Dorigon
Alpha and Omega
iirc twinkinfo wasn't able to get advertising approval to cover hosting costs due to its name, so changing the site was necessary. it was hemorrhaging dollars every month. myrm was too destitute to take that constant loss.
News Concerning Recent Events
- Thread starter Selaya
- Start date
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Anonymous
Guest
I must say, most of you people live in a different world than I do! I am not a, "Gameboy mental" nor do I enjoy all aspects of WOW. I exclusively play lowbie RBG's with my twinks, and this is what led me to this website. I am glad you guys are back in action and wish you the best!
Tom Ganks
Guest
TI was great until people turned it into a witch hunt and a festering pool of trash. Which is why Shane didn't want it anymore (considering he hadn't sold the site just because he wanted to keep the community alive up till that point.) Then Xpoff happened and it's a much more respectable community (relatively).
People are blaming internal things on the state of the community, when they are external. Twinking isn't as fun anymore due to IN-GAME changes. Yet people blame the site. OK...
Anonymous
Guest
Hello. This is Drayner, the creator of Twinkinfo. I haven't played WOW in a long time and rarely visit this site anymore. I was informed that there was more "drama" about the site happening again so I popped on here. I did a search for my name and found a couple posts about the site that I wanted to contest. Here goes...
Drayner's Blog was a) not directed towards doing exploits on twinks. It was mostly PTR testing on 2.4.3 (I think this was the correct patch). The blog was not looked down by much of the community because it wasn't even known by many anyhow. People started moving to Twinkinfo because it provided a fresh atmosphere
Purj might only remember the Naxx shoulder posts and the info about the one night where we could use darkmoon card pendants and weapons that I posted about. I posted about being able to do it. I posted about my trying it out. I posted warnings about not wasting gold on enchanting the weapons because they WOULD go away. I posted about the hotfix the next day. Overall though, the blog was not about "Exploits". I was against exploits. In fact, I posted about how to do the leg enchant exploit that the guys on Uldum were doing only to help get it fixed by Blizz faster. That backfired and it took them much longer to fix than I expected. I didn't even use mine.
The focus of the blog was info, tips, guides, and maybe a little bragging. Here are some of the archived posts from the blog.
You're correct, Pwndepot never redirected to Twinkinfo.com --- you are incorrect about why opened forums on TI. I was banned from Pwndepot for simply linking to an article on my blog about an upcoming patch. I decided then to open my forums. Not for people to be toxic. If that is what people think of my era of Twinkinfo, I am sad.
Here's a post by Ishh, one of the fine folks that joined me on Twinkinfo, about the PwnDepot vs Twinkinfo thing. I rarely posted or commented about PwnDepot myself.
https://web.archive.org/web/2008122...2008/12/twink-mining-guide-1-to-450/#more-474 ---- make sure to read the comments too.
And finally, let me emphasize, I never ran the site for any financial gains. Until Daman purchased the site, the site was run on a dedicated server that was part of a 3 server cluster that I had for my network of tech websites. I pulled in $10k/mo in ad sales on those sites, I didn't need any revenue from Twinkinfo.
Here is a post I made in 2016 (I think) about Twinkinfo's History (and my history)
The History of Twinkinfo.com
As the creator of Twinkinfo.com, I would like to present this history of Twinkinfo and Drayner for the archives. I am no longer associated with the site and I rarely visit it anymore. I currently don’t play World of Warcraft on live servers and haven’t played since early 2015.
There are many definitions of this word, most of which are inappropriate. The context used here is in regards to World of Warcraft twinking, which is where you max a character out a low-level.
Here’s a quick introduction of me, Drayner
The K-Mart Twink Days
I have been twinking since 2006, which is the same time that I started playing World of Warcraft. I was a level 15 Druid running around the Orgrimar when someone sent me a message asking if I wanted to do some battlegrounds. I had no idea what that was but decided to give it a try. It was a blast. I had come from hardcore raiding in Everquest and I needed something different. At that time, I was running a very successful tech website that took a lot of my evening hours and I needed something I didn’t have to commit 3–4 nights a week to. I didn’t have 4–5 hours of my time each of those nights anymore. I needed something I could get in and out of fairly quick. Doing these “battlegrounds” was perfect for that. I was able to jump in a game, play 30 minutes to an hour and then get back to work. I learned pretty quick and figured out that if I didn’t turn these marks in, I wouldn’t level. I figured out that I would be most powerful at 19 so I leveled to 19 and stopped turning them in. This was before I even knew what a twink was and looking back, I was what I call today, a “K-mart Twink”.
I played my original character, which was a druid that served as my main until Mists of Pandaria. I kept him at level 19 for 2–3 months before I decided to level up and try the next bracket. Keep in mind that this was my 1st character, I didn’t know what was out there besides Warsong Gulch. By now, I realized that I needed to gear up a little better and started buying blue gear courtesy of gold from a real life friend. I leveled to 29 and geared up a little.
I continued playing 29s for a few months, then 39 for a month or so. By now I was 8–9 months in and decided to give 49 a try. I got to 48 or so and was asked by someone to do a dungeon. I had never done a dungeon so I gave it a try. I wasn’t paying attention and before the dungeon was complete, I was level 50. Oops…
At that point, we were less than a month from the release of Burning Crusade. I decided to level up to 60 but didn’t make it before BC hit. I had this bad ass purple PVP gear in my bags that I couldn’t use until I hit 60 but when I did my 1st Burning Crusade quest, the green quest reward gear was better than my purple PVP gear. Boo.
After hitting 60 for the very 1st time, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to raid and I really didn’t want to level to 70 yet. I decided to roll a new character and twink it out at 19. I chose Warlock since locks in the 39 bracket seemed to be the hardest class for me to beat on my feral druid.
Drayner the Blood Elf
During all this time on my Druid, I was unguilded and didn’t even know what a Twink was really. I was semi-twinking and didn’t even know it and I didn’t even know there were Twink Guilds around. I found out that there was one on Draka Horde and it ended up being one of the best 19 Twink Guilds in the Vengeance battlegroup.
Well, I leveled up Drayner the Blood Elf and got all the gear I wanted, Tree Bark, Darkweaves, etc. I wasn’t aware of the The Lucky Fishing Hat or Boots yet, but I did figure out through Thotbot that I could level engineering and get some nice stats with the goggles. I started spamming trade chat for help with enchants. One high level Warlock noticed it and offered to help. I told him that my gold was on my 60 Druid, Axim. When I told him that, he knew the name. He remembered me running flags in the 39 bracket with him for months. He helped get Drayner all enchanted and ready for action. He got on his 19 twink and we did some games.
A couple of games in, he mentioned that he was in a twink guild called Malthoron Trader’s Union (MTU) and talked with the guild leaders, Groba (Llonah) and Laycee (Sidni) to see if they would take me and they did.
I joined MTU and that’s where it REALLY all began. I went from pugging solo without knowing much to learning a ton and queing with others like me. It was awesome! A couple of weeks later, I was asked to participate in my 1st of 10+ premades with MTU, most of which we won.
I quickly became well-known in the Vengeance forums. A combination of above average playstyle where I was a healers worst nightmare and my constant conversation in the Vengeance forums contributed to my fame.
This is where the whole website part comes into play…
The Little Known vTwinks Era
Since 1998, I had been a hobbyist webmaster. I created several sites that had mild success, from sports gambling info where I actually handicapped games at a 65% win rate to a site teaching others how to build the web. In 2002, I had a site about Pocket PC explode and launch a level of success that I had never had before. This site quickly turned into a major player and I went from a shared hosting plan to being forced into a dedicated server. The traffic was off the hook. In 2006, the site got to the point where I was making $6,000 to $10,000 a month in ad sales and I had built 3–4 sites in it’s likeness about other technology based on it’s success. I had 30 or so people helping now and I was started to have more free time to start other projects so in 2007, I created a site for Twinks called vTwinks. It didn’t cost me anything but a vBulletin License since I already had the server, 3 of them in fact.
vTwinks was to be a community for Vengeance Twinks. I got the site up and running, complete with forums and started telling people in Vengeance about it.
Sadly, it never got off the ground. In the 1st week, I had a couple of people mention that it was a knock off of another site that was online called “Battleground Forums”, which ended up turning into “PwnDepot”. I didn’t know the site existed. I checked it out and WOW! It was what I wanted to do, but for any Twink, not just Vengeance. I backed up and punted.
I turned vTwinks into blog instead. I used this blog to detail my adventures in Twinking.
Twinkinfo, The Beginning
A year later, I decided to drop the name vTwinks and change it to Twinkinfo.com and here’s a portion of my 1st post on Twinkinfo…
Twinkinfo was just a blog to start out. This was in late Burning Crusade and Wrath PTR was up. I was testing out a ton of big changes coming for 19 twinking. I was starting to get some traffic and some great comments.
About this time, I shared one of my best findings on the PTR and linked the blog post on Pwndepot (Battleground Forums). I actually posted all the pertinent info on Pwndepot so a reader really didn’t have to leave the site to get the info, but I did link the post I made on my blog as well. It got me banned from Pwndepot….
I was a tad upset. I wasn’t trying to compete with the site, just share. I have been running forums for 5+ years at that point and I pretty much understood forum etiquette and didn’t see anything wrong with my Pwndepot posting. Well, I still had the vBulletin License from vTwinks, so I decided I would add forums to Twinkinfo and here’s my post about that… (That post is missing now, here is the text via an archive)
That was the birth of Twinkinfo as we know it today.
Over the next couple of months, Pwndepot banned people for mentioning Twinkinfo and the phrase “Twinkinfo” was censored on the site. This upset many people and was the reason that so many fled Pwndepot to take up home on Twinkinfo.
Twinkinfo ended up becoming “the” twinking site now. Pwndepot eventually closed it’s doors for new posts and members.
Our staff grew fast and the info continued to be top notch. Even though the forums were now rocking, 70–80% of Twinkinfo’s traffic was the blog portion of the site. The posts that myself and my staff were putting out was great, on time info.
I wanted the site to be a site where everyone from noobs to pros could benefit from. When I brought on the initial staff, here’s how it read… (Again, this post is gone now too, here is how it read)
During this time, I thought I was going to quit Twinking.
The site continued to grow. I had my own ups and downs in-game and on Twinkinfo. Staff members came and went but all in all, we continued to grow. In all this, I never really made a cent off the website, nor did I care to. My time was all that it cost to run it.
Draynerworld.com
Somewhere along the way, a EU player made a rant about how I might as well change the name of the site from Twinkinfo to Draynerworld since I was running the site with a “Hitler-like” mentality. I created Draynerworld.com as a joke to poke fun at that member. I actually blogged there a few months before shutting it down.
Twinkinfo Sale #1
In March 2010, I sold 90% of my website network to a media company for low to mid six figures. Twinkinfo wasn’t a site that I sold in this package, but I was growing tired of running it. A few months later, I posted that I was going to sell the site and that I was tired of running it.
I don’t remember the date, but a member named Daman contacted me about this and I quickly gave him the site for pennies… Well, the cost to him was $1k and to make it easy for him to transition since he was new to running sites, I charged him for a year of hosting on my dedicated servers.
After a few months of helping him transition as the new owner, I stepped away for a LONG TIME. I was a tad disappointed with some of the choices he made for the site. He gave a long list of banned members a 2nd chance and brought some players I would have never considered onboard.
During the time Daman owned the site, I was not around much.
Towards the end of his ownership, I was asked by Inkobah to help since he was pretty much absent and nobody was running the site on the technical side. Inkobah was made the Head Admin on Twinkinfo a some point during Daman’s ownership and I believe he did a great job keeping the site going.
Well, I agreed to help Ink with Twinkinfo. I was going to upgrade the software, fix all the bugs, and do a total site redesign and we were all ready to move forward when all of a sudden, Daman popped back up. He hired a friend to redesign the site and they even changed the forum software. They asked me back to help with content, but I felt a bit of resentment after I started the redesign only to have someone come in at the last minute.
In protest, I acted like a 2 year old and deleted almost 2,000 of my posts from the site. I would have deleted them all, but someone figured out what I was doing and took away my ability to delete my own posts.
What Ink and I didn’t know at that time was that Daman was cleaning the site up for resale.
Twinkinfo Sale #2
After everything was upgraded and running smoothly, all of a sudden Twinkinfo had new ownership. I believe the sale price was around $5k. The new owner was now a guy named Shane, a guy who didn’t even twink.
I had no issues with this, at least they have someone who knows something about running a website now… or did they. I have no doubt that Shane knows how to run a site, but does he know how to run an online community. Time would tell… It didn’t start off good in my eyes, he brought new staff in and the old staff left one by one. The new staff put in place included several people I had previously banned from the site. That should tell you something. Then Shane made someone a moderator on the site that I felt was a horrible move for the bracket I cared about, the 19 bracket, I wanted to totally disassociate myself from Twinkinfo for good. I forced them to ban me with my attacks on members and requested that they remove my account altogether. Well they didn’t and eventually the person I was not happy with being a moderator eventually worked themselves out of that position. It was at that point that I requested to be unbanned and I became a part of the site, as a member only, again.
Twinking.net
Several months after Twinkinfo was purchased by Shane, I started getting contacted by members and former staff about me starting a new site. For months, I told them all that I had no interest in starting something new. Since I like to blog and share my feelings, I had already created a new site called TwinkPVP and was quietly posting some stuff over there. I really didn’t want to get involved again, but I eventually caved and Twinking.net was created.
Here’s the post I made when it was launched…
A few months after the launch of Twinking.net, Ink and I both became inactive in Wow. The site was handed over to a great guy, Bwappo. Bwappo ended up letting another guy named Yoube run the site. After that move, I updated all the software and layout and walked away from Twinking.net for good.
A few months later, Yoube decided to move away from the Twinking.net domain to create his own thing which lasted a while and is gone now. Twinking.net and Yoube’s follow-up site, Bisnation are both offline now.
I currently have zero desire to be a part of any website. I am really enjoying my free time.
One of my favorite posts I made on Twinking.net was one that I took offline because one of the bloggers was unhappy about it and felt as if I “took” his idea. Even though the idea came about based on his idea, the post became a Drayner Autobiography and not really what his idea was. That post was not published, but I like having it around to reference. It was recently deleted from the Twinking.net database by its current owner so I will publish it here…
[alert color=”ff0000" title=”Warning”]Much of the following has already been stated in the 1st few paragraphs of this post, but I do go into a bit more detail [/alert]
The Autobiography of Drayner!
This was originally posted on July 27th, but was removed for undisclosed reasons. This wall of text has now be officially reposted. Keep in mind that this post was written prior to my <a href=”http://twinking.net/its-all-about-the-community/" target=”_blank”>umpteenth exit</a> from the 19 bracket.</strong>
I have been gathering information from random Kmart twinks that queue up in the XP OFF 19 bracket for the last week. Most of them won’t answer or reply with obscenities, but I do want to understand what is going through mind of an 800 HP rogue in greens. Why do they even queue for XP Off games? Hopefully I’ll understand soon. Some of the early, honest replies have to do with PVP gear although I think they are misguided with this since there isn’t much PVP gear that matters at these levels.
Anyhow, while reading some of the replies I received, It reminded me of my 1st year in the World of Warcraft.
I played Everquest for 5 years prior to coming to Wow. When Wow was 1st released, I put it off and tried Everquest II instead. I had heard how easy it was to level to 60 and that it got boring real fast. I was already in love with Sony’s games anyhow. In Everquest, I was in a top guild on my server and we raided 4–5 hours a night, 4 or more nights a week. After years of doing this, I started to grow tired of the grind. Farming items for access to the new raid instances, working on Epic quests, and relying on 39 other people to succeed. Everquest was a team game, much like some of the earlier raiding in Wow.
I needed something new so I tried EQ2. My real life friends that hopped over got tired of it quick and returned to EQ1.
Around this time, I had a web business that was starting to blow up and needed more time from me. I couldn’t sit at the keys waiting to pull a boss all night. I had to find a way to play more casually. Once you hit a level of success and taste end game in any MMO, it’s hard to scale back. The drive to be the best is in all of us.
With less time available, I decided to try World of Warcraft. I had a real life friend playing and I figured he could help me fast track.
The Wannabe Kmart Twink
When I started Wow, the Burning Crusade wasn’t on the horizon yet. I started a Night Elf Druid. I chose Draka since my RL friend was there. Everquest didn’t have factions. I didn’t even know what they were. I leveled 1–20 on this Alliance Druid before my friend explained to me why he couldn’t throw me any gold since he was Horde. I quickly deleted this character and started a Tauren Druid that I still have and is my enchanter today. He has all but a couple old school twink enchants!
My friend hooked me up with a chunk of gold and went about my leveling. I was standing around in Orgrimar one day at level 15 or so and someone asked me if I wanted to do some battlegrounds with him and his friend. I had no idea what battlegrounds were at that time but I decided to give it a whirl. I had a blast. I didn’t have any real gear and looking back on it, I wasn’t even a Kmart twink… I was a leveler. I was the kind of player twinks preyed on. Over the next few days, I realized I could get XP by turning in these tokens I was getting. Lucky for me, I was getting 1 token for a loss more often than 3 for a win. I leveled to 19 and decided to stop turning in and work on gear some. I became a Kmart twink.
Staying at level 19, I spent the next 6–8 months in Undercity doing nothing but WSG. I bought and sold gear, took a few more gold hookups from my friend, and geared up. Today, I realize that I never became a “real” twink on that character.
I spent several months at 19, a couple more months at 29, a few months at 39, and finally leveled to 49. Each bracket, I worked on gear and enchants but never really got any dungeon gear. At 39, I started noticing the same players in bgs and there was a warlock that teamed up with me every time we were in the same game. He made suggestions and helped my game play out some as well. I really valued his input since warlocks were the one class that game me the most trouble. I normally ran flags and knew a lot of great hiding places. This was well before flags showed up on the map after a period of time. There was one time when I had hopped into bear form and laid down with the flag in some bushes above the horde tunnel and walked away to eat dinner without dying. Those were some crazy days.
One of the suggestions he offered was getting some dungeon drops. I am sitting at level 49 and got a random tell asking me if I could tank a dungeon for their group. I had never done any dungeons and this warlock suggested that I needed gear from them, so I said sure. I didn’t think about XP. Well, within the 1st few minutes of the dungeon I ding 50. Oh No! We finished the dungeon and I was bummed. I decided at that point that I would go ahead and level to 60, get some PVP gear and try that out.
I was a noob still, almost a year into the game. I loved the PVP aspect of the game because I didn’t have to block out hours of my day for raiding. I could play a game, log out to write some articles, and jump back in for another game. I was in love with this.
So I set off to level to 60. I joined a guild and everything. In guild chat, I quietly read everything that scrolled past. I learned in guild chat that an expansion was coming. I didn’t research it at all and didn’t really care. I just wanted to hit 60 and get these hot purple items I was seeing linked in chat. As I leveled, I picked up a purple or two on the way, got them enchanted and kept them in my bags for when I hit 60. The Burning Crusade came faster than I thought. When it launched, I had only made it to 58 which was perfect since that’s when I was able to get to the Outlands.
I got the expansion and started doing quests. The 1st couple of quests I did gave me green gear rewards better than the purple in my bags that I never got a chance to wear. OMG. I leveled to about 65 before I gave up and decided to roll a new character to play WSG some more. I left the end game pipe dream behind.
The Drayner Era
I decided since I had so much trouble with Warlocks that I would give it a try. I had a better understanding about gearing toons for low-level PVP and I launched my 1st real twink. I had met a rouge that warned me about XP gains and told me how to avoid a lot of XP. While gearing up my 1st real twink, a Blood Elf Warlock named Drayner, I ran into a 70 Warlock in Org. I had posted on my lock that I was looking for a certain enchant. This 70 Lock replied and I asked him If I could log into my main and pay him for the service and then log back to Drayner to receive the enchant. He said sure and I logged over. When I sent him a tell, he remembered my Druid’s name (Axim) and realized that he and I played many game together at level 39. He hooked me up with the enchant and introduced me to <Malthoron Traders Union> (MTU), a 19 Twink Guild on Draka Horde. What I didn’t know at that time was that MTU was one of the best, if not the best, Horde guild in Vengeance. We geared my lock up and I was invited to become A Team lock for the MTU Premade Team. That was the beginning of my real twinking experience in Wow.
While I don’t remember the 70/39 Warlock’s name, his 19 twinks in MTU were Mypain (Rogue) and Mypayn (Hunter). He introduced me to Groba, Laycee (most know her as Sidni), and Fael. I played with these folks as well as Mypain, Bratty, Meraxx, Lucid, Umberbulk, and more for a good year or so.
I loved the community of 19 twinks in Vengeance! Our forums were fun, some times ugly, but most of the time the camaraderie was awesome! It made you want to be a part of the community and I was. These were the best years for me in twinking. I was regarded highly as a twink, people were generally nice, and stuff like GY camping was frowned up and most everyone looked down at those that camped or exploited. I once shared screen shots of one of a rival guild’s members holding the flag in an exploit spot and their GM kicked them. We policed our community well. That rival GM and I have become friends and still keep in touch 5+ years later!
At some point, I felt I needed to take a break from the game and to keep from coming back, I sold all my twink and main’s gear and deleted the toons. I stayed away from Wow for about 6 months. I did return and created Draynertwo since someone quickly jumped in and created a level 1 Drayner after I deleted. I wasn’t able to get a GM to restore the orginal Drayner either. I played again for 3–4 months and became tired again. Instead of deleting this time, I just shut it down.
This attempt at quitting only took a couple of weeks to fail. Since quitting and coming back was fodder for trolls that our Vengeance forums started to spawn, I decided not to come back to Vengeance. Instead, I chose to transfer my lock (this was the Orc Drayner) to Malygos, a server another friend I knew was on. He was a hard-core raider and I rarely saw him but I was only interested in twinking anyhow. I met up with another Orc Lock named Torkd and he got me invited to <Twinks in Pink> in the Vindication Battlegroup. I renamed Draynertwo to GotDots and played as that name in Vindication for almost a year. I ended up moving other twinks I had over to Malygos as well. there was Gotarrows, Gotheals, and Gotstabs. This was another really fun time for me. I made friends and enemies in guilds over there and some of the enemies became friends later.
Somewhere in my Vindication days, I got onto the PTR and found some really good twinks. I could compete, but I didn’t realize how strong some twinks were from other battlegroups. This is where I learned that Cyclone was heating up and several guilds were moving over there to test the premade waters. One of these guilds was <Team Vengeance>. This guild was made up of many good and popular twinks out of Vengeance Battlegroup and I wasn’t very friendly with many of these guys. You may have heard of some of these twinks: Ebayed, Kidneypopper, Tombrady, and many more. I had a 2nd, almost finished Blood Elf Warlock on Akama that I was rolling to play with Vegansown in <Mayhem> and decided it would be funny to trick the <Team Vengeance>guys. I transferred over to Suramar and started pugging on a lock named Twinklock. Within a couple of days, Kidneypopper, who I had several arena encounters with as Drayner with Fael or Lucid as my partner, asked me if I wanted to join his guild. I played dumb and replied, “I don’t need a guild, I am a twink and don’t plan on leveling”. He explained that his guild was a twink guild and I said, “oh ok, sure”. I played with these guys for a couple of weeks until my conscience finally got the best of me. I decided to come clear, I sent mail to a few of them and gquit.
After quitting, I stuck around on the server for a little while. I got word from Vegansown that was planning to come over. Vegansown and I had talked about me coming to play with for years but the PVP/PVE server transfer limitation prevented it. I never wanted to make a character on another server, I preferred to create them and gear up on my server where I had my resources and transfer over when done. I went ahead and created on Suramar and transferred a couple of their members over. It was short lived for me though, I disliked the several of their members and decided to move on.
During this time in Cyclone, I ended up pugging into many games with <Warsong Warriors> members like Sunlynn, Caneus, and another good lock that’s name escapes me. They welcomed me to transfer to Bronzebeard and play with them. Transfer cool down at this time was still 30 days. I transferred this lock, but I made a mistake… I chose Uldum instead of Bronzebeard. This lock, named Twitter, was stuck on Uldum for 30 days. Instead of playing him while waiting for the CD, I decided to move my hunter named Seadawg over to Bronzebeard. I did a couple premades withon my hunter during this time. A couple of weeks before I could transfer my lock over to Bronzebeard finally, I started pugging with him on Uldum. With about a week left, I started getting ninja invites and tells from the guild leader of a guild on Uldum named . I replied and made it clear that I wasn’t interested and that I was transferring in a week. After some persistence, I finally accepted an invite. Their GM told me, just join and you might like it and stay. A week later, as I promised, I moved to Bronzebeard.
This started a history of transferring right and left. This lock on Bronzebeared ended becoming my 39 lock and GotDots, the Orc lock on Malygos was eventually transferred to Cyclone where I played in a few Alliance guilds as a Gnome lock. I jumped around from guild to guild for a while, playing with and for the bulk of my time. I played with several other guilds as well, but most of them were quite brief.
This was the time frame where Twink Info was starting to get really popular, tradeskills became a part of the game, and gear got better. This was also the time where I could go mid, dot everything, use my lifeblood, Void bubble, and AGM and live through all the damage I took. Pretty fun times for locks and during this time, I forgot how to be a Stam Fearbot.
When guilds were crutching on professions, I had them too, but the guild I was in didn’t take the time to level professions as a whole. Some did, but others didn’t. Professions made a big difference, especially the mining bug that wasn’t fixed at the time . had a meeting to discuss the short term future of the guild and what we were going to do. One of their long time members from way back when they were on Sentinals told me that my input wasn’t welcome in that meeting. I disappeared from the guild roster for good that evening. I left all the Naxx shoulders I had with members and picked a random server to transfer my lock to. Yes, I closed my eyes and chose a server from the drop down box. I ended up on Trollbane in the Ruin Battlegroup as Evolved. I spent a month goofing off in the WSG and Arenas all while acting like someone else in the forums. It was good times, but not very fun since there were no other active twinks on that realm.
My next stop was Ysera Horde as Lokdtite in the Stormstrike battlegroup. This is where I ran into that fun hunter named Halfbreed that I poked fun at on TI with a “Meet the Twinks” Feature. I had a great time while undercover there too. When I was trying to remember the name of my character over there, I found a cool post on Twink Info.
Pretty cool that my toons inspired other locks even under fake names!
After that, I headed to Alleria as Afraid for a month. Nothing eventful here, I didn’t even really read the forums over there.
The Ruin Migration
I moved my lock from Ysera to Medivh after I decided what server/battlegroup I wanted to build the <Twink Info> guild in. I chose Medivh and so started “The Ruin Migration”.
I’ll be brief with the portion since many of you are well aware of this era. This is where hundreds of 19s migrated to join <Twink Info>, a guild where I didn’t play favorites. I didn’t care how good or bad you were as long as you played to win and played by the rules. I brought my lock over and created an FC druid since nobody wanted to FC. After 20 or so premades, most of which we lost, I shut it down and took a break.
I later moved that lock over to a new project that Wuvs put together that was similar to what I did with <Twink Info> called <Fishin Buddies> My lock’s name was Druvs and we had some other big names over there with “uvs” names, like Puvs and Buvs.
I later moved that lock to Bloodhoof to play with . Of all the names I have played under, this one was the worst… Nedreck.
After “The Ruin Migration Days”, I moved my lock from Bloodhoof to Farstriders where I played as Lawwk. The guild I was in was quite fun, but I ended up deleting that little Gnome Drayner and quitting right here.
I quit for a bit and when I returned, I rerolled another new lock, which is the one I am playing today. I spent a little time on Medivh with my old MTU friends before moving to Bleeding Hollow Alliance for a brief stint with . I ended up quitting for 6 months and in my return I bounced around a couple time before setting on Elune to play with .
When I arrived on Elune, nobody knew who I was. I loved it. It was refreshing playing a character who wasn’t named Drayner. Now I don’t enjoy playing Daphane as much since I have added pressure that I didn’t have while incognito. That’s the reason I have played undercover so often.
The Many Faces of Drayner
All in all, I have played about 9 different warlock twinks, 5 of which still exist. 1 @ 19, 2 @ 39, 1 @ 24, and 1 @ 49. I have played in the 19, 24, 39, 49, and 70 bracket with various classes, but mostly warlocks. I really love the 19 bracket and that’s what keeps me coming back.
Insert picture — lotsofdrayner11.jpg
Here’s a list of all the names my 19 warlocks have gone by:
What Now?
In closing, I started twinking for 1 reason, I continued twinking for another. I started twinking as a non-twink because I didn’t have to commit big chunks of time to work with others to take down the big boss. I stuck around as long as I have because of the community. As the community changed (and not good changes for me), that reason wasn’t enough and I started quitting for months a time. I keep returning though.
What keeps me coming back? I really haven’t figured that out. Everytime I do come back, I have a blast for a couple of weeks and then it fades. The last 2–3 times, It faded fast because of the imbalance of the game, hunters, and general douchebaggery that exists in the bracket I enjoy most, the 19 bracket. I always get invites to other brackets that are “more mature”, but I have become lazy and am at a point where I really don’t want to create new twinks anymore. I did spend months working on a 70 lock last year, but that was the last time I put any serious commitment into a twink.
In 2010, I sold my web business, paid my house off, bought my wife a new Volvo SUV, my son a batting cage, and a Harley Davidson for myself. After selling these properties, I also sold Twink Info. I now had newly found time to play more so I started trying out the raiding world I ignored all those years. I had fun, got my resto druid to #2 on the server I was on, got a server 1st kill, and raided with the #1 guild on my server. 3 months before Cataclysm dropped, I got bored and stepped away. When Cataclysm hit, I came back and decided that I didn’t want to raid anymore and started that 70 druid twink I referred to in the previous paragraph. That’s pretty much the end to my story besides the 2 times I have resurfaced in the 19 community, the 2nd of which I am still active on.
Moving forward, I feel I am going to need to find another class and/or bracket to play. I have played Warlock almost exclusively for all the years I’ve twinked, but I am not pleased with what the lock will be @ 19 when Mists of Pandaria drops. Until MOP, I will be playing my 19 lock as much as I have time for though.
I am done with 19 Warlock play now. I leveled the last of my 19 locks to 24 (and eventually will go to 29). I have chosen to move on for various reasons. I could make a good long QQ post about these reasons, but I will just sum it up by saying… the community.
/End of History of Drayner
— — — — — — — — -
Twinkinfo Sale #3
Reserved for info about the 3rd sale of the site to Myrm.
Update: I will post more when I get more info, but apparently Twinkinfo is no longer. I received a text today that told me to check out the site. I typed Twinkinfo.com in my browser and it’s forwarding to another domain. I read a post there and they have merged. I guess this new site was competitor to Twinkinfo and they decided to merge, but without the old content. Makes no sense to me, but hey… it’s not my site anymore. THANK GOD.
Drayner's Blog was a) not directed towards doing exploits on twinks. It was mostly PTR testing on 2.4.3 (I think this was the correct patch). The blog was not looked down by much of the community because it wasn't even known by many anyhow. People started moving to Twinkinfo because it provided a fresh atmosphere
Purj might only remember the Naxx shoulder posts and the info about the one night where we could use darkmoon card pendants and weapons that I posted about. I posted about being able to do it. I posted about my trying it out. I posted warnings about not wasting gold on enchanting the weapons because they WOULD go away. I posted about the hotfix the next day. Overall though, the blog was not about "Exploits". I was against exploits. In fact, I posted about how to do the leg enchant exploit that the guys on Uldum were doing only to help get it fixed by Blizz faster. That backfired and it took them much longer to fix than I expected. I didn't even use mine.
The focus of the blog was info, tips, guides, and maybe a little bragging. Here are some of the archived posts from the blog.
- Fishing Hat Guide - https://web.archive.org/web/2008092...hing-hat-and-nat-pagles-extreme-anglin-boots/
- Don't ding doing Halloween quests - https://web.archive.org/web/2008102.../10/dont-click-the-candy-buckets-in-the-inns/
- Naxx Enchants are Legal - https://web.archive.org/web/2008092...om:80/2008/09/naxx-enchants-legal-officially/
- 1-450 Mining Guide - https://web.archive.org/web/2008122...2008/12/twink-mining-guide-1-to-450/#more-474
- Taking shots at Pizza GY camping way back in 2008 - https://web.archive.org/web/2008122...8/10/rip-jtpackard-great-19-priest-70k-kills/
You're correct, Pwndepot never redirected to Twinkinfo.com --- you are incorrect about why opened forums on TI. I was banned from Pwndepot for simply linking to an article on my blog about an upcoming patch. I decided then to open my forums. Not for people to be toxic. If that is what people think of my era of Twinkinfo, I am sad.
Here's a post by Ishh, one of the fine folks that joined me on Twinkinfo, about the PwnDepot vs Twinkinfo thing. I rarely posted or commented about PwnDepot myself.
https://web.archive.org/web/2008122...2008/12/twink-mining-guide-1-to-450/#more-474 ---- make sure to read the comments too.
And finally, let me emphasize, I never ran the site for any financial gains. Until Daman purchased the site, the site was run on a dedicated server that was part of a 3 server cluster that I had for my network of tech websites. I pulled in $10k/mo in ad sales on those sites, I didn't need any revenue from Twinkinfo.
Here is a post I made in 2016 (I think) about Twinkinfo's History (and my history)
The History of Twinkinfo.com
As the creator of Twinkinfo.com, I would like to present this history of Twinkinfo and Drayner for the archives. I am no longer associated with the site and I rarely visit it anymore. I currently don’t play World of Warcraft on live servers and haven’t played since early 2015.
There are many definitions of this word, most of which are inappropriate. The context used here is in regards to World of Warcraft twinking, which is where you max a character out a low-level.
Here’s a quick introduction of me, Drayner
The K-Mart Twink Days
I have been twinking since 2006, which is the same time that I started playing World of Warcraft. I was a level 15 Druid running around the Orgrimar when someone sent me a message asking if I wanted to do some battlegrounds. I had no idea what that was but decided to give it a try. It was a blast. I had come from hardcore raiding in Everquest and I needed something different. At that time, I was running a very successful tech website that took a lot of my evening hours and I needed something I didn’t have to commit 3–4 nights a week to. I didn’t have 4–5 hours of my time each of those nights anymore. I needed something I could get in and out of fairly quick. Doing these “battlegrounds” was perfect for that. I was able to jump in a game, play 30 minutes to an hour and then get back to work. I learned pretty quick and figured out that if I didn’t turn these marks in, I wouldn’t level. I figured out that I would be most powerful at 19 so I leveled to 19 and stopped turning them in. This was before I even knew what a twink was and looking back, I was what I call today, a “K-mart Twink”.
I played my original character, which was a druid that served as my main until Mists of Pandaria. I kept him at level 19 for 2–3 months before I decided to level up and try the next bracket. Keep in mind that this was my 1st character, I didn’t know what was out there besides Warsong Gulch. By now, I realized that I needed to gear up a little better and started buying blue gear courtesy of gold from a real life friend. I leveled to 29 and geared up a little.
I continued playing 29s for a few months, then 39 for a month or so. By now I was 8–9 months in and decided to give 49 a try. I got to 48 or so and was asked by someone to do a dungeon. I had never done a dungeon so I gave it a try. I wasn’t paying attention and before the dungeon was complete, I was level 50. Oops…
At that point, we were less than a month from the release of Burning Crusade. I decided to level up to 60 but didn’t make it before BC hit. I had this bad ass purple PVP gear in my bags that I couldn’t use until I hit 60 but when I did my 1st Burning Crusade quest, the green quest reward gear was better than my purple PVP gear. Boo.
After hitting 60 for the very 1st time, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to raid and I really didn’t want to level to 70 yet. I decided to roll a new character and twink it out at 19. I chose Warlock since locks in the 39 bracket seemed to be the hardest class for me to beat on my feral druid.
Drayner the Blood Elf
During all this time on my Druid, I was unguilded and didn’t even know what a Twink was really. I was semi-twinking and didn’t even know it and I didn’t even know there were Twink Guilds around. I found out that there was one on Draka Horde and it ended up being one of the best 19 Twink Guilds in the Vengeance battlegroup.
Well, I leveled up Drayner the Blood Elf and got all the gear I wanted, Tree Bark, Darkweaves, etc. I wasn’t aware of the The Lucky Fishing Hat or Boots yet, but I did figure out through Thotbot that I could level engineering and get some nice stats with the goggles. I started spamming trade chat for help with enchants. One high level Warlock noticed it and offered to help. I told him that my gold was on my 60 Druid, Axim. When I told him that, he knew the name. He remembered me running flags in the 39 bracket with him for months. He helped get Drayner all enchanted and ready for action. He got on his 19 twink and we did some games.
A couple of games in, he mentioned that he was in a twink guild called Malthoron Trader’s Union (MTU) and talked with the guild leaders, Groba (Llonah) and Laycee (Sidni) to see if they would take me and they did.
I joined MTU and that’s where it REALLY all began. I went from pugging solo without knowing much to learning a ton and queing with others like me. It was awesome! A couple of weeks later, I was asked to participate in my 1st of 10+ premades with MTU, most of which we won.
I quickly became well-known in the Vengeance forums. A combination of above average playstyle where I was a healers worst nightmare and my constant conversation in the Vengeance forums contributed to my fame.
This is where the whole website part comes into play…
The Little Known vTwinks Era
Since 1998, I had been a hobbyist webmaster. I created several sites that had mild success, from sports gambling info where I actually handicapped games at a 65% win rate to a site teaching others how to build the web. In 2002, I had a site about Pocket PC explode and launch a level of success that I had never had before. This site quickly turned into a major player and I went from a shared hosting plan to being forced into a dedicated server. The traffic was off the hook. In 2006, the site got to the point where I was making $6,000 to $10,000 a month in ad sales and I had built 3–4 sites in it’s likeness about other technology based on it’s success. I had 30 or so people helping now and I was started to have more free time to start other projects so in 2007, I created a site for Twinks called vTwinks. It didn’t cost me anything but a vBulletin License since I already had the server, 3 of them in fact.
vTwinks was to be a community for Vengeance Twinks. I got the site up and running, complete with forums and started telling people in Vengeance about it.
Sadly, it never got off the ground. In the 1st week, I had a couple of people mention that it was a knock off of another site that was online called “Battleground Forums”, which ended up turning into “PwnDepot”. I didn’t know the site existed. I checked it out and WOW! It was what I wanted to do, but for any Twink, not just Vengeance. I backed up and punted.
I turned vTwinks into blog instead. I used this blog to detail my adventures in Twinking.
Twinkinfo, The Beginning
A year later, I decided to drop the name vTwinks and change it to Twinkinfo.com and here’s a portion of my 1st post on Twinkinfo…
Twinkinfo was just a blog to start out. This was in late Burning Crusade and Wrath PTR was up. I was testing out a ton of big changes coming for 19 twinking. I was starting to get some traffic and some great comments.
About this time, I shared one of my best findings on the PTR and linked the blog post on Pwndepot (Battleground Forums). I actually posted all the pertinent info on Pwndepot so a reader really didn’t have to leave the site to get the info, but I did link the post I made on my blog as well. It got me banned from Pwndepot….
I was a tad upset. I wasn’t trying to compete with the site, just share. I have been running forums for 5+ years at that point and I pretty much understood forum etiquette and didn’t see anything wrong with my Pwndepot posting. Well, I still had the vBulletin License from vTwinks, so I decided I would add forums to Twinkinfo and here’s my post about that… (That post is missing now, here is the text via an archive)
That was the birth of Twinkinfo as we know it today.
Over the next couple of months, Pwndepot banned people for mentioning Twinkinfo and the phrase “Twinkinfo” was censored on the site. This upset many people and was the reason that so many fled Pwndepot to take up home on Twinkinfo.
Twinkinfo ended up becoming “the” twinking site now. Pwndepot eventually closed it’s doors for new posts and members.
Our staff grew fast and the info continued to be top notch. Even though the forums were now rocking, 70–80% of Twinkinfo’s traffic was the blog portion of the site. The posts that myself and my staff were putting out was great, on time info.
I wanted the site to be a site where everyone from noobs to pros could benefit from. When I brought on the initial staff, here’s how it read… (Again, this post is gone now too, here is how it read)
During this time, I thought I was going to quit Twinking.
The site continued to grow. I had my own ups and downs in-game and on Twinkinfo. Staff members came and went but all in all, we continued to grow. In all this, I never really made a cent off the website, nor did I care to. My time was all that it cost to run it.
Draynerworld.com
Somewhere along the way, a EU player made a rant about how I might as well change the name of the site from Twinkinfo to Draynerworld since I was running the site with a “Hitler-like” mentality. I created Draynerworld.com as a joke to poke fun at that member. I actually blogged there a few months before shutting it down.
Twinkinfo Sale #1
In March 2010, I sold 90% of my website network to a media company for low to mid six figures. Twinkinfo wasn’t a site that I sold in this package, but I was growing tired of running it. A few months later, I posted that I was going to sell the site and that I was tired of running it.
I don’t remember the date, but a member named Daman contacted me about this and I quickly gave him the site for pennies… Well, the cost to him was $1k and to make it easy for him to transition since he was new to running sites, I charged him for a year of hosting on my dedicated servers.
After a few months of helping him transition as the new owner, I stepped away for a LONG TIME. I was a tad disappointed with some of the choices he made for the site. He gave a long list of banned members a 2nd chance and brought some players I would have never considered onboard.
During the time Daman owned the site, I was not around much.
Towards the end of his ownership, I was asked by Inkobah to help since he was pretty much absent and nobody was running the site on the technical side. Inkobah was made the Head Admin on Twinkinfo a some point during Daman’s ownership and I believe he did a great job keeping the site going.
Well, I agreed to help Ink with Twinkinfo. I was going to upgrade the software, fix all the bugs, and do a total site redesign and we were all ready to move forward when all of a sudden, Daman popped back up. He hired a friend to redesign the site and they even changed the forum software. They asked me back to help with content, but I felt a bit of resentment after I started the redesign only to have someone come in at the last minute.
In protest, I acted like a 2 year old and deleted almost 2,000 of my posts from the site. I would have deleted them all, but someone figured out what I was doing and took away my ability to delete my own posts.
What Ink and I didn’t know at that time was that Daman was cleaning the site up for resale.
Twinkinfo Sale #2
After everything was upgraded and running smoothly, all of a sudden Twinkinfo had new ownership. I believe the sale price was around $5k. The new owner was now a guy named Shane, a guy who didn’t even twink.
I had no issues with this, at least they have someone who knows something about running a website now… or did they. I have no doubt that Shane knows how to run a site, but does he know how to run an online community. Time would tell… It didn’t start off good in my eyes, he brought new staff in and the old staff left one by one. The new staff put in place included several people I had previously banned from the site. That should tell you something. Then Shane made someone a moderator on the site that I felt was a horrible move for the bracket I cared about, the 19 bracket, I wanted to totally disassociate myself from Twinkinfo for good. I forced them to ban me with my attacks on members and requested that they remove my account altogether. Well they didn’t and eventually the person I was not happy with being a moderator eventually worked themselves out of that position. It was at that point that I requested to be unbanned and I became a part of the site, as a member only, again.
Twinking.net
Several months after Twinkinfo was purchased by Shane, I started getting contacted by members and former staff about me starting a new site. For months, I told them all that I had no interest in starting something new. Since I like to blog and share my feelings, I had already created a new site called TwinkPVP and was quietly posting some stuff over there. I really didn’t want to get involved again, but I eventually caved and Twinking.net was created.
Here’s the post I made when it was launched…
A few months after the launch of Twinking.net, Ink and I both became inactive in Wow. The site was handed over to a great guy, Bwappo. Bwappo ended up letting another guy named Yoube run the site. After that move, I updated all the software and layout and walked away from Twinking.net for good.
A few months later, Yoube decided to move away from the Twinking.net domain to create his own thing which lasted a while and is gone now. Twinking.net and Yoube’s follow-up site, Bisnation are both offline now.
I currently have zero desire to be a part of any website. I am really enjoying my free time.
One of my favorite posts I made on Twinking.net was one that I took offline because one of the bloggers was unhappy about it and felt as if I “took” his idea. Even though the idea came about based on his idea, the post became a Drayner Autobiography and not really what his idea was. That post was not published, but I like having it around to reference. It was recently deleted from the Twinking.net database by its current owner so I will publish it here…
[alert color=”ff0000" title=”Warning”]Much of the following has already been stated in the 1st few paragraphs of this post, but I do go into a bit more detail [/alert]
The Autobiography of Drayner!
This was originally posted on July 27th, but was removed for undisclosed reasons. This wall of text has now be officially reposted. Keep in mind that this post was written prior to my <a href=”http://twinking.net/its-all-about-the-community/" target=”_blank”>umpteenth exit</a> from the 19 bracket.</strong>
I have been gathering information from random Kmart twinks that queue up in the XP OFF 19 bracket for the last week. Most of them won’t answer or reply with obscenities, but I do want to understand what is going through mind of an 800 HP rogue in greens. Why do they even queue for XP Off games? Hopefully I’ll understand soon. Some of the early, honest replies have to do with PVP gear although I think they are misguided with this since there isn’t much PVP gear that matters at these levels.
Anyhow, while reading some of the replies I received, It reminded me of my 1st year in the World of Warcraft.
I played Everquest for 5 years prior to coming to Wow. When Wow was 1st released, I put it off and tried Everquest II instead. I had heard how easy it was to level to 60 and that it got boring real fast. I was already in love with Sony’s games anyhow. In Everquest, I was in a top guild on my server and we raided 4–5 hours a night, 4 or more nights a week. After years of doing this, I started to grow tired of the grind. Farming items for access to the new raid instances, working on Epic quests, and relying on 39 other people to succeed. Everquest was a team game, much like some of the earlier raiding in Wow.
I needed something new so I tried EQ2. My real life friends that hopped over got tired of it quick and returned to EQ1.
Around this time, I had a web business that was starting to blow up and needed more time from me. I couldn’t sit at the keys waiting to pull a boss all night. I had to find a way to play more casually. Once you hit a level of success and taste end game in any MMO, it’s hard to scale back. The drive to be the best is in all of us.
With less time available, I decided to try World of Warcraft. I had a real life friend playing and I figured he could help me fast track.
The Wannabe Kmart Twink
When I started Wow, the Burning Crusade wasn’t on the horizon yet. I started a Night Elf Druid. I chose Draka since my RL friend was there. Everquest didn’t have factions. I didn’t even know what they were. I leveled 1–20 on this Alliance Druid before my friend explained to me why he couldn’t throw me any gold since he was Horde. I quickly deleted this character and started a Tauren Druid that I still have and is my enchanter today. He has all but a couple old school twink enchants!
My friend hooked me up with a chunk of gold and went about my leveling. I was standing around in Orgrimar one day at level 15 or so and someone asked me if I wanted to do some battlegrounds with him and his friend. I had no idea what battlegrounds were at that time but I decided to give it a whirl. I had a blast. I didn’t have any real gear and looking back on it, I wasn’t even a Kmart twink… I was a leveler. I was the kind of player twinks preyed on. Over the next few days, I realized I could get XP by turning in these tokens I was getting. Lucky for me, I was getting 1 token for a loss more often than 3 for a win. I leveled to 19 and decided to stop turning in and work on gear some. I became a Kmart twink.
Staying at level 19, I spent the next 6–8 months in Undercity doing nothing but WSG. I bought and sold gear, took a few more gold hookups from my friend, and geared up. Today, I realize that I never became a “real” twink on that character.
I spent several months at 19, a couple more months at 29, a few months at 39, and finally leveled to 49. Each bracket, I worked on gear and enchants but never really got any dungeon gear. At 39, I started noticing the same players in bgs and there was a warlock that teamed up with me every time we were in the same game. He made suggestions and helped my game play out some as well. I really valued his input since warlocks were the one class that game me the most trouble. I normally ran flags and knew a lot of great hiding places. This was well before flags showed up on the map after a period of time. There was one time when I had hopped into bear form and laid down with the flag in some bushes above the horde tunnel and walked away to eat dinner without dying. Those were some crazy days.
One of the suggestions he offered was getting some dungeon drops. I am sitting at level 49 and got a random tell asking me if I could tank a dungeon for their group. I had never done any dungeons and this warlock suggested that I needed gear from them, so I said sure. I didn’t think about XP. Well, within the 1st few minutes of the dungeon I ding 50. Oh No! We finished the dungeon and I was bummed. I decided at that point that I would go ahead and level to 60, get some PVP gear and try that out.
I was a noob still, almost a year into the game. I loved the PVP aspect of the game because I didn’t have to block out hours of my day for raiding. I could play a game, log out to write some articles, and jump back in for another game. I was in love with this.
So I set off to level to 60. I joined a guild and everything. In guild chat, I quietly read everything that scrolled past. I learned in guild chat that an expansion was coming. I didn’t research it at all and didn’t really care. I just wanted to hit 60 and get these hot purple items I was seeing linked in chat. As I leveled, I picked up a purple or two on the way, got them enchanted and kept them in my bags for when I hit 60. The Burning Crusade came faster than I thought. When it launched, I had only made it to 58 which was perfect since that’s when I was able to get to the Outlands.
I got the expansion and started doing quests. The 1st couple of quests I did gave me green gear rewards better than the purple in my bags that I never got a chance to wear. OMG. I leveled to about 65 before I gave up and decided to roll a new character to play WSG some more. I left the end game pipe dream behind.
The Drayner Era
I decided since I had so much trouble with Warlocks that I would give it a try. I had a better understanding about gearing toons for low-level PVP and I launched my 1st real twink. I had met a rouge that warned me about XP gains and told me how to avoid a lot of XP. While gearing up my 1st real twink, a Blood Elf Warlock named Drayner, I ran into a 70 Warlock in Org. I had posted on my lock that I was looking for a certain enchant. This 70 Lock replied and I asked him If I could log into my main and pay him for the service and then log back to Drayner to receive the enchant. He said sure and I logged over. When I sent him a tell, he remembered my Druid’s name (Axim) and realized that he and I played many game together at level 39. He hooked me up with the enchant and introduced me to <Malthoron Traders Union> (MTU), a 19 Twink Guild on Draka Horde. What I didn’t know at that time was that MTU was one of the best, if not the best, Horde guild in Vengeance. We geared my lock up and I was invited to become A Team lock for the MTU Premade Team. That was the beginning of my real twinking experience in Wow.
While I don’t remember the 70/39 Warlock’s name, his 19 twinks in MTU were Mypain (Rogue) and Mypayn (Hunter). He introduced me to Groba, Laycee (most know her as Sidni), and Fael. I played with these folks as well as Mypain, Bratty, Meraxx, Lucid, Umberbulk, and more for a good year or so.
I loved the community of 19 twinks in Vengeance! Our forums were fun, some times ugly, but most of the time the camaraderie was awesome! It made you want to be a part of the community and I was. These were the best years for me in twinking. I was regarded highly as a twink, people were generally nice, and stuff like GY camping was frowned up and most everyone looked down at those that camped or exploited. I once shared screen shots of one of a rival guild’s members holding the flag in an exploit spot and their GM kicked them. We policed our community well. That rival GM and I have become friends and still keep in touch 5+ years later!
At some point, I felt I needed to take a break from the game and to keep from coming back, I sold all my twink and main’s gear and deleted the toons. I stayed away from Wow for about 6 months. I did return and created Draynertwo since someone quickly jumped in and created a level 1 Drayner after I deleted. I wasn’t able to get a GM to restore the orginal Drayner either. I played again for 3–4 months and became tired again. Instead of deleting this time, I just shut it down.
This attempt at quitting only took a couple of weeks to fail. Since quitting and coming back was fodder for trolls that our Vengeance forums started to spawn, I decided not to come back to Vengeance. Instead, I chose to transfer my lock (this was the Orc Drayner) to Malygos, a server another friend I knew was on. He was a hard-core raider and I rarely saw him but I was only interested in twinking anyhow. I met up with another Orc Lock named Torkd and he got me invited to <Twinks in Pink> in the Vindication Battlegroup. I renamed Draynertwo to GotDots and played as that name in Vindication for almost a year. I ended up moving other twinks I had over to Malygos as well. there was Gotarrows, Gotheals, and Gotstabs. This was another really fun time for me. I made friends and enemies in guilds over there and some of the enemies became friends later.
Somewhere in my Vindication days, I got onto the PTR and found some really good twinks. I could compete, but I didn’t realize how strong some twinks were from other battlegroups. This is where I learned that Cyclone was heating up and several guilds were moving over there to test the premade waters. One of these guilds was <Team Vengeance>. This guild was made up of many good and popular twinks out of Vengeance Battlegroup and I wasn’t very friendly with many of these guys. You may have heard of some of these twinks: Ebayed, Kidneypopper, Tombrady, and many more. I had a 2nd, almost finished Blood Elf Warlock on Akama that I was rolling to play with Vegansown in <Mayhem> and decided it would be funny to trick the <Team Vengeance>guys. I transferred over to Suramar and started pugging on a lock named Twinklock. Within a couple of days, Kidneypopper, who I had several arena encounters with as Drayner with Fael or Lucid as my partner, asked me if I wanted to join his guild. I played dumb and replied, “I don’t need a guild, I am a twink and don’t plan on leveling”. He explained that his guild was a twink guild and I said, “oh ok, sure”. I played with these guys for a couple of weeks until my conscience finally got the best of me. I decided to come clear, I sent mail to a few of them and gquit.
After quitting, I stuck around on the server for a little while. I got word from Vegansown that was planning to come over. Vegansown and I had talked about me coming to play with for years but the PVP/PVE server transfer limitation prevented it. I never wanted to make a character on another server, I preferred to create them and gear up on my server where I had my resources and transfer over when done. I went ahead and created on Suramar and transferred a couple of their members over. It was short lived for me though, I disliked the several of their members and decided to move on.
During this time in Cyclone, I ended up pugging into many games with <Warsong Warriors> members like Sunlynn, Caneus, and another good lock that’s name escapes me. They welcomed me to transfer to Bronzebeard and play with them. Transfer cool down at this time was still 30 days. I transferred this lock, but I made a mistake… I chose Uldum instead of Bronzebeard. This lock, named Twitter, was stuck on Uldum for 30 days. Instead of playing him while waiting for the CD, I decided to move my hunter named Seadawg over to Bronzebeard. I did a couple premades withon my hunter during this time. A couple of weeks before I could transfer my lock over to Bronzebeard finally, I started pugging with him on Uldum. With about a week left, I started getting ninja invites and tells from the guild leader of a guild on Uldum named . I replied and made it clear that I wasn’t interested and that I was transferring in a week. After some persistence, I finally accepted an invite. Their GM told me, just join and you might like it and stay. A week later, as I promised, I moved to Bronzebeard.
This started a history of transferring right and left. This lock on Bronzebeared ended becoming my 39 lock and GotDots, the Orc lock on Malygos was eventually transferred to Cyclone where I played in a few Alliance guilds as a Gnome lock. I jumped around from guild to guild for a while, playing with and for the bulk of my time. I played with several other guilds as well, but most of them were quite brief.
This was the time frame where Twink Info was starting to get really popular, tradeskills became a part of the game, and gear got better. This was also the time where I could go mid, dot everything, use my lifeblood, Void bubble, and AGM and live through all the damage I took. Pretty fun times for locks and during this time, I forgot how to be a Stam Fearbot.
When guilds were crutching on professions, I had them too, but the guild I was in didn’t take the time to level professions as a whole. Some did, but others didn’t. Professions made a big difference, especially the mining bug that wasn’t fixed at the time . had a meeting to discuss the short term future of the guild and what we were going to do. One of their long time members from way back when they were on Sentinals told me that my input wasn’t welcome in that meeting. I disappeared from the guild roster for good that evening. I left all the Naxx shoulders I had with members and picked a random server to transfer my lock to. Yes, I closed my eyes and chose a server from the drop down box. I ended up on Trollbane in the Ruin Battlegroup as Evolved. I spent a month goofing off in the WSG and Arenas all while acting like someone else in the forums. It was good times, but not very fun since there were no other active twinks on that realm.
My next stop was Ysera Horde as Lokdtite in the Stormstrike battlegroup. This is where I ran into that fun hunter named Halfbreed that I poked fun at on TI with a “Meet the Twinks” Feature. I had a great time while undercover there too. When I was trying to remember the name of my character over there, I found a cool post on Twink Info.
Pretty cool that my toons inspired other locks even under fake names!
After that, I headed to Alleria as Afraid for a month. Nothing eventful here, I didn’t even really read the forums over there.
The Ruin Migration
I moved my lock from Ysera to Medivh after I decided what server/battlegroup I wanted to build the <Twink Info> guild in. I chose Medivh and so started “The Ruin Migration”.
I’ll be brief with the portion since many of you are well aware of this era. This is where hundreds of 19s migrated to join <Twink Info>, a guild where I didn’t play favorites. I didn’t care how good or bad you were as long as you played to win and played by the rules. I brought my lock over and created an FC druid since nobody wanted to FC. After 20 or so premades, most of which we lost, I shut it down and took a break.
I later moved that lock over to a new project that Wuvs put together that was similar to what I did with <Twink Info> called <Fishin Buddies> My lock’s name was Druvs and we had some other big names over there with “uvs” names, like Puvs and Buvs.
I later moved that lock to Bloodhoof to play with . Of all the names I have played under, this one was the worst… Nedreck.
After “The Ruin Migration Days”, I moved my lock from Bloodhoof to Farstriders where I played as Lawwk. The guild I was in was quite fun, but I ended up deleting that little Gnome Drayner and quitting right here.
I quit for a bit and when I returned, I rerolled another new lock, which is the one I am playing today. I spent a little time on Medivh with my old MTU friends before moving to Bleeding Hollow Alliance for a brief stint with . I ended up quitting for 6 months and in my return I bounced around a couple time before setting on Elune to play with .
When I arrived on Elune, nobody knew who I was. I loved it. It was refreshing playing a character who wasn’t named Drayner. Now I don’t enjoy playing Daphane as much since I have added pressure that I didn’t have while incognito. That’s the reason I have played undercover so often.
The Many Faces of Drayner
All in all, I have played about 9 different warlock twinks, 5 of which still exist. 1 @ 19, 2 @ 39, 1 @ 24, and 1 @ 49. I have played in the 19, 24, 39, 49, and 70 bracket with various classes, but mostly warlocks. I really love the 19 bracket and that’s what keeps me coming back.
Insert picture — lotsofdrayner11.jpg
Here’s a list of all the names my 19 warlocks have gone by:
- Drayner
- Draynertwo
- Yard (Dray Backwards)
- Yards
- Lawk
- Lawwk — Farstriders
- Nedreck
- Druvs — Fishing Buddies
- Lokd
- Lokdtite — Emberstorm
- Aspired
- Twitter — Early Cyclone
- GotDots — Vindication
- Inspired
- Nardai
- Afraid
- Evolved — Early Ruin
- Former
- Torlaan
- Twinklock — <Team Vengeance> Undercover
- Elock
- Tdot
- Tinydots
What Now?
In closing, I started twinking for 1 reason, I continued twinking for another. I started twinking as a non-twink because I didn’t have to commit big chunks of time to work with others to take down the big boss. I stuck around as long as I have because of the community. As the community changed (and not good changes for me), that reason wasn’t enough and I started quitting for months a time. I keep returning though.
What keeps me coming back? I really haven’t figured that out. Everytime I do come back, I have a blast for a couple of weeks and then it fades. The last 2–3 times, It faded fast because of the imbalance of the game, hunters, and general douchebaggery that exists in the bracket I enjoy most, the 19 bracket. I always get invites to other brackets that are “more mature”, but I have become lazy and am at a point where I really don’t want to create new twinks anymore. I did spend months working on a 70 lock last year, but that was the last time I put any serious commitment into a twink.
In 2010, I sold my web business, paid my house off, bought my wife a new Volvo SUV, my son a batting cage, and a Harley Davidson for myself. After selling these properties, I also sold Twink Info. I now had newly found time to play more so I started trying out the raiding world I ignored all those years. I had fun, got my resto druid to #2 on the server I was on, got a server 1st kill, and raided with the #1 guild on my server. 3 months before Cataclysm dropped, I got bored and stepped away. When Cataclysm hit, I came back and decided that I didn’t want to raid anymore and started that 70 druid twink I referred to in the previous paragraph. That’s pretty much the end to my story besides the 2 times I have resurfaced in the 19 community, the 2nd of which I am still active on.
Moving forward, I feel I am going to need to find another class and/or bracket to play. I have played Warlock almost exclusively for all the years I’ve twinked, but I am not pleased with what the lock will be @ 19 when Mists of Pandaria drops. Until MOP, I will be playing my 19 lock as much as I have time for though.
I am done with 19 Warlock play now. I leveled the last of my 19 locks to 24 (and eventually will go to 29). I have chosen to move on for various reasons. I could make a good long QQ post about these reasons, but I will just sum it up by saying… the community.
/End of History of Drayner
— — — — — — — — -
Twinkinfo Sale #3
Reserved for info about the 3rd sale of the site to Myrm.
Update: I will post more when I get more info, but apparently Twinkinfo is no longer. I received a text today that told me to check out the site. I typed Twinkinfo.com in my browser and it’s forwarding to another domain. I read a post there and they have merged. I guess this new site was competitor to Twinkinfo and they decided to merge, but without the old content. Makes no sense to me, but hey… it’s not my site anymore. THANK GOD.
Anonymous
Guest
Ps. Drayner again. I want to be clear, I don't really care what anyone thinks of me. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but I did want to clear the air about the initial intent of TWiINKINFO.com.
Ok, back to my rock I have been living under. Hearthstone and Fortnite is calling.
Ok, back to my rock I have been living under. Hearthstone and Fortnite is calling.
Goesid
Twink Info Legend
Anonymous
Guest
Any chance for some contact information (brag / discord) as I would love to have some questions answered if possible
?Anonymous
Guest
I see that I am rarely mentioned here and like I said, I am not really concerned about what people think of me as a player, etc... but I don't want people that were not around in TI's infancy to think that it was a toxic place to learn toxic things like some have represented it to have been. There were hundreds of twinks banned from this site (accounts and IP addresses). The 1st thing Daman did when he bought the site was remove all that and gave everyone another chance.
In my defense, most of that post was cut and paste info from earlier walls of text from days of old.
Let him do what he wants, he made the site
Thanks.
Any chance for some contact information (brag / discord) as I would love to have some questions answered if possible
Sure. Email to my old Molten Wow email address is fine. mwdrayner at gmail dot com
Puempeekstoh
Legend
Long live the King.
necroaqua
Grandfathered
<Warsong Warriors> represent. Exorcism (Exo) is the lock you're thinking of. The guild technically still exists (see my druid in sig), but isn't active. A few of the core players from back in the day get on to check every now and then. I think Cae has a WW facebook group too.
Anonymous
Guest
Omg it took me about half an hour to read the post with all the archives
BUT THANKS BECAUSE THIS IS HISTORY
Thanks for sharing this much ily
BUT THANKS BECAUSE THIS IS HISTORY
Thanks for sharing this much ily
Tonkks
Tônks
I just checked my account and saw I made it in 2009... jeez. I was 13 back then... Although I made my account then, I was a viewer for a little longer. I saw Drayners post and I just wanted to thank you man. Reading your blogs and joining your site back in 2009 is something I won’t ever forget.
What a lot of you guys don’t understand about the community back then and why it “isn’t as good” now isn’t your fault. Back in the day, in addition to twinks being much more customizable (do I get +8 Agi enchant to my fishing hat or +100HP), movement in WSG was much more integral than it is now. We had more abilities at 19, and more “jumps” to help get ahead in the games. Dreynor and others provided extremely helpful blogs, videos, and tips for getting ahead at level 19. Blizzard also has gotten a lot smarter, and allowed less “bugs” to be taken advantage of. I wish everyone here today had the opportunity to play during those days.
The community has survived fragmented battle groups (Emberstorm represent), the Ruin migration, and now the current shitty legion templates. Until blizz forces us to level or takes away WSG, the bracket will always live on.
Now adays, there have been several helpful posts and theorycrafts behind different weapon scaling and item level rarity differentiation’s. Some of these posts bring back memories of what twinkinfo used to be.
I continue to twink for similar reasons. I made my rogue back in early 2007 and loved the ability to log in, play for 30 minutes or so, and log off. I began to spend more time in wow, and spent many years of my life playing a mage for top 100US guilds. Without the time or dedication I once had for my mage, the 19 bracket keeps bringing me back. I don’t have as many old friends that still queue, but have made many new ones.
The community has always had some toxicity, and always will. @Dreynor if you (or anyone else really) ever want to queue ally 19s I try to log in as much as I can. Feel free to PM me.
Good luck in your future endeavors @Conq. Everyone says they put down the game. You’ll be back. See you all in the gulch.
EDIT: They still use the old “Help Wanted” graphic on curse/mmo champion when they’re hiring. Seeing the old gear brings back memories. Just think- some of the guys reading this post now will think of the ilvl100 rogue masks the same way in 5 years that some of us recognize Talbar Mantles and Inferno Robes. Funny how times change.
What a lot of you guys don’t understand about the community back then and why it “isn’t as good” now isn’t your fault. Back in the day, in addition to twinks being much more customizable (do I get +8 Agi enchant to my fishing hat or +100HP), movement in WSG was much more integral than it is now. We had more abilities at 19, and more “jumps” to help get ahead in the games. Dreynor and others provided extremely helpful blogs, videos, and tips for getting ahead at level 19. Blizzard also has gotten a lot smarter, and allowed less “bugs” to be taken advantage of. I wish everyone here today had the opportunity to play during those days.
The community has survived fragmented battle groups (Emberstorm represent), the Ruin migration, and now the current shitty legion templates. Until blizz forces us to level or takes away WSG, the bracket will always live on.
Now adays, there have been several helpful posts and theorycrafts behind different weapon scaling and item level rarity differentiation’s. Some of these posts bring back memories of what twinkinfo used to be.
I continue to twink for similar reasons. I made my rogue back in early 2007 and loved the ability to log in, play for 30 minutes or so, and log off. I began to spend more time in wow, and spent many years of my life playing a mage for top 100US guilds. Without the time or dedication I once had for my mage, the 19 bracket keeps bringing me back. I don’t have as many old friends that still queue, but have made many new ones.
The community has always had some toxicity, and always will. @Dreynor if you (or anyone else really) ever want to queue ally 19s I try to log in as much as I can. Feel free to PM me.
Good luck in your future endeavors @Conq. Everyone says they put down the game. You’ll be back. See you all in the gulch.
EDIT: They still use the old “Help Wanted” graphic on curse/mmo champion when they’re hiring. Seeing the old gear brings back memories. Just think- some of the guys reading this post now will think of the ilvl100 rogue masks the same way in 5 years that some of us recognize Talbar Mantles and Inferno Robes. Funny how times change.
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Kirise
OG
While a lot of people long since moved on (myself included) from twinking and WoW, it says a lot that we still drop by from time to time to see what people are up to. Beyond the fun I had twinking, I owe a lot to the friends I made here, and the people who inspired me to step up my forums game.
Quick story on how I first met Drayner: I wrote my first guides and posted them on PwnDepot. A week later, somebody copied them and posted them on TwinkInfo as their own work. I made an account on TI and told Drayner what happened. Because Drayner was IP banned from PwnDepot, he couldn't verify my side of the story, but he took me at my word and removed the guides from TI.
That happened on March 19th, 2009...his message remains in my inbox to this day. That kind of integrity is part of how he pulled me out of writer's retirement to write for twinking.net when it first started, where I would later go on to write some of my favorite articles.
I can only hope the many good people here made the most of the opportunities this game and this community offered.
Quick story on how I first met Drayner: I wrote my first guides and posted them on PwnDepot. A week later, somebody copied them and posted them on TwinkInfo as their own work. I made an account on TI and told Drayner what happened. Because Drayner was IP banned from PwnDepot, he couldn't verify my side of the story, but he took me at my word and removed the guides from TI.
That happened on March 19th, 2009...his message remains in my inbox to this day. That kind of integrity is part of how he pulled me out of writer's retirement to write for twinking.net when it first started, where I would later go on to write some of my favorite articles.
I can only hope the many good people here made the most of the opportunities this game and this community offered.
- Status