Anyone who still doubts the fact that WoW belongs on sites like SK and ESL would have been hard pressed to argue their point yesterday. Emotion is such a huge part of any sport, any esports is no different. We’ve all seen CS players scream and shout then they win; we’ve all seen Sky’s tears after his WCG defeat. But WoW players – especially the European and Asian ones – are always quite and subdued. At least, they used to be before Innerfire burst onto the scene yesterday.

Not just the players, in fact. The team’s manager wept tears of joy! That’s how much it meant to him. I bumped into him just before the CS finals and when I asked if he was coming inside to watch, he told me he’d had enough emotion for one day. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the very essence of sport.

It was so important to them, they’d worked so hard – practiced hours and hours – and they were rewarded, justly. The smiles on their faces in this interview are the smiles of men who know they’ve just completed a job well done.

It isn’t just about trying hard and getting emotionally involved, however. It wasn’t fate, or some kind of script where the heroes win out in the end. They deserved it; they were the better team. You don’t get an 8-0 record simply by trying hard, not in any game. You need talent too and Innerfire undoubtedly have that.

Innerfire’s story is lovely, but there’s a much more fundamental reason that Innerfire is important to WoW. Reading the same names over and over again on forums and blogs gets pretty boring. A relatively unheard-of team winning a tournament is exciting enough, but when it’s the first event of a new year? Even better!

Does this mean the old guard is dead? Of course not, but Innerfire have added a new ingredient to the WoW recipe – a little extra spice. Much like Tradechat’s victory at the last tournament of 2008, Innerfire’s shows that there is always room for new talent in World of Warcraft. It also sends a warning out to the well known teams: don’t take anything for granted.

Few would have predicted the Bulgarians to progress deep into bracket play, let alone win the whole thing. But now that they did, surely they must be one of the favourites to win the Global Finals too. With Europe’s record of winning tournaments, being the number one team here means a lot and the Innerfire boys know that. They told us yesterday that they feared no team, and why should they?