srsbusiness

It’s a New Year, which is a time for reflection. How did we get here, where are we going? All that… Well, with that in mind, and a nudge from another blog, I decided to take a look back at Khaas, where did he come from? How did he get where he is, and where is he going? I’ve always thought of Khaas as a little bit of villain, and all bad guys need an origin story right? Well, here’s mine.

Khaas, and How I Chose to be a Death Knight
The character Khaas was actually inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, Kas the Betrayer (or Kas the Bloody-Handed as he is also known) was a pretty heavy dude, anyone familiar with D&D knows surely of Vecna, the Lich who was betrayed and had his eye and hand removed in an epic struggle with his right hand man… that’s how Kas got the title “the Betrayer”.

I’ve been a fan of Death Knights since I first encountered one in a D&D game as a kid, to me the DK has always been about being a Paladin but about a billion times more badass. Would you rather have a squire or a shambling horde of undead minions? Tend the wounds of a fallen comrade, or raise them from the dead to do your bidding? Yeah, it’s good to be bad… Of course, I could’ve gone with someone like Lord Soth or something, but that’s a little too pretentious and also a little too predictable. I wanted something identifiable, but not to the point of being a Hunter named Legolasxx.

A little muddling with the letters left me with Khaas, an Orc with a cool fantasy name, easy to pronounce and memorable. With a little something special for me and anyone else who played D&D way back when. Basically though, he followed my cardinal rule of name creation, if you’re gonna steal from popular culture/fiction under no circumstances use the main guy’s name. Steal a “lesser” name.

Beyond D&D there was the influence of Warcraft II and III to think about, the first time I used Death and Decay and Raise Dead in WCII I was hooked. Add the storyline of Arthas in WCIII’s human and undead campaigns and I was a ravening fan of the class. I was so hooked in fact that one of the primary reasons I didn’t rush out in support of World of Warcraft at launch was the absence of my favorite class, the Death Knight.

Humble Begininigs
I began my MMO career with games like EverQuest, by the time I got to WoW I was playing a Mage. Not my first choice, but I was with friends and they needed a nuker. In Vanilla I played the Mage, then a Warlock, and then rerolled to an Alliance Warlock, which later was turned from Human to Orc and transfered to Bloodscalp with Khaas. Throughout Burning Crusade I had what you might call MMO Schizophrenia, I rolled and rerolled multiple times. My MO was to get a character to max level and then gear up with arena gear, then grow bored and repeat the process. That was how I spent the entirety of BC, until that is the announcement of the Death Knight with Wrath of the Lich King.

I was galvanized by this news, and immediately announced to my guildmates “I will be a Death Knight when Wrath drops, and I will be tanking”. I’m sure there was some level of cynicism involved, everyone knew I was a FOTM kinda guy. But I don’t think anyone ever realized why…

Wrath of the Lich King
Toward the end of BC I started five-boxing, I had actually done my fair share of dual-boxing in EverQuest and 10 boxing in Dark Ages of Camelot, and was having a good amount of success running a 5 and 10 man setup in WoW. I even ended up participating in an interview with various members of the boxing community for an online magazine called the Escapist (The Article in Question, I am referred to as Hor).

When Wrath was released, I had very little tanking experience. And absolutely 0 with the new content. So, I decided to continue boxing with my DK and 4 Shaman group. This is where my real tanking experience began, I started running heroics with my little group and learning the fights. This had the great advantage of letting me mess up without any real consequences, I didn’t feel like I was wasting anyone’s time while I “learned” and I didn’t build a rep as a noob for myself. When I actually did start tanking in pugs and in raids, I actually knew what I was doing. And it really helped; I think, to distinguish myself from the mass of Death Knight rerolls in existence through a large portion of Wrath. Early on especially there were a lot of DK “tanks” running around with no real idea what they were doing.

The introduction of dual specs seems to have exacerbated the problem, now people are slapping on a tanking spec for their secondary and saying they “can tank”. In the end, experience I think is the best teacher. Nothing teaches like repair bills, for me five-boxing through my failures was the way to go, it made me learn and focus in a way I wouldn’t have in a regular group. Sure, I didn’t come out of those first boxed runs being an expert tank, but I was certainly no noob. And now, after experiencing the raiding content that Wrath has to offer, I feel safe in calling myself an accomplished tank.

Thank you Cozmo D for inspiring this little trip down memory lane.