Meet Ilia The Guy Behind RealNibba

Hi, I'm Ilia Kozarev, better known as RealNibba on YouTube and Discord. I make World of Warcraft videos, build free addons and write the guides you'll find on this site. I've been playing Wrath of the Lich King, on and off, for about 15 years, and I've been publishing WoW content since February 2025. The channel has grown to over 5,000 subscribers and 125+ videos so far.

Everything here comes from real characters, real raids and real experiments that I play and record myself. If you want to know why you can trust a page on this site, this page is the honest answer.

1.A 50-cent net café and a Blood Elf Paladin

I grew up in Stamboliyski, Bulgaria, in a regular family without much money. When other kids had their own computers in 2007, I paid 50 cents for 30 minutes in a net café. A friend of mine set up a WoW account for me on a Bulgarian server, because the monthly subscription was literally my whole monthly pocket money for school. My first character was a Blood Elf Paladin called Ragerobber. My love for Paladins is not from thin air: that is where it all started, and every cent I could save went to the net café so I could keep playing.

When Wrath of the Lich King came out, the owner of that net café bought it, and about ten of us kids stood behind his chair for one reason: the Death Knight. We didn't care that we weren't on the computers. For us it was a movie, and watching a Death Knight for the first time was epic.

Then I made the mistake every kid makes once. I forgot to log out in the net café, and the next day my level 55 Paladin was deleted by someone. It felt like I hadn't just lost a character, I had lost a person. RIP Ragerobber, 2007–2008. You are remembered.

2.Skipping school, ten characters and a first Lich King kill

In 2009 I finally got my first PC: 1 GB of RAM, a 128 MB video card and a 90 GB disk. At first it couldn't even run WoW, but I kept upgrading it, and once I could play at home I played so much that I sometimes skipped school while my parents were at work, just to log in. Before Cataclysm I had my first ICC 25 Heroic kill, and instead of one character I had ten: one of every class. I still keep one of each class on my main account today, and that is the reason my class opinions on this site come from actually playing them.

I tried Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria while they were fresh, and they weren't for me. The raids in Cataclysm felt too easy to gear through, and in Mists I liked the PvP but the PvE never clicked. There is a Bulgarian saying, “old love does not rust”, and it's true: 15 years later I'm still playing Wrath of the Lich King.

3.From watching creators to becoming one

Until 2021 I never imagined I'd be a face on the internet. Then I watched creators, saw how many people watched even simple videos, and realised I had a huge amount of Wrath knowledge that nobody was using. Real life wasn't easy at that time. I lost my father when I was 18, my mother and sister were ill, and I spent years just getting from one month to the next. I worked in construction, and for about three years I was a truck driver, first in Bulgaria and then internationally: more than 500,000 km on European roads. My health didn't survive it. After six surgeries the doctors told me I couldn't drive any more, so I went back to construction and back to WoW.

I had no idea how to run a YouTube channel, edit a video or even what to record with. I learned all of it in public, one video at a time. My motto has always been the same: persistence is the key to success. I share some of my real life in the videos too, including what my job looks like and how I spent my first YouTube paycheck on the PC I'm writing this on.

4.What you can trust on this site

• I play what I write about. Every guide is based on what I actually did: raids, farm runs, experiments and gear tests, most of them recorded on video.
• I credit other people. When a list or idea comes from someone else, their name is on the page (for example the Herald and Argent lists).
• I build my own tools. The addons here (RareHunt, MarketWatch, Raid Tools, Farm Pack and the BiS Tracker) are free, and I use them on my own characters before anyone else sees them.
• Pages have dates. Each guide shows when it was last updated. If something is wrong or outdated, tell me and I will fix it.

RealNibba is an independent fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment. World of Warcraft is a trademark of Blizzard Entertainment.

5.How I build and check the lists

The gear lists, talent builds and guides are made the same way every time, so you always know what a page is based on.

• Gear lists. Every item is a real item from the 3.3.5a game database: its item ID is stored in the list, and its name, icon and tooltip come from that database, not from memory. Each list credits the community project it starts from, and each page says how confident I am in it.
• Talent builds. The trees, ranks and prerequisite rules are the real 3.3.5a talent data. Every build in the calculator follows those rules and adds up to exactly 71 points before it goes on a page. Glyph descriptions come from a 3.3.5a game database as well.
• Guides. I write them from my own runs and tests. When I build on other players' public guides, I rewrite the ideas in my own words and never copy their text.
• Dates and fixes. Every guide, gear list and talent page shows the date it was last updated. When you report a mistake through the Community tab or the contact page, I check it against the game data, fix the page and the date changes.

6.Find me

The best place to see what I'm working on is the YouTube channel. The Discord server is where the community hangs out, reports bugs and shares builds. For anything else, use the contact page.

Everything you see here is built for you, with my time and dedication, and it exists because of your support. Persistence is the key. RealNibba out.