The Rise and Fall and Rise of Jasiggity
Jasiggity
“Jack of all Trades, master of none. “
That phrase could be applied to me when it comes to the realm of nerdity. I have a notoriously short attention span. Seriously, I have the capacity of a squirrel…if that squirrel was a crack-head with undiagnosed ADD and a bag full of pixie sticks…a pixiecrack squirrel, if you will. I tend to latch on to some geeky passion, ride the hell out of it for a very short amount of time, and then go frolicking off to find some other way to curb my boredom. I point to my short-lived hot-and-nasty affair with Warhammer 40K. I spent a lot of money, absorbed a lot of information, and then decided I didn’t like it anymore.
That’s how I’ve always been. I’ll go through phases of tabletop gaming, board gaming, TCG playing, Xbox 360 addiction (screw your PS3), and of course, World of Warcraft.
After doing a bit of research, I found that in the WoW arena this isn’t an entirely rare occurrence. World of Warcraft has a revolving door of players who sign up, play fervently for a time, and then unsubscribe. I had no less than three characters I made, leveled up to 30 or 40ish in vanilla WoW and then got bored and left. I would indubitably come back a few months later, start a new character on a new server (usually because I discovered a new friend who had “an awesome guild that you HAVE to join!”) Of course, me being a pixiecrack squirrel, it didn’t hold enough appeal to power through.
Then there was Jasiggity, my beloved and henceforth oft mentioned Draenei Paladin. After my quick rise to max level, which was an amazing experience (more about this soon,) I quickly found myself bored with end-game content (again with the pixiecrack). I would go through the motions, run some dungeons, participate in a few raids, but I just didn’t “get it.” Couple this with copious amounts of guild drama and we have a recipe for disaster…or at least a guideline for unsubscription. I thusly cancelled my WoW account, convinced I had done everything worth doing.
But like a lost love, I couldn’t get Jasiggity completely out of my mind. I believed that his story was left un-finished, I knew there was more potential for this Champion of the Naaru and I couldn’t just let it go. Tabletop RPG players still recount tales of their character’s glory years after a particularly awesome campaign. I’ve even known a few to frame character sheets. I feel the same way about Jasiggity…I spent so much time with him, overcoming trial after trial, dungeon wipes (TPK for you tabletoppers,) ghost-runs, and more than the occasional naked dance on top of a mailbox. After long last, I realized that even though it was a pre-defined template and I had extremely little to do with the actual shaping of Jasiggity’s physique and skill set, his personality was completely from my own imagination. As it turns out, I was completely in love with my character with an almost fan-boy like devotion. I longed for lore and story and adventure about Jasiggity, yet the only way I was going to see any of it was if I did it myself.
That sort of passion and involvement is one that I’ve rarely felt. I’ve never had a “hobby” or another geeky activity that consumes my brain space and broils my creative juices like my character in World of Warcraft. It’s not about the phat loots (even though I DO love it), it’s not about the raid prestige (though I AM awesome), it’s about the time I can spend, intimately, with this creature of my own design. After a long long time, I’ve finally felt the connection that fiction writers and role players have with their characters. I know Jasiggity, I AM Jasiggity, and I will gladly pay $14.99 a month to continue to love and learn.
Long story short…my affinity with this character is enough to override my pixiecrack attention span and keep me both present AND interested.
How about you? Have you ever connected so well with an MMO character? Or even just a video game character in general? Leave me tales of your adventures below!
By request of The Grand Geek himself, there will be more on my bold statement that MMOs are the way of the future in my next post: Friendship is Rare
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I know exactly what you are talking about in this story. I played DnD before WoW even came out and i had many characters i identified with on a deeper level than most would find normal. There was one dwarf cleric, Norad Firebeard, that i can talk about like he was a real person and if it wasnt for the mention of certain spells he casted or frost giants he fought than i feel like people i was telling about him would assume he was a real person.
But when WoW came out i could only play for a month and then i would get bored. i would get a multitude of characters to around 40 and get bored. but then another friend would say i “need” you to play and i would buy a month and start a new character. And one particular time i made my blood elf priest Daswookie, got him to 80, and did some end game raids. And no matter what guild drama occurred i would still play him. I grew to know him like i would a good friend and even though i took a break from WoW i still find myself once in a while telling tales of grand arena fights or the time i solo healed this end game boss.
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