Community Spotlight: Okaymage (Zolas)

From professional First-person Shooter (FPS) games, to League of Legends, to competitive sports, this girl has done it all. You may recognize Okaymage (Zolas) from her recent MDI appearance on team John’s Army or from crushing high keys as a Frost Mage in Shadowlands and BFA. You may also recognize her as this week’s Raider.IO Featured Streamer or from her electric streams and comprehensive Mage guides on YouTube.

Today, we have the privilege of chatting with Okaymage. In this exclusive interview, we discover more about her history in professional gaming, her first foray into the MDI, and the trials and tribulations of showing the community what truly makes a spec powerful in Mythic+. Want to learn all about Okaymage and her unique perspectives? Read on!

Table of Contents

Q-1: Thanks so much for chatting with us today. Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself? What is your background in professional gaming?

Okaymage: Hello! My name is Jordan and I am 28 years old. I was born and raised in Essex, but now I live in central London. I’ve always naturally gravitated towards gaming and have played ever since I can remember. At the age of 2 years old, my dad has video footage of me setting up an entire chess board by myself.

I’ve always been a highly competitive person. I grew up competing in sports such as ski slalom races and I competed in many swimming galas representing my Essex county. I grew up playing console and first person shooters such as Halo and Call of Duty. I became very good at these and, on the side while I was at school, I competed in many tournaments for money. Just before I went off to university, I turned my attention more towards PC gaming as I massively got into League of Legends playing Mid, ADC, and Jungle. In my first year, I joined my university's official NUEL team, which is the UK’s university esports tournament. Each university has a team like they do for other sports such as football or basketball, and they all compete with each other in a tournament that is taken very seriously. In my second year, I became the captain of my university's team. By that point, I was very experienced in leading and training teams of players.

My dad is someone I've always massively looked up to. I know it's probably cheesy to say, but he's my hero and he really does inspire me. He's always had such a passion for producing music and has been a DJ on and off throughout his life. When he was younger, he was signed to the same record label as Prodigy. His music taste has largely inspired my streams now. I’ve always wanted to be as cool as him.



Q-2: How long have you been playing WoW and how long have you been doing competitive Mythic+? What do you love most about M+?

Okaymage: I pretty much started playing the game in WoD, although Legion was where I truly got into WoW. Initially, I didn't enjoy the game as I disliked questing and levelling, and I wasn’t ever interested in farming mounts or achievements. However, as soon as Mythic+ was released, I knew I’d found my true calling in the game. It completely resonated with every single competitive bone in my body and I couldn’t get enough. This also made me become very interested in high-end Mythic raiding. I’d never experienced this competitive side of WoW and it sucked me in completely. Every season, I would do hundreds of keys to practice and get better. In Tomb of Sargeras, I actually wracked up close to 40 kills on most bosses in Heroic just because I spent 8 hours a day in pugs practicing and practicing to get better. Much to the amusement of my guildies at the time, they would regularly meme on how many times I’d killed bosses. This was back before boosting was a thing, so to be honest, killing multiple bosses about 40 times in pugs was pretty funny. I wanted to be better though. I needed to become the best and I practiced so hard every day until I was getting there.

When BFA hit, I was ready. I was well practiced and decided I was going to take it to the next level. Various seasons during BfA, I was ranked one of the highest Frost Mages in the world for keys. (I regularly joke that I know no one was playing Frost back then, so I was probably competing against 20 people.) In BFA, I would regularly get DMs of questions, and people used to always add me to ask me questions as well. It was really nice as I’ve always enjoyed helping people. In the raid, I also quickly became high on rankings as Frost Mage. I would regularly come top 10 on a lot of bosses on logs while playing a unique build of Frost called the “orb build”. I never touched Glacial Spike. I also off-specced Arcane and regularly played it in the raid.

When corruption hit in Season 4 of BFA, I had incredibly bad RNG of getting masterful corruptions from dungeons in the first week. Something was clearly telling me I should finally give Fire a go, as it was the last spec left to master. I had previously become friends with one of the best Fire Mages in the world at the time. I always thought it very important to learn from the best players so I always reached out to get to know them and learn from them. For three days, I spent a solid 8 hours each day on the training dummies, and then an entire week pugging the raid to practice. By this point, I was very accustomed to pushing high keys. At the end of BFA, I quickly pushed to become 28th in the world for all Mages. This is when I first started streaming. My streams were mostly to my guildies who were interested in the very high keys we were doing at the time. However, the level I was playing at quickly drew the attention of a lot more people. I enjoyed my time as Fire and, if I’m truly honest, I miss this version of it. The satisfaction of Ignite melting entire packs was so good.



Q-3: What do you love most about Mage? What are your favorite aspects of Frost compared to Arcane and Fire? What is your playstyle and how do you and your group adapt to each other?

Okaymage: When it came to Shadowlands, I missed Frost and decided that I wanted to stick with Frost for the first tier. I always like to change things up and play different things. I believe it keeps your mind strong and stops you from getting stuck in your ways. However, because of the covenant system and other systems like conduits and legendaries, I wasn’t able to multispec easily. Therefore, I decided to fully dedicate myself to Frost. At the same time, I noticed a change in the community. People in pugs have always been stubborn when it comes to meta; however, in Shadowlands, I felt like this was turned up to the max. People were outright saying that certain specs could not complete keys, which was absolutely ludicrous to me. I often had people come to me for help about what they should do as a Frost Mage as it was borderline impossible for people to play the spec. This honestly still baffles me as it’s a video game, not work. I’m a firm believer in playing what you enjoy.

So seeing this, I decided that I wanted to be the representation that people needed. I wanted to showcase that you can play an off meta spec and still perform, do high damage, and time very high keys. This very quickly drew more people to my stream. There was no one playing this spec at the high end, and yet a massive part of the community wanted to play it. I’d still get asked tons of questions through the week about Frost. Seeing this pushed me to look at what content was out there for the spec. What very little information and videos I found on YouTube were wrong. One guide I watched even said you needed 12% mastery before the spec was playable which is completely absurd and incorrect.

I took it upon myself to make a guide. A guide that would clear up all the misconceptions once and for all. It took me weeks to write, and I reached out to and closely worked on it with contributors over in the Alter Time Mage Discord. The most important thing to me will always be to provide correct information. I taught myself from scratch how to edit videos and thus my first video, the Ultimate Frost Mage M+ Guide was born. I expected nothing from this guide; all I wanted to do was help people and get the right information out there. If I helped only one person, then I’d feel like I’d achieved something and would be proud of myself. Unbelievably, the guide actually blew up on Reddit and absolutely skyrocketed my channel. People flocked to the stream to learn Frost Mage and watch me completing high keys. It was completely surreal. It’s the internet — I was expecting hateful comments. However, I was overwhelmed with complete positivity, which is pretty unheard of. Through this, I really found my passion in content creation. I’m honestly so excited to see what the future holds.

In terms of the difference in specs and how they play, Frost has always been the most engaging spec for me. Because it’s a consistent damage spec, you always need to be dealing damage. There are no down times in your rotation. This constant need to be working on your damage keeps me highly engaged while playing in mythic progression. I also extremely enjoy having “something” for every pack in m+. I love always being able to deal damage, always having buttons to press and always being useful. I can't say I miss having to worry about my cooldown uses throughout a dungeon.

I’ve always loved Arcane because it is heavily punished by movement. You really have to think about positioning in a fight and plan your cooldowns according to incoming mechanics. I enjoy this level of thinking. My best example of this was when I played Arcane on the Mythic Queens Court in The Eternal Palace. Also, if I’m completely honest, I do enjoy a burst damage profile. Bursting extremely high on the meters will always feel satisfying. Fire is similar to this; however, it's less punishing because it's more mobile. Fire is the perfect progression spec. It has a cheat death, it’s highly mobile, has an execute, and burst damage profiles are always preferred in progression since the damage is guaranteed when you need it and you can focus on mechanics outside of that. If there's anything I would like people to take away from this, is the understanding of what makes specs meta, which very rarely comes down to raw damage. Unless specs are heavily nerfed...RIP Fire going into Patch 9.1.





Q-4: If you ever pug keys, what is the biggest misconception you encounter regarding Frost or even Arcane? What would you like people to know about Frost and/or Arcane compared to Fire?

Okaymage: The community loves to make specs unplayable. What makes specs meta is so much more than raw damage. It’s mostly down to damage profile and utility. Meta does not equal damage and offmeta does not equal no damage. The community loves to think this. I wish people could realise that every spec is capable of pushing to an extremely high level, and to stop rejecting them from your weekly +15.

I know it's unrealistic for people to know the ins and outs of every single spec. They look to the top players and think if they copy what they do it will achieve the same results. However, you can't apply world-first content to the content we are doing. Whatever specs are played week one of the raid won't affect you a couple of months down the line. For example, Max from Complexity-Limit himself talked about how Elemental Shamans may have seen more play in the world-first scene, but it was just unfortunate that they weren't able to loot their best legendary week one due to the world boss rotation. However, people look at a spec being missing and assume its bad—no damage and unplayable.

Following this, whatever specs are played in a world-first key, are not going to apply to your lower keys. More often than not, it's the individual player and team as a whole that times keys rather than the actual individual specs. I recently had a conversation with a guildie who made the statement that Paladins aren't good Mythic+ tanks. He said this simply because there was a lack of representation of them at the time and they were not meta. He thought this was due to them being bad. However, recently when you look at the rankings of tanks, not only is the highest a Paladin, but there is one of every tank spec at the top. We need more of this to prove to the community you can make any spec work and that rejecting certain specs from your keys is a toxic mentality.



Q-5: We know that you competed in the most recent Mythic Dungeon International on team John’s Army. Was this your first time competing in the MDI? If so, what were some of the things you learned about the tournament that you feel are noteworthy?

Okaymage: A few members of our team had previously competed in The Great Push. However, this most recent MDI was the first time we had competed together in the tournament. A few of us had pushed keys together in BFA, so we were already familiar with doing high-end content together. This also helped us a lot with working on routes as we had a ton of experience doing this already. I think route planning is vital in a competition like the MDI.

I’d say the most noteworthy part is the importance of working together, right down to planning DPS cooldowns, and arguably more importantly, planning defensives. Play to each other's strengths and weaknesses. A few times, I was having trouble tracking when my interrupt was as it was usually late into a pull, so our captain John would help me out and call my interrupt early on into progress. I got there in the end, but helping each other out is invaluable.



Q-6: How did the MDI compare to other esports you have competed in professionally? What stood out to you in terms of highlights and/or particular challenges?

Okaymage: As time has gone on and gaming has really taken off as an industry, it's been amazing to see how far gaming has come in terms of a sport. It has been really incredible to witness how serious gaming has become, how widely recognised it is, and how much money is in it now. In terms of the MDI, the quality of the production team, the commentators, and the event as a whole was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The whole team behind the event was remarkable!

The support John's Army had from friends, the guild, the viewers, and even family was so incredible. I have not experienced that before and it really made the tournament a much more enjoyable experience. On top of that, getting to talk with and compete at the same level as players I've looked up to for a long time was extremely humbling.

A massive highlight for me as well was getting a Dratnos compliment in one of our live MDI keys!






Q-7: Between live key pushing and the MDI, what were the biggest differences for you in terms of preparation and execution?

Okaymage: I would personally say the approach to MDI compared to high keys is just a completely different mindset. Each pull in the MDI is so big that it's mostly about AoE control and planning damage cooldowns to make sure the packs die before they kill you. In contrast, high keys are more about individual mob control—single-target stuns and CC with heavy focus on interrupts because, on higher keys, those interrupts can be fatal compared to lower keys.

The pulls are larger in the MDI, so there's a lot to track, think about, and focus on each moment. When you see around 20 nameplates as well as the boss sometimes, it can take some practice to get the panic under control. There's also a bit of a learning curve to being able to focus on certain mobs for interrupts and stuns with so many mobs/nameplates in the pulls. It can also get very dangerous in melee when you have multiple mobs casting frontals.

In my opinion, mistakes in live keys can be a lot more punishing because they can fail the key. Arguably though, the stakes are still higher in the MDI compared to just not timing a key on live servers.




Q-8: Looking back on the MDI, what are some things that you and your team would have done differently, if any? What were your key takeaways?

Okaymage: I think going into the MDI we had zero expectations. We were really just having a bit of fun. However, after all our practice we felt that we could actually perform up to the standard of the better teams. In hindsight, we wish we had taken it a little bit more seriously and had more time to practice. A lot of our teammates have full time 9-5 jobs and were also on different raid teams with different raid schedules. So we, in total, had about 6 hours of practice spread over the week. Going forward, we will definitely take it more seriously in terms of dedication and time.

What actually impacted us the most in the live competition was buckling under the pressure. In any competitive content, mentality is the most important part. You need to be able to think clearly in high-pressure situations, calm the panic, be logical, and not make rash decisions. You need to be able to focus on what you need to, react well, and be able to make rational heat-of-the-moment decisions. Following this, I also think really gelling as a team is important. It helps a lot when you trust each other to do their jobs mostly so that you can focus on your own. You need to be able to free up thinking space and focus on what you need to do, and not be worrying about things that do not concern you.

Also, what’s very difficult to comprehend is the pressure of playing to a large audience. In the moment with everyone watching, people commenting on everything you’re doing, plus the pressure to perform; it's something a lot of people never expect. I think it's because it’s very easy to be a viewer—the stress and high pressure doesn’t cloud your perspective and it’s almost like 20-20 vision/hindsight. When you’re actually in that moment and you have the countdown timer, you’re suddenly aware of everyone watching. That feeling is something unexplainable until you experience it for yourself. Anyone that has entered competitions will understand what I mean. This pressure definitely caught some off guard. As I always say: the more you do, the easier it becomes. It’s something you only grow used to with time.

Also my key takeaway is Chinese food :)



Q-9: What are your favorite Mythic+ dungeons and affixes in Shadowlands and why? What about in other expansions?

Okaymage: This is an unpopular opinion for most, but I really love Spiteful due to the amount of pad damage I can add to my overall and the resets I can get on Icy Veins.

On a more serious note, I personally love affixes that make you think and may slightly change how you tackle a dungeon but aren’t massively impactful and slow dungeons down. An example of a bad affix is Inspiring. Yes, Inspiring makes you think about how you do packs. However, it’s far too impactful and slows dungeons like Mists of Tirna Scithe down. An example of a great affix is arguably Bursting. You can blow up a pack and put measures in to survive as a group, or you can micro manage it in the moment. However, Bursting doesn’t slow dungeons down—it just makes you think a little. In my opinion, this is how all affixes should be.

Also, I think it’s worth noting that the seasonal affix Reaping in BFA season 2 was the best thing they ever implemented into dungeons.



Q-10: We know you stream a lot of your high key pushing on Twitch. What are some of the best things about streaming competitive gaming content, whether you’re streaming live keys or being broadcasted live in the MDI?

Okaymage: When it comes to streaming, the thing I love most by far is just being able to hang out with my viewers, have a laugh, and hopefully make people's day just a little bit better.


I mostly tackled this tier with showing people that meta and off meta didn’t represent the raw damage output of a spec. I love pushing high keys as a Frost Mage just to show people it did damage. People see it now for themselves, where they are watching the MDI and the best players in the world playing it. It shouldn’t be this way; everyone should know that all the specs are capable of more than enough damage, especially in the level of content the majority of people play at. We’re not all world-first players. To me, it has been important to showcase this. I love to give other Frost Mages hope and show them the representation they need so that they continue playing a spec they enjoy.





Q-11: Continuing from the last question, what are some of the biggest hurdles you’ve had to overcome in livestreaming competitive content?

Okaymage: So far, fingers crossed, I haven't experienced a problem during livestreams. In terms of in game, I’ve always been in a fortunate position where people play with me before they “see” me personally. Usually, I earn people's respect through playing, so when people see and interact with my character first, I have never encountered a problem. However, in my whole life, the only times I have run into misogyny is in the high-end competitive WoW scene when people hear or see you're a girl before they play with you. There is a prominent stereotype of high-end players seeing women as bad, boosted, and only bring drama. It can be incredibly difficult to push past this.

A problem I run into still to this day is when I join a pug key and they want us in Discord. They hear or see I’m a girl before we play. It's shocking how instantly you get judged. Especially in the high end scene, like I said before, people see females as mostly boosted and bad. So before the key even starts, people are hostile towards me, have no respect for what I say, and ignore me or talk over me. Plus, they expect that I'm going to be bad and they lose faith in timing the key. I feel this pressure to perform above and beyond my usual capabilities just to fight the stigma. It’s as if you represent the entire female population and have to actively prove them wrong. It is a tremendous burden on any one person's shoulders.

Sometimes, my own anxieties can't handle it. It is incredible pressure, which can lead to small mistakes if you're having an off day. If you do make a small mistake, they jump on it like it justifies how they feel and all women are bad at games, even though they themselves have made more mistakes. Even the other day, our male healer disconnected and never came back, so we couldn't continue the key. The tank in my group was very prickly towards me the whole time and I could tell he had some kind of personal problem with me. When he was annoyed that the key was no longer timed, he openly said “this is why i don't play with women.” I actually laughed at this because the healer disconnecting was the problem. You need to have tough skin on the internet. However, it does get boring after a while. Attack me because of something I have actually done, not something I was born as and can’t control.



Q-12: We know that you love high-energy music and that your dad is a DJ. What are some of your favorite songs, albums, or specific artists you love to jam out to while playing WoW? Does your dad approve of your choices? ;)

Okaymage: I mostly love house music; however, drum and bass really gets the energy going in the stream. ‘veI always resonate with high energy music. It pumps me up full of life. Recently with the DMCA problems on Twitch, it meant that I lost my whole playlist as it was copyrighted. At first, I was deeply saddened because I personally believe music is so important in a stream. New people tuning in immediately get a sense of who you are and your vibe. So when I initially started playing random copyright free music, I felt like I lost a tiny sense of my personality and energy. However, after putting a lot of time into listening to copyright free songs and signing up for various record labels in order to play their music, I have actually found so many high-quality songs that showcase my vibe even more than my original playlist! I don't know what I'd do without it now! Spending 8-12 hours a day looking for music really paid off, and I feel very proud of it now.





Q-13: If you could pick three Mage spells to be able to cast in real life, what would they be?

Okaymage: I love to travel so I would have to take Teleport, and yes, I'm counting that as one spell for every city in the world! I would also like to Conjure Refreshments because I love pretzels. What more could you want in life than pretzels?! As for the last one, Blink is tempting. However, I would definitely run into trouble with it and would easily get run over, so I would take Arcane Intellect because I need all the help I can get.





Q-14: If there would be one thing you’d love to change about Mythic+ in its current form or for future expansions, what would it be?

Okaymage: Stop trying to slow dungeons down! Pulling big will always be enjoyable. Adding platforms and mob mechanics that force you to take 2-3 mobs at a time feels draining.

I’d also like to add that dungeons are best when they are not linear. Thinking and changing routes depending on comp and that week's affixes is what makes it engaging content.

Also, I think it's worth mentioning that people WANT to play Mythic+ every week. Adding weeks that are borderline unpushable compared to how easy other weeks are is ridiculous. Add rotations that make every week pushable! It would lessen the pressure people feel to push when faced with these rare push weeks to cram every second of their spare time into keys.



Q-15: What are your plans for the future of your professional gaming career? Are there any particular goals you have set for yourself in WoW or other esports you’d like to compete in?

Okaymage: Participating in this year's MDI completely reignited my competitive nature. It reminded me how much I’ve always enjoyed competing. I will definitely be participating in more WoW esport events. Next MDI, Echo, we are definitely coming for you so watch your backs!



Q-16: Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to share or any advice for aspiring Mythic+ enthusiasts?

Okaymage: Mythic+ and pushing score can be an extremely grindy and tedious process. For every 50 keys you get declined from or go wrong, you will get that one score upgrade. You just have to keep trying. I always recommend adding people you enjoy playing with. Try and lessen your reliance on pugging.

I would like to thank all of the contributors in the Mage Discord with a special mention to Kolarin and Toegrinder. Their hard work in figuring out what's best through sims and the like has really carried the community.

Lastly, a massive shout out to my Twitch community. We have really built something special over there and I’m proud of them all.

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Links

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