WCS 2013 Format, Players, Prizes and Point Details

Premier League Prize Pool Distribution

The 2013 World Championship Series Premier League Prize Pool consists of $1.6 million spread out over the course of the year. Regional WCS league seasons will each include $100,000 in prize money to be distributed among players, while an additional $150,000 will be allocated for each Cross-Region Season Finals event. Finally, $250,000 will be awarded to competitors in the 2013 WCS Global Finals, held at BlizzCon in November.

The prize pool distribution for each Regional League and Cross-Region Season Finals that will be held this year, as well as the distribution for the BlizzCon WCS Global Finals, is listed below. The prize for Regional Leagues was designed to be relatively flat to reward the accomplishments of all participating players.

You may notice that prize pools gradually take on more top-heavy forms for Cross-Region Season Finals and the WCS Global Finals, though all participating players will still take home a share of the prize money. This was done in order to greatly reward those players who show the absolute best performance over the course of the season, and year. Additionally, we feel that the player pool is much smaller and the competition more fierce at these events, thus deserving a greater reward.

Point System Breakdown

A major component to the new World Championship Series is the point system, which will be used for determining which 16 players will be invited to the WCS Global Finals held following the conclusion of the final WCS Season each year.

Our primary goal for the point system was to design it in such a way that it rewarded players who are the most consistent in their performance at WCS events throughout the year. In order to achieve this, we intentionally balanced the amount of points earned from each event so that top performers wouldn’t be favored so heavily that further 2013 competition becomes negligible for other players. We also feel that this design will help to retain lively and intense competition from season to season as players battle to defend and improve their point ranking—even those who rise victorious from Season Final events. All Challenger and Premier League players in a particular WCS season will be rewarded a set number of points based on their performance, with the exception of WCS Korea, in which only the top 40 Challenger League players will be awarded points.




Some events outside of the WCS will also award points that count toward this system. In order to qualify as a point-rewarding non-WCS tournament, any given event will need to go through a formal approval process with the Blizzard eSports team. From there, non-WCS events will be split into one of two point tiers based on a few eligibility criteria that we’ll be announcing at a later date.