Coming from Fnatic’s celebrated Battlefield 4 side, Thomas “Morte” Kerbusch is one of the top first-person-shooter players around and he and his team mates have recently transitioned to Overwatch. There’s been plenty of interest from many of the major gaming organisations in Blizzard’s newest title but Morte and his side, confident that Overwatch is going to be a huge eSport, decided to make the move as early as possible. They’ve formed a new side under the banner Reunited.gg and have been working their way though all the closed beta tournaments, since they got access in mid November last year. They had to add a new player to complete the six-man roster and Harrison “kruise” Pond has stepped up to play one of their support roles. With plenty of ESL One and Dreamhack gold medals to their names, they’re definitely going to be one of the sides to watch once Overwatch’s competitive scene really kicks off. We caught up with Morte to get his views on the game only a month before its big launch.
How are you enjoying the beta at the moment?
Enjoying it very much – it’s the first game in a long time I’m thoroughly enjoying and don’t get tired of playing!
What made you guys want to switch over to Overwatch in the first place?
We were looking for a new challenge for a quite a while. We wanted a bigger, better game to play with a competitive angle and Overwatch is looking to go massive.
What’s been the hardest part of making the transition from Battlefield 4?
The games aren’t really comparable at all really but transitioning is something we’ve been doing for a long time, as we’ve played a pretty substantial number of different games together over the years. Transitioning is easier, as well, because our communication and teamwork are so well-established already.
No doubt there’ll be some more tweaks before it’s released, is there anything you’d like to change about the game?
Ah well, I guess there are a lot of things I would like to see changed but that’s not saying the game isn’t very good already. Basically, the problem at the moment is that the public play is so different from competitive play and this makes balancing fairly hard for Blizzard. But they are keeping an eye on the competitive scene and are actually watching matches and listening to feedback to make sure the game can reach it’s full potential.
I know your time with Fnatic has come to an end, will you be looking for a new sponsor once the competitive scene really kicks off?
Actually, we are looking for sponsors already, but not in the form of a new organisation. After leaving Fnatic we created our own team – Reunited!
You’ve just added your sixth player to the squad, Harrison “kruise” Pond, how did you guys meet and what was it about his play that made him stand out?
We were struggling with our line-up for quite a while, playing with a lot of different people in a fairly short amount of time. With kruise we found a very good support (Lucio mostly) who can also DPS when needed and this was exactly what we were looking for. I think we have one of, if not the most, flexible rosters in the scene right now. On top of that, kruise fits in the team atmosphere perfectly which made it an easy choice!
Do you have any favorite heroes?
In matches I like to play Zenyatta most, but when just playing for ‘fun’ I prefer playing quite a bit of Widowmaker and Hanzo and other damage dealers like that.
Which game mode do you guys like the best?
Payload – it seems to fit the game best and gives the most enjoyable matches.
You’ve had some tough battles up against IDDQD, do you think you’ll take them down next time around?
I think we’ve shown we could certainly take them down! However, IDDQD is reforming after some members decided they wanted to part ways. So, for now, I guess we have to wait to see which new line-ups will appear!
Any last words?
Shout-out to our fans for their continued support – it means a lot! You can follow us on Facebook or on Twitter.