Rappelz Reporter Community Spotlight: ZooZoo of Salamander
Please tell us a little about yourself.

I'm a 25 year old video sound mixer in Atlanta, GA, USA. I live with my wife and our mini pet collection (2 cats, turtle, and lizard.) I love big sound (my neighbors don't,) movies, clubbing (house, not hip-hop) and all kinds of design and production. Oh, and games. I'm kind of old-school about my games. I don't really keep up with what's new, I just find a game that I like a lot and play it to death. Befo rappelz rupees was Blizzard's Starcraft. The constant hardcore playing to keep up with the Korean pace sort of set me up nice for rappelz rupees-style leveling.

How did you start playing rappelz rupees?

I don't remember exactly. I think I wanted to get into a MMO, but didn't fancy a game that shuts you out if you can't pay the "rent." I didn't have any IRL friends into the game, but I kept in touch with the nicer players I met. I got in with Bleach on Bahamut, but got outpaced by my guildmates who were headed for CV, so I jumped into Salamander when it started up. I think what has kept me in the game this far is the scale of the leveling system, the quality of the people I've met and the past year's improvement in game development, new content, and GM involvement.

You’re well known for your pet guides on the forums. What made you decide to write a guide?

When I started writing guides, there was a LOT to learn about the Breeder and different pets and there were a lot of Breeders (and pet owners) looking for advice on the forums. I really wanted to take the forum discussions beyond people asking how to put a pet into their formation every week, and the best way I could think to do that sort of thing is to make a foundation reference guide that gets everyone past basics and talking about the more interesting and cool stuff that you can do in the game. There was a big gap between totally new players and players who were more conditioned.

Since Epic 4 Breeders and Orcs exploded in popularity, I kind of wrote the right guides at the right time, though that wasn't what I set out to do. I'm very happy that the guides I've made hit such a huge percentage of the community.

I write about what I want to read about. I love strategy, theory, and data, and sometimes in a small community, those things aren't really brought together in one simple place. There were places where you could find the very very beginning stuff like how to use the game, but what was available didn't really have much out there for the beginning to intermediate players.

+ Expand this interview to read about what it’s like to have in-game fame, as well as how Destiny became one of the best geared guilds on Salamander.

Have you received any fame in-game due to your guides? Any fun stories to share?

Several times a week I get PMs from players who have read my guides or who were helped by them. It lets me know that the guides served their purposes. I did get a laugh out of a person qualifying their Orc WTS spam by calling it a "ZooZoo-skilled" Orc. I think that's funny, considering that I give situational advice, not specific skill builds. And the guy was selling this Orc in Epic 5 (my Orc guide was E4.) I was asked if I was R7 yet several months ago. A certain type of player tends to see me as some kind of omnipotent all-knowing Superplayer, but I'm learning how to play my class better every day from trial and (more often) error and from talking to other players in game who do things different than me. I don't really know a ton more than most skilled players of similar level do.

Your guild, Destiny, is making a name for itself as one of the best equipped high level guilds in the game. Can you tell us what has led to your success?