In this
installment, I will tell you about the origins of Kassandra, after all, I did
promise to be more Kassandra-centric in my ramblings.
Kassandra in her
original incarnation was born into the World of Warcraft as Cassandra (with a
C) sometime in 2009 during my deployment to Afghanistan. Previously my main was Veluna, a shadow
priest. Since starting WoW way back
when, I had almost exclusively played as DPS.
All of my alts were damage dealers and Veluna would occasionally heal
with mixed results, but was first and foremost a shadow priest. My deployment brought Veluna’s raiding career
to an end. I was able to play while
deployed, but my internet was unstable and on the best of days I was running
1000ms latency. I am sure I could have
been carried to a degree, but being an effective raider was not an option for
me during deployment. Early on though, I
noticed I could usually ‘play around’ the horrid lag in 5 mans and overland
questing. It wasn’t optimal, but it was
doable.
I decided that if
Veluna couldn’t raid, I would start a new character and play a new role. Tanking was the easy choice; at least it has
some parallels to DPSing. I purposely
chose a character model similar to Vanessa VanCleef. Then I was stuck for a while on what her (yes
I play female toons, almost exclusively) name would be. I wanted something feminine, but not
cutesy. I wanted something if not
original, at least not common. After
much thought, and in some desperation, I chose the name Cassandra. You will notice that this is Kassandra’s
chronicle and the current warrior spells her name with a ‘K’. That is a long story; maybe I’ll get to it
later.
Names are
important to me. Perhaps it’s my RP
background, perhaps it’s just because I couldn’t stand to play a character
named ‘Chesseburga’ or ‘Qtpie’ or ‘Faxpaper’, all names I have seen in the
game. Azeroth is a fantasy world, and
there is nothing mystical or fantastic about a lame name. Face it; names are probably important to
you. Who would you rather go on a blind
date with, Brittany or Bertha? I thought
so. In game terms, Brittany would be the
female mage, serving as the resident server QT.
Brittany would be sure that everyone knew her status. Bertha, she is of course the dwarf warrior,
played by a man in real life. I was
actually unsure or lukewarm about ‘Cassandra’ but I grew into the name, to the
point where I rolled an army of alts with similar names. At the time I rolled her, I think ever knew
one Cassandra in the real world, and she is the kind of person that is easily
forgettable the kind of girl that guys just don’t think about at all. In the here and now I work with a Cassandra,
and no she has no idea I have a warcraft character that bears her name.
So, Cassandra’s
early days of tanking went well enough.
It is really hard to screw up leveling in WoW. I found I like tanking. It forced me to pay attention to mechanics to
a greater degree than DPSing ever did.
It also forced me to pay attention to navigation within instances, and
where mobs were and how they pathed. It
taught me leadership, which is probably the most important thing I took from
tanking. It taught me to play a very
active role in the success of a group, instead of my former passive mindset.
I also found that
as arms warrior, Cass could DPS with the best of them. When I returned from Afghanistan, I actually
spent more time DPSing then tanking on Cass.
So, why is there a
Kassandra? What ever happened to
Cassandra? My old guild started going
through rough times and thought a server transfer was the panacea to its
various ills. I had Veluna, along with
several other max leveled characters. I
couldn’t pay to move them all, so in the end, I left Cassandra behind. I knew in advance the server we would be
moving to and rolled a new warrior, Kassandra in her current incarnation. With the release of Mists, she surpassed the
old Cassandra. In a twist of irony, the
serve transfer did not revitalize my old guild, and Kassandra wound up
transferring back to the server Cassandra was on. Confused yet?
You should be.
It’s hard to say
what the future holds for Kassandra. As
I mentioned earlier, I am not overly happy in my current guild and have begun
looking to see what opportunities are elsewhere. I have mentally given myself a month to mull
things over, if I am still not happy then, I will leave my current guild, even
if it means I roll guild-less for a time.
I have noticed that warriors don’t seem to be in high demand, either as
tanks or melee DPS by raiding guilds.
Nonetheless, I enjoy my warrior, and chasing the favored class is always
a losing proposition. For the foreseeable
future I will remain Kassandra the warrior, although I will certainly indulge
my alt fetish, just to keep things fresh.
So, what is in a
name? I spoke earlier about names, and it’s
worth going on some more about. Well we
don’t choose the names we are born with (sorry Bertha); we do choose names for
our characters. Since a character’s name
is a matter of choice, I have no problem judging you based on your character’s
name. You choose ‘Notatank’ for a
name? You’ll find I have little time for
you and little inclination to have much to do with you. Besides names that are purely obnoxious, like
the above examples, there are names that are merely uncreative, overdone or
simply lame. If you ever met a rogue in
game named ‘Nightsalker’ you know what I mean.
Nightstalker is probably already taken though, so chances are the
stereotype rogue you met was actually ‘Nnighstalker’ or ‘Nytstalker’ or some other ludicrous
permutation of a fairly lame and uncreative name.
For once I am ahead
of schedule in my blog. I have so many
ideas floating around in my head; I could probably throw up a post every day
for the next week. I will refrain from
this. Instead I will concentrate a
little more on editing and improving my page.
If some of what you have read so far seems like drivel, I offer the
defense that when most bloggers begin writing, what they write is drivel, but
that drivel slowly improves.
No promises about
what the next post may bring.
Peace.
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