Blizzard Entertainment is proud to announce the 2012 Battle.net World Championship, a major global eSports event featuring some of the best pro-gaming competition in the world. Slated to take place in Asia toward the end of 2012, the Battle.net World Championship will host this year’s StarCraft II and World of Warcraft Arena World Championship tournaments. Blizzard gamers and eSports fans from around the world will be invited to attend and witness some of the most skilled pro players on the planet battle it out for cash and glory.
We’re excited to be showcasing Blizzard eSports on a truly global stage this year. We're also heavily focused on getting Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria, and Heart of the Swarm into players’ hands as soon as possible. In light of our jam-packed schedule, we’ve decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013.
More details about the 2012 Battle.net World Championship and BlizzCon 2013, including specific dates and locations, will be coming in the months ahead.
Looks exciting, will be interesting to see whether they can pull it off better than the previous events they have held. It will also delay Blizzcon, so they will be much more focused on the games themselves as opposed to things like panels, and hype for upcoming games, like they did at previous Blizzcons.
On January 25 2012 23:33 Bengui wrote: Call me a pessimist, but this more like a "sorry for not having Blizzcon" tournament than a "let's kick some ass" tournament.
More like, we don't have blizzcon but we're gonna keep the tournament with 100% focus and production.
hopefully this will be a good tournament, hopefully the map pool will be better than the ladder pool though (or even better they make the ladder pool better then use the new pool) but other than that i think that this will be a good tournament...hopefully.
Map pool: close position only metalopolis, steppes of war, jungle basin, and searing crater, except now with 300% more rocks! To add excitement to the matchups, all races will be terran and you will have to kill rocks with your first 6 SCVs before you can land your command center.
Meh I think it's gonna be a better production from Blizzcon 2011, whom was a joke ! Anyway, the panels in Blizzcon are almost always a waste of time, and hype for nothing
Please hire some competent people to run your tournament Blizzard. No idiotic ladder maps please, or at least keep them to a minimum.
Oh, and it sounds like they're trying to squeeze out HOTS before the end of the year. That would be nice. It would certainly help me get interested in SC2 again.
It seems a fairly good decision to focus on actually releasing the games, instead of hyping them up with another convention. Preparing panels for Blizzcon most certainly took nearly a month of work from the developing teams.
Regarding the tournament I have my doubts about every tournament until the details are announced, but in addition Blizzard has the fairly sub-standard Blizzcon tournaments as a history. Let's hope they have learned their lesson, and actually have a kick ass tournament this time, but i'm not going to hold my breath for now :D
I am personally sad because my best friend and I were planning on making our best efforts to finally go to a blizzcon this year. Been our dream since they first started running them.
gonna be hyped for the whole year now ! ... ... mmm maybe not. And lets see how the ladder pool will look at the end of the year O.O . Maps might be giant, no more blue minerals x3. Only golds and rich vespin to reduce the worker count per base while keeping the eco the same, so there will be huger armys, making the control even harder xD.
But lets see ... announcing a huge tournament at the end of the year which will probably be WoL based. Yep HotS for christmas.
This is a clear indication that Blizzard has nothing new to announce for 2013. That means that everything we know about now is what is coming out in 2012 and 2013.
My guess is that D3 is 2012 and HotS and whatever that WoW Expansion is called will be 2013.
On January 25 2012 23:47 IdrA wrote: THE RETURN OF STEPPES OF WAR
ROFL
Man IdrA why u know post more xD
Sad no BlizzConn glad there still doing the tournament though!
He "know post more" because there are idiots like you here who didn't pass the 5th grade.
But yes I really hope this means HotS, D3, and a fantastic tournament. The finals last year had problems, but I think without the added distraction of the Blizzcon event, it will all run a lot smoother.
I hope about the time this tourny kicks in, Blizz does something to address lags/disconnects, some hybrid lan or something. If not, they can't be serious doing a 'e-sports' event.
Makes a lot of sense for blizzard to give their games support seeing as how huge League of legends is becoming in the esports scene with the backing it's getting from the developer. Better late than never, should make for even more viewership. Look at the possibilities World of Warcraft had in the early stages, yet it wasn't until the numbers went down they started with commercials etc. Be more proactive blizzard! In the same breath, thank you for all the amazing games you give us
I'm afraid that 2013 Blizzcon means we won't get any information about project Titan this year Looking forward to the announcement of more details regarding the 2012 Bnet event.
I assume this will be near the end of the year like blizzcon and I would hope Hots is out in retail before october. I wonder if this will be a Hots tournament.
Well, they probably skip this year Blizzcon simply because there will be no new annoncement this year and they don't want to do another Blizzcon on the exact same product. Wich mean they probably want D3/HoTS to be released in 2012 and want Blizzcon 2013 to hold an HotS tournament OR they want Blizzcon 2013 to hold the very first HotS tournament and will release it a couple of day/week before it.
What would 2012 would be about if there was one? D3/HotS/MoP... Hmm... sound like a deja vue.
This makes me really really sad I've gone to just about every blizzcon, missed 1 since they started. Part of why I loved blizzcon was being able to randomly interact with pros because they're walking around/enjoying the convention just like everyone else. I mean last year bumped into liquid tyler slasher and DRG all in the span of about 5 minutes, then went for a smoke and met Nestea and MVP.
On the plus side, this will hopefully give blizzard a chance to show that they've learned something from MLG IPL GSL NASL DH Asus RoG and all the other top tier tournaments out there. By that, I mean I really hope they use a different map pool than they did at last years con.
On January 26 2012 06:53 nimdil wrote: This is mess.
We have: World Cyber Games (1) Electornic Sports World Cup (2) GSL World Championship (3) IEM World Championship (4)
and now Battle.net World Championship (5).
Not too many world-championship-type tournaments in the schedule?
Except the GSL World Championships, which isn't happening this year (though we may get something similar), all these tournaments just feel like 'normal' tournaments rather than a 'world championship'.
On January 26 2012 06:53 nimdil wrote: This is mess.
We have: World Cyber Games (1) Electornic Sports World Cup (2) GSL World Championship (3) IEM World Championship (4)
and now Battle.net World Championship (5).
Not too many world-championship-type tournaments in the schedule?
Except the GSL World Championships, which isn't happening this year (though we may get something similar), all these tournaments just feel like 'normal' tournaments rather than a 'world championship'.
WCG feels like World Championships with all these national qualifiers etc.
I believe that GOM stated that Super Tournament is not happening this year but they may make second GSL World Championships. Has something changed?
I actually think they learned from the last blizzcon for the maps. They really got hit hard by the community so I think this time they will run things excellently and it will end up a really good tournament
The last Blizzard tournament made me extremely angry so maybe now that they have time to focus, they can put on a better show. With so many other world tournaments going on I wonder what kind of cash incentives they're planning.
Then again we might also get JasBas vs Toodming on Steppes and lots of trivia.
I'm a little sad that Blizzcon isn't happening this year but i'm glad they are working hard on working on getting D3 and HOTS and hopefully they will devote as much time to making this tournament good!
Hoping Blizzard will place the event at a strategical location and draw some crowds and interest for SC2. China or South Korea comes to mind. Am I correct in assuming that there isn't so big interest for Blizzard-games in Japan?
Something that people may not have focussed on in the first paragraph is that the competition is being held in ASIA.
Korea or China? I'm guessing Korea. If so, this has the potential to be fucking amazing. Inviting pretty much every Korean SC2 progamer to one venue... wow. Also, this could be held after the "big switch" for many A-class BW players over to SC2. This could get really interesting...
They stated on there wow forums that there wont be a blizzcon this year because they will be to busy with all the releases this year. That actually makes sense since all 3 of the games that blizzard is known for are schedules to have a release this year.
I'm keeping in mind that the changes to the ladder pool were directly caused by Blizzcon, so I am excited for it, even if it bombs.... Cause then things will be fixed if there are huge problems
This is a nice way of saying that instead of hosting a tournament + panels/exhibitions etc. (Blizzcon), it will just be a tournament. During last year's Blizzcon I only watched the tournament and I don't remember it being one of the better tournaments of the year, primarily because of the map pool. They also didn't necessarily air the best games, plus the finals came under fire for the apparent theatrics of Nestea vs MVP.
On the bright side, maybe this will give them a chance to focus solely on hosting a good tournament. We know that Blizzard can draw a crowd, so if they can host a better tournament it could be epic (like the GSL finals MMA vs MVP held at Blizzcon).
I was planning on going to Blizzcon this year for the first time in a while, it's unfortunate that they delayed it to 2013, but I suppose if they don't have enough new stuff to hold an entire event, then that is ok.
Really interested in the details, especially regarding the prize pool. I think that Blizzard should put up an enormous prize pool, used from all the tourney money they net from other tournaments, and stream revenues.
Honestly, I'm grateful that they're throwing a tournament in light of the fact that they're forgoing blizzcon. They have the resources to make this one of the best tournaments of the year, I'm sure they've learned from 2011 exactly what they did wrong/right. I'm really hoping they throw in a huge prizepool for the pros. I can't help but wandering what the price of the stream is going to be, I hope it's not the same as a blizzcon E-ticket since we're not get all of the same perks. Either way, I look forward to watching the champs duke it out.
So they have this blizzcon money that they are saving this year.. minus whatever it costs to do this tournament and thats what they should make the prize pool.
EPT
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