Not long ago, we noticed that one of the guitar players for the punk band State Champs regularly displays a glorious Horde banner on stage while performing. His name is Tony Diaz, and he sat down with us recently to answer our questions for this week’s Community Spotlight.

Q: How’d you get started playing video games?

A: My first memory of playing video games is of playing Zelda when I was 4 or 5 years old, and my brother refusing to help me get through it. He's 11 years older than I am, so he definitely didn’t want me even playing his games. Still, I had so much fun trying to get through that game. After that, it was Super Mario Bros 3 for me. Once I played those two games, I was all in for the rest of my childhood.

Q: At some point, you found World of Warcraft?

A: More like I was introduced to World of Warcraft. My roommate, Mike, made me go over to his house and create a character. So I made an Undead Rogue. I thought the animation was so funny when my character would throw axes at those hounds in Death Knell. It wasn’t the throw animation that was funny, but the fact that the axe would be stuck in the hounds’ faces as they're running at you. I just loved it all. I went out and bought the game that same week and started a new Undead Rogue on a PvP server!

Q: Has World of Warcraft crossed over with making music for you?

A: My roommate and I made a techno song that's just a sound clip of Bom'bay from Sen'jin village saying "Someone call for the doctah?". So that’s a really poorly made track, but time well spent!

Q: Tell us about State Champs?

A: I'm actually not sure I would've wound up in State Champs without World of Warcraft. I played in another band previous, and I knew Tyler (State Champs guitarist), and he also played WoW. So when our respective bands weren't on tour, we would play World of Warcraft at my apartment. We had a couple of Arena teams, and when we weren't smashing our keyboards over that, we would level characters together. Eventually it lined up so that I could jump ship to his band, and the rest is history.

I’m not sure I would've had the opportunity if Tyler and I hadn't become so tight over gaming.

Q: How would you describe yourself as a player?

A: I think I'm just a regular old Deathguard, out there championing my Queen, The Dark Lady Sylvanas Windrunner. The community is so very important to me, and it's something I take part in every day. Whether it's streaming, testing, or just chatting about it with people on Twitter, I'm doing something WoW-related every day, and by the way, the World of Warcraft Twitter community is awesome. I've met some great people on Twitter, and I even found my regular raid group through it. I'm glad I'm accepted as a part of it all because there's no other community I would rather be a part of.

Q: What do you make of the future with Legion?

A: I'm SO EXCITED!!!! I was just shaking with excitement at BlizzCon during anything that had to do with Legion. I mean … the trailer alone! The rush of emotions when you first see Sylvanas — I was just in awe.

I'm super into the lore, so I'm most excited for that. I want to know everything about what's going on with the story, plus artifact weapons, which is even more lore that I'm ready to absorb. I was totally convinced I was going to play certain characters in Legion until those all got revealed too. Mage isn't looking so bad anymore, ya know?

We have huge thanks for Tony taking the time to talk to us. If you’d like to check him out online, look here:

@RivalDiaz on Twitter
RivalxDiaz on Twitch

Let your banner fly!