WCS Winter Championship to be held at IEM Katowice

Intel Extreme Masters Katowice will see 32 StarCraft II players battle it out for US$150,000 in the WCS Winter Championship.

Intel Extreme Masters returns to Katowice, Poland in early March next year for the annual World Championship. The Spodek arena will once again see thousands of fans witness top-notch CS:GO and League of Legends played by some of the world's best teams. In addition to this, we are thrilled to announce that joining the game lineup will be StarCraft II in the form of the first ever WCS Winter Championship!

Intel Extreme Masters Katowice will be the first WCS Circuit Championship, during which a total of 32 players will battle it out for a share of the US$150,00 prize pool. The winner will receive a WCS Global Playoffs seed at BlizzCon and 10,000 WCS points, which will dictate seeding and global rank.

Slot distribution

The slots for the WCS Winter Championship will be distributed as follows:

Regional challenger (8 slots)

Two for Europe, Africa and the Middle East
Two for North America (USA and Canada)
One for Latin America
One for China
One for Oceania, Southeast Asia and Japan
One for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau

Server qualifiers (14 slots)

Eight for Europe
Six for America

National qualifiers

Citizens from hosting nation eligible

WCS standings invites (8 slots)

2015 WCS standings will be used for Winter Championship

In order to compete in the WCS Circuit Championship, players must be citizens or residents of one of the eligible regions listed above.

Format

The format of the WCS Winter Championship will be a single elimination bracket with best-of-five matchups except for the grand final, which will be a best of seven.

StarCraft II at Intel Extreme Masters Taipei

Before the Katowice tournament, a $25,000 8 player invitational will take place at Intel Extreme Masters Taipei at Taipei Game Show where top Korean performers of the 10th Intel Extreme Masters season will compete along other legendary players. You can read more about the event over here.

On December 19 2015 00:18 corydoras wrote:
Well, at least the Polish fanatic audience will rock the building again.

I'm totally for the new WCS system. You might call it welfare, but without the prize money, it won't make sense at all to be a pro outside Korea. But no selfies with Zest this time: that sucks a bit

On December 18 2015 23:15 SmykuToronto wrote:
They told me to chill. This ain't a thing I'd chill about Gz to Gfinity for becoming most stacked tourney series in SC2.

On December 19 2015 00:27 Topin wrote:
giving a ro16 blizzcon ticket for winning a tournament this early is kinda dumb imo

On December 19 2015 00:33 barbaTossa wrote:


Yea, about that: Gfinity can not support a prize pool of at least 50k and will therefore not be a WCS Global event. That means it will award a total of 0 WCS points. Let's see if they are able to compete with all the money Blizzard is throwing at already larger organizations and paid trips for everyone. Oh and if Koreans are even willing to travel abroad to play a tournament of the difficulty just below GSL (because, let's face it, no foreigner wants to play in gfinity with the wcs changes) for a prize pool of 5000$ first place.

This seems already clear to everyone here but note that IEM Taipei is part of the already planned and scheduled (as IEM Asia) IEM Season X circle. It would happen either way. It is however NOT a WCS Global event since it also lacks the required price pool. It, too, will award 0 WCS points. The 'You can read more about the event over here.' leads directly to the CS:Go event and there is no informatin about Starcraft to be found. I guess it's clear what we have to expect for the next Season of IEM and from DreamHack in terms of WCS Global events.

I am simply staggered by the nonchalance pillars of the community (Apollo, messioso) say this will be fine when it's clearly not going to be and they know it.

They're not going around in public talking about how their employer is screwing over the foundation of professional starcraft because of some complaining foreigners that prefer drama over practice? How surprising.

On December 19 2015 00:41 Clonester wrote:



I want to be a billionare...... i would just hold 250k$ Events in Europe without any WCS point and give 15 of 16 slots to korean qualifiers. Just because I am salty.

On December 19 2015 00:48 barbaTossa wrote:


I am convinced they think it's the best for the scene and it might be. Who knows? But implying or maintaining the misconception that there will be even close to as many WCS Global-type events in 2016 as in 2015 if there might in fact be none is platantly lying and hoping the community will forgive them as soon as they see the changes in action.

On December 19 2015 01:00 Dodgin wrote:
I just want to confirm

This means no Korean players at IEM WC?

If so, I am so so disappointed and will not watch this.

On December 19 2015 01:17 Elentos wrote:

With half the players and one fifth the prize money.

On December 19 2015 00:41 Clonester wrote:



I want to be a billionare...... i would just hold 250k$ Events in Europe without any WCS point and give 15 of 16 slots to korean qualifiers. Just because I am salty.

On December 19 2015 01:07 SC2Toastie wrote:

If they'd really be convinced of that they should not be representative casters of Professional starcraft.

Maybe we could introduce some new terminology to Starcraft.
Professional Starcraft -> Highest level, includes Koreans
Amateur Starcraft -> High Drama Content, No Koreans allowed!!!
WCS 2016 -> WCS Welfare
World Championship Series -> WCS Slaughterhouse

Just to avoid confusion

On December 19 2015 02:55 Diabolique wrote:

Nice, I already started to use the "WCS Welfare" circuit yesterday and will not do otherwise.

The sad thing is that I am living quite close to Poland and I was planning to go to the IEM World championship this year to see the best SC2. OK, I will save the money. I am just sad that as there are some good Polish players, I am sure, the Polish crowd will support even this event, so IEM will not see, how they destroyed the viewership.

So this means, there will not be any WCS Global Events, right? The worst nightmare is real. Thank you Blizzard, thank you IEM. We are lucky to have proleague, but I am sad, as watching Koreans in Korea playing Koreans is not exactly what I liked. I liked big offline events in the west with western production, interviews, casters ... Where best Koreans were playing the best Koreans, eventually foreign players, This was exactly what IEM was offering. Thank you Snute for your performance at IEM last year. But there will be no more reasonable IEM.

Fuck you Blizzard. Fuck you IEM. Fuck you Apollo and other "supporters". Fuck you all foreign players!

Please, Dennis, find some new German sponsors and change Homestory cup's prize pool to 50k, to 75k, and do Korean qualifiers with lots of spots and cover at least partially their travel costs. I promise you, you will become the most watched event of the year 2016!

And thank you very much, Team Liquid Writers, Moderators, Administrators, for not playing this artificial celebration wave, explaining to the world, how great this new system is. I understand, it is not easy not to celebrate the hand, that also feeds you. Thank you for being honest. Long live Team Liquid!

On December 19 2015 05:53 Silvana wrote:


Katowice is IEM World Championship. It's where they used to invite all last season champions and crown the WC. Now they downgraded it to Taipei and use Katowice to host a region locked tournament (Winter). So unless I understood something wrong I think this as a clear sign they don't have interest in having Koreans in their tournaments, hence I don't expect them to give us any other Global event besides Taipei.

On December 19 2015 07:35 sharkie wrote:


you just told us why they changed the format

Viewer numbers were abysmal for IEM WC, why should they stick with the same format?

On December 21 2015 14:26 NyxNax wrote:
$150,000 holy shit.. That will make it interesting

On December 21 2015 15:28 aQuaSC wrote:


You could at least be more reasonable in the hate you are spilling. I'm trying to understand your view, but it gets harder and harder with every your post to take you serious. You are a casual. You are playing in the basement. Anyway, any invitational shouldn't have higher prize pool than any kind of open tournament.

It would be nicer to discuss with you if you weren't so blind in your hate.

EDIT: I have a great idea: what would you say to a tournament system, where each player is invited (screw you, casuals), has an amount of money on him equal to his estimated skill level, and when a player enters a tournament his participation raises the prize pool accordingly? Is that your paradise?