Within the past year, I have had the great pleasure of getting to know Grandad O’ RPG. I originally only knew he was a Twitch streamer who plays World of Warcraft and he was someone I followed on Twitter. He then joined the Strawberry Friends discord group where I got to know him better via dungeon runs and his interactions in discord groups. From the time I’ve spent with him I’ve found him to be a wonderful person with a kind heart, great sense of humor, and a voice that I always find very calming and reassuring when we do voice chat during runs. I’d wanted to join him during his streams but they tended to be too late at night for me or during times I was unavailable. I still hope to change that in the future if he continues streaming.
Grandad O’ RPG inspired me to pursue the shaman class with more focus when I saw what an amazing healer he was on his draenei shaman and his vulpera shaman. I leveled Fiadeya, my draenei shaman, or goatem, all the way to 60 and fell in love with her. Alas, I still wasn’t brave enough to try heals on her in groups and thus focused on elemental and enhancement specs instead. But it was still an awesome accomplishment for me to finally have a max level shammy and I wouldn’t have done that had Grandad not been so inspiring!
In addition to loving shammy now, I’ve discovered a new love for my girly space goats! I enjoyed playing Fiadeya and my lightforged pally Kriarii so much that I’ve added more draenei to my collection. I changed the gender of my goat monk Vralimos and much prefer the female version of her now. I also made a death knight draenei named Koraa and most recently a hunter draenei named Zevelna. While I’ve made goat DKs before, I usually abandon them, but maybe not this time. I’m pretty sure I’ve never made a goat hunter before and I’m really enjoying her so far!
Much to my dismay and the dismay and concern of many others, Grandad encountered some health issues a bit ago and had to be hospitalized. I was very worried about him and kept hoping that he’d fully recover and be okay. My dad was hospitalized many times in the last decade or so of his life and he had heart issues and a stint put in and it was all very scary stuff. Seeing Grandad’s pics of himself in the hospital brought back some unhappy memories for me, but I just knew his situation had to turn out better than my father’s did.
While Grandad focused on getting better, the rest of us in the Strawberry group and other friend groups he’d joined had to adjust to gaming without him. I stepped up and finally did healing on my goatem Fiadeya and discovered that I wasn’t too terrible at it! Bonus, I even found it kind of fun! I think with more practice I could get better, but I’ll never be as good as Grandad and that’s okay.
I also wanted a shammy horde side so I boosted a troll shammy I’d made and will work on her when I have time. Shammy definitely feels like the healer class for me and I never would’ve known that had I not seen what Grandad can do!
Fortunately, Grandad O’ RPG is doing much better now and is hopeful that he’ll be able to return home soon. I am extremely relieved that his health has improved so much and that he’s on his way to a full recovery. He has become a rather special person in my life and in the lives of many others and I hope he knows how much he means to all of us and how much we all want the best for him. He truly is the Grandad O’ Inspiration!
Srinity 