few weeks.

And then I realized that Ashenvale SUCKS.

The earliest screenshot is from about two years after I made Drau.  When I started playing, Zable was running around on a Darnassus tiger and I was like :O! GIANT KITTY.  So I got the idea to grind out Darnassus rep on my little hunter, who couldn’t have been more than level 35.  This was in September of 2010-

This is also the oldest evidence that I have of Zable jumping in on my screenshots.

That was my first helm!  Hunters still used mana, and I had literally nothing else, so I had an Azure Silk Hood that Zablet made me.  Yeah, I was maybe not so great at this.  I also remember loading up the trainers and going D: and not sure what I needed to train because there were like 50 spell ranks.  I used to look at my spellbook and be like :O! at all these cool new things I’d eventually get to learn, like Aspect of the Dragonhawk.  Good times.

Fast forward two months!  Cata had just released, and the quest flow was much better.  Instead of mucking through Desolace, I ran over and did WPL/EPL and then did the next few zones from there.  I was confused at first about the change over to focus, but I was kinda like “okay, that makes sense…”  In EPL, Zable helped me tame The Lone Hunter with the sword in his head.  :D  I named him Vlad.

I did an LFD dungeon at some point because Zable told me it was good for exp, got yelled at a lot, and probably cried a little.  I was extremely nervous with strangers on WoW, so I spent most of my time questing.  On the plus side, I learned how to handle threat and let my pet tank.  And at some point, Zable suggested I use Kill Command instead of just machine-gunning Arcane Shots.

Well, I got to 55 on Drau, parked her somewhere in Blasted Lands after server transferring her from The Scryers over to this new server Zable wanted to go to- Medivh.

I then rolled a DK, and Drau kind of chilled for a while.  I had a lot of alts that I’d dink around on, and I understood more stuff about this game.

One day, I logged over onto Drau and stared, dismayed, at her gear.  What was I thinking?!  A spirit trinket that had on-use crit?  My rings were a mess!  What in the hell was that necklace?!  I was like “noooooo”.

And then I decided I was going to level Drau.  I was raiding on Deiter by this point, and come hell or high water, I was going to level my first character.

I went through Outland for the second time and refused to wear the int/agi quest rewards they threw at me.  I was no longer -that- hunter.

Made it to Norfran!  So close to level 69!

First order of business when I hit level 69?  Go to Un’goro.  I had heard that there were OTHER DINOS that you could tame.  And I had my eyes on a bright green one, but that would come later, and I knew I’d tame him and name him Reptar and he would be the BEST PET EVER.  For now, I liked the black and blue one.

But I had my eyes on a bigger prize.  When I hit level 74, I parked myself in Grizzly Hills.

And I decided to camp.

I camped all night, with hunters dropping in on top of me after the first few hours, claiming they had been there for “two days”, and then leaving for a BG or dungeon.  It was like a stand-off.  Sometime around 5am, I decided to nap.  I woke up a couple of hours later and logged in just to check!

And there he was!

Took a break for a couple of months.  I think I just kinda found questing tedious or something. I went an ground out professions when I hit 75, and slowly decided to get to 80.

Didn’t take long after that for me to hit 85.  Note the whisper in this Screenshot:

Yes.  A couple of minutes before I dinged 85, Karoma spawned and someone was asking in general chat if there were any hunters about.  I ran through these quests, flew over, and nabbed him.  :D  Also, in all of those screenshots, and even currently?  Her ground mount is still a Darnassus cat.  Her flying mount, since I made it at level 70, has been the Turbo-Charged Flying Machine.  I just can’t think of anything to switch them to!

And that green dino?  I finally found him.

Back when I was leveling Deiter, I had a hunter guldmate named Dondusa.  We’d run instances and stuff, and he joined Waypoint with me (I actually quit our old guild the night he did after he had a blow-up with the GM).  He quit the game a short while later because of family stuff, I think, but I remembered he spent boatloads of time out in Hyjal, camping a turtle out there.

And I found him one day, on Drau.  I caught him after dying a couple of times, and I asked my favorite hunter, Rades, to name him for me.

So I did some dungeons, and sometimes I even got to raid on Drau in Tier 11 when we needed ranged!  I geared her up to step into Firelands if need be, as our hunter was going away for a short while and we might need someone to fill in.

Her current Firelands progress is 1/7 with a single Staghelm kill.  First night we got that kill, I was filling in for someone because we desperately needed ranged to force the shapeshifts.

And also, hunter PvP.  How does it work?  Maybe one day I’ll figure that out.  For the moment, Drau and Reptar are on the back burner.

Tier 13 was very kind, because the new heroics were kind of a good way to gear up Drau and get to play her.  LFR might not be real raiding, but it’s as close as I’m getting for now.  But it’s cool.  My hunter doesn’t wear int cloth hoods anymore.

No, she wears dragons.

 

Sixth Beating the Heirlooms: Leveling without them in PvP