srsbusiness

» Khaas, and the Origins of Hor
My main is Khaas, the Death Knight, yet many people still refer to me simply as Hor. Even people who know me in real life call me Hor. Why you ask? Well, it all started ten years ago in the game EverQuest. Back then I was a Barbarian Shaman named Horaxe. The name was both a bastardization of the name I tried before “Horus” and of course, a not so subtle combination of two things to make what I felt was an appropriately fantasy sounding name. Originally I wanted to just put in Thundar but apparently someone else watched that cartoon as a kid too…

I quit EQ after several years, the game slowly started to die. And I just wasn’t into it anymore, I had a brief fling with the game again, as I made a Wizard named Volos and started dual-boxing the Wizard and an enchanter named Lurmael with my then-roommates in Utah. World of Warcraft was in Beta, and people kept leaving EQ little by little, it was inevitable, servers began to merge in a last ditch effort to make them seem less empty. For me at least, that was the final death toll for the game.

Initially, I didn’t even want to play WoW; when asked I presented all of the usual arguments: It’s not EQ, I hate the graphics, I can’t get my heart broke again. Eventually though, my friends won out. I returned to Arkansas for a wedding, and to decide where I was going next. I dropped by to see an old friend from the EQ days, WoW had just been released: he and his brother were already level 10 and they wondered where my copy was. I told them if they got me a copy of the game I’d play with them, an hour later I was making my mage: Malignor. I leveled him up, started raiding and eventually quit WoW.

My friends had quit, and I was really only playing on that server because of them. Actually, I was only playing at all because of them. Then, sometime later we all rerolled on the Malorne server, this time they were both well ahead of me. Level 60 already, one was the guild’s MT. It took a couple of weeks, but I caught up with my new Human Lock, Xombi.We were there for quite a while killing boss after boss, I had a lot of fun then, but it was also very draining. Raids lasted, and lasted. “One more attempt…” over and over again. By the time BC came out, the guild was falling apart. My friend had been hacked and lost his gnome warrior, and was talking about never playing again. In fact, several tanks left. The guild simply dissolved overnight.

I didn’t play at all for a little while, then I asked one of my friends from Utah if he played. So, I rerolled again, an Orc lock this time. I power levelled to 70, started doing arenas. In fact, BC was just about all about arenas for me. I leveled two warlocks, a warrior, two paladins, two rogues, a druid, and four shamans during BC most of those ended up getting pretty solid pvp gear. I liked raiding, but it wasn’t really accessible for us. There was only Karazhan really, and then later ZA. Our guild was close friends and family, and we lacked the full raid force.

Then, Wrath Came out…
One of the reasons I didn’t want to play WoW from the beginning was admittedly the lack of a Death Knight class. I have loved the DK since playing Warcraft II once upon a time. That love only increased when WC3 was released and there was a whole story arc about the DK. So, a little after midnight on November 13, 2008 I crossed the street from the gaming store to my apartment, installed the expansion and made the Orc who would be known as Khaas. I was prepared, my wife was out of town and I had a couple of days off of work. I even had provisions ready: I had to get to Northrend ASAP. At this time, I was still five-boxing regularly and had a group of Shamans ready to add the DK and start power levelling. I was 63 by the time I went to sleep that night… And some time later, I hit 80 on Khaas as well as the Shamans. I started running Heroics because I had decided long ago that I would be leaving my comfort zone in Wrath, I would finally start tanking.

It took some time and some repair bills, but I got it down. By the time I was done, I knew I could tank. And better, I hadn’t made a horrible reputation for myself by getting other people killed all the time while I “learned my role”. It’s been a while since I’ve boxed, I now dedicate my time solely to tanking, so much so in fact that I’ve started leveling alternate tanks one of each class. I’ve even dual box tanked a bit in Ulduar (though I don’t recommend it, if you can avoid it). But generally speaking, I’m back to being a single box player. I still dabble in multi character madness once in a while, but really my attention is focused toward raiding with my friends, both new and old. Which brings me to…

» The Guild
Face on Fire has been around for a couple of years, basically it’s something we talked about when I lived in Utah and we were still playing on the dying EverQuest servers. At the time, we were trying to figure out what game to play, and what to call our guild. But nothing came of it initially. One of the people involved went to Russia for two years shortly after that, his girlfriend started playing on one server, while I was on another, and the others… who knows where they were at the time. But still, we somehow managed to get it back together. And I got to meet new friends, people I had not had a chance to meet during my time in the desert. And others only half remembered.

In the months following the release of Wrath, the guild leader and her husband have left for Russia again. And several others have left indefinitely for one reason or another. Meanwhile, the guild has actually been thriving on Bloodscalp. I and Someshta have been recruiting, shaping a raid force unlike anything we as a guild have had before. As such, we’ve made solid progress in Ulduar (currently only Vezax, Yogg, and Algalon still live). And to tell the truth, the people in the guild now are actually pretty great. We raid hard a couple of nights per week and I don’t feel burnt out like I did in Vanilla…

» The Player
So, here’s the part where I tell you about myself. My name is Keith, I’m 29 and live with my wife of 4 years and our Pug Buster, in Arkansas. Currently we’re on the move, my wife’s accepted a teaching position near the capital. So we’ll be leaving the apartment for our newly purchased house several hours from our current residence. I’ve been playing video games most of my life, my parents were into Pong, Frogger, and Asteroids when I was very young. And when I turned five I got the only Nintendo on my block, I was the cool kid for a couple of months. I love to cook, and I love food in general: hot, cold, sweet, and sour. I build computers in my spare time, mostly for myself but I build them for friends occasionally too. I’m also a student, working on a Rhetoric degree, though my interest is really in folklore. Specifically, the traditions and ceremonies surrounding death. For example, did you know in some asian cultures, they celebrate for a month every year serving plates full of food for the dead, running performances of plays, movies, etc with not a single living soul in the audience? Maybe someday I’ll write a book about it…