Paul (a.k.a. Joana) passed away on Monday. You probably know him from his Speedrunning guides that were so helpful in leveling in Classic.
His sister put out a message on Tictok and out Discord server confirming this. She also asked that we put the word out to those who may not know.
Her TikToc name is Deeisme81. I can’t put the link on here.
I’m hoping Blozzard honors him in-game.
I mean sad but… Why do we need to spread the word a person is dead? The people that know them will remember but why do we feel the need to tell everyone this person is dead?
I wouldn’t want that after I die… Telling degens that I died and to remember me when they could just move on.
Because his sister asked that the gaming community spread the word. You may not know him, but others do.
Also, he was working on a Cata guide. I don’t know what the status of that is.
And I a part of the community said “who”? And “why”? Followed by a “Nah I’m good”.
I’ve seen a few of Joana videos but I don’t really watch those sorts of things.
I also don’t watch Tiktok often at all but did search out what you posted and found the video from the sister. She said to share, so there is nothing wrong with you making the thread. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad about posting it.
I feel for her - very sad. She said he died of heart failure and some knew about the issues so it was somewhat expected, but sad nonetheless.
What I’ve found is a lot of people with very serious health issues play this game as a way to escape their physical ailments. It’s not something that they often share but I’ve known quite a few who died from their ailments - although mostly there isn’t public sharing - and it is sad every time. I had a member of my guild in 2010 who died after battling something similar and according to his family, the guild and the game was one of the few things that made him really happy. This made me think of that. 
(I also often wonder what is wrong with some of the people who post here, they don’t have to reply at all yet here they are showing that they just aren’t very nice people as if they are proud of themselves for having no empathy whatsoever, by this I mean the last poster and others like him specifically. In that way, no wonder Blizzard calls this place toxic)
RIP Joana, true OG.
It would be nice if they named a troll hunter in his honor.
Although I’ve never been into speedrunning or gaming celebrities, I was certainly aware of the Joana guides, and I’m pretty sure I heard them on a couple episodes of the Countdown to Classic Podcast in the time leading up to the announcement and release of Classic servers.
Joana seemed to be the major name in speedrunning, and their knowledge in their guides formed the foundation for the leveling approaches that a lot of players were using on Classic in 2019-2020, especially during the initial rush before boosting became widespread.
Just remember.
They could do something about that and empower their staff to be more proactive.
Or just spare a bit of the Scrooge McDuck pile and hire some more employees.
Yes, people could just be better but barring that a little encouragement would go a long way.
/offtopic
Condolences to all family, friends and fans of the deceased.
I haven’t bought any of his classic guides but man I always went back now and then to watch some of his old 1-60 runs
He gave out the Joana leveling guides. He had a website for it. And he also really helped me get to gold cap back in original WoW. He still has the website? You used to be able to talk to him. And yea he said all about the AH flipping and the addons to use and having an AH alt on a different account, having a bank alt that was not an AH alt. He was very good at the game. And he had really good leveling guides too.
I mainly knew him for the leveling guides.
I either got the AH guide from him or he pointed me to it, either way, it helped a lot and he leveling guides were pretty leet.
He taught stuff such as skip almost all escort quests, and had a list of which gathering quests to do, had you do almost all of the quests where you would kill lots of NPCs to get xp fast.
He was making guides from way back when WoW was just coming out. He could get multiple toons from 1 to 60 before the average person even got one to 60.
https://www.furiouspaul.com/wow
https://www.joanasworld.com/
Well I don’t care for streamers, guides or anything in that vein, so I do not know Paul/Joana at all, but it’s always good for those who knew a player to know where he/she went - silence is upsetting, and secrecy worse.
I feel sad for family and friends of the deceased.
This person has touched many lives. It’s respectful to give him a salute.
My condolences to his family.
He was around way before streaming was ever a thing.
Every WoW leveling guide out there? They all got from him. Blizz should make an in game NPC of the guy. To my understanding he had a bunch of alts.
I want an ingame NPC of him. All the super fast leveling that I did, I learned from him.
I got so many toons at max level in so many versions of the game and many alts almost there. I use the tactics I learned from him to this day.
For example, I used try to cap out all the quests in each zone, then go to the next.
He would say stuff like… skip the escort quests.
He would then say how to have an AH alt and that toon could help you get all the goods while questing.
I kept dying back to back and leveled super slow on my lock in original 04 version of this game.
I got his guide and made it to 60. He had me skipping lots of quests, skipping entire zones. Said what classes pair up best with other classes for questing duos. He has a site, probably books and used to be able to talk to someone on his site. I bought the guide way back in the day.
And yes there my Tauren friend. This fella was not a streamer. He did what he did without using videos.
He also did all that he did 100% on his own. He used no outside knowledge to do what he did. His guides that he made were entirely his ideas and his thinking. Steaming did not even exist when he first started.
Agree with everyone that we need an in-game Joana! It is only fitting. This guy helped so many people out. He made a real impact on a lot of people, even through a video game.
My condolences to his family.
It’s safe to say I had a very different approach to the game in general, but parts of those methods fit really well with some of the things I enjoy and don’t enjoy with leveling.
Give me kill quests all day and I’m happy, but good luck trying to get me to babysit Captain Placeholder while he crypwalks around Stonetalon. I’m a warrior, not a dogwalker.
► [Abandon Quest]
This is the reason why I do not know who he is … super fast is so not me 
I never to the best of my knowledge ever followed any levelling guide. The only guides, I remember ever having kinda followed, are El’s angling and Drrum’s pets (not videos either btw, and neither around any more - and at least the latter had an NPC).
And I thought “streamers” is whoever ever made a youtube of their run to show to others, sorry if that’s not the meaning of the word (I’m not a native speaker - and this whole guides, videos … world is not my backyard) and sorry if I somehow hurt you. Your playstyle is as different from mine as humanely possible, so I have a hard time understanding.
But if he meant this much to many people as I see he did, like Drrum and others he deserve an NPC.
He mainly was super efficient. Many of us who became super fast, did so because of him.
His guides are still very relevant to this day for Classic WoW. Players like Sage, Nixxiom used him He has addons. He did HC guides as well. And did more games than just WoW. Found out about him cuz of WoW though.
Yes, I see you like him, and many with you.
But this exact stuff is more that irrelevant to me. I want NOT efficient I want to do my own mistakes, play how I feel like today, and find my own way. Not to follow a guide - neither in HC, where I finally made it to 60
And no, I do not use addons either (apart from sadly demised Deathlog, and one to remove the Open all mail Button in the mail window). Also I only play WoW Classic.
The guys guides definitely helped me a long the way on fresh pserver launches, sad to see him go and feel for his sister. RIP.