Exactly a month ago Joe Fernandes won the World of Warcraft Arena Championship held in Anaheim, CA alongside Boetar, Swapxy and Fabss. Without a doubt the MVP in many of the matches, he is one of the most feared warriors in the European scene and even the world.



Hello and thank you for taking the time for this interview, could you introduce yourself to our readers who might not be familiar with who you are?

Hi there, my name is Joe 'Joefernandes' Fernandes and I'm playing World of Warcraft for SK Gaming.

Can you share with us how you got into World of Warcraft and PvP in general?

Originally my brother and his group of friends got me into World of Warcraft. After that I just saw a lot of WoW videos created by warriors which got me excited to start playing one.

On to the interesting stuff, originally Fabss played warlock in the qualifiers however at Opening Week and BlizzCon he was benched. Was that due to the warlock nerfs?

Yeah, the warlock nerfs prior had a role to play in that and also turbocleave is strong regardless, so we just practiced turbocleave more after the warlock nerfs.

You played some very tough matches going from regional qualifiers to opening week and blizzcon. Was there any particular comp you were scared of? We saw that you handled RMD pretty easily.

We were still scared of RMD, we pretty much had to play flawless to win if the RMD was good. Outside of that shaman Junglecleave was a bit scary for turbo too.

SkillCapped were very eager to knock your team out and you were 5:5 when you started the finals. Was the rivalry outside of the game too or are you guys on good terms?

Well I'm real life friends with Adrian (Healingstat) and got along well with most of their team, so we're good friend IRL but ingame they got annoyed for not beating us in the European championship finals. Due to that I think they really wanted to knock us out during BlizzCon.

How did it feel winning BlizzCon for the first time? Obviously Fabss did it once and Boetar had previous experience with LAN events, but for you this was your first LAN.

This was my first ever LAN and it felt amazing, still pretty surreal winning it, but we're over the moon with winning, especially to take down the best RMD in EU + NA.

What do you think WoW lacks to be a genuine esport similar to the likes of League of Legends and CS:GO?

I think good communication between a lot of the top players and the WoW Devs could help to make a better game, which would include positive feedback from players. Also the games are hard to follow for a lot of people watching, i think showing CDs on abilities was a lot better than showing people's faces on cam.

Commentary could also be a little bit better, again due to communication, would love to be able to talk to the casters about what they should look out for and general gameplay etc of what we do and try to achieve, instead of waiting around for media stuff.

You are now back from Anaheim, is there anything in particular you are already missing from the event?

I miss the California weather, and the people in general. Both the EU and US teams were super nice.

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule! Any shout outs you would like to give?

I would like to thank my teammates for the hard work they put in and for giving me a spot in the team. Shoutout to all my ingame friends as well as Dmachine and Clutter for running the event smoothly and professionally, and also SK Gaming for sponsoring us at Anaheim!

Make sure to follow Joefernandes on the following links: Twitch, Twitter