[Dox]

• In a couple of minutes Blizzard will announce the new league changes. It will be held at Coex Intercontinental Hotel Grand ballroom, South Korea.
• The event started off with the (Korean) Heart of the Swarm story teaser trailer.
• "The merging is complete."
• MLG and ESL, OGN / Kespa / Blizzard / Gom TV / Twitch TV partnership announced.
• The eSports revolution: World Championship Series v2.0.
• Blizzard unveils revamped $1.6 million 2013 StarCraft II tournament season.

Originally Posted by GameSpot

Today at a press conference in South Korea, Blizzard Entertainment announced a revamp to its StarCraft II World Championship Series which debuted last year, working with partners to create three equal and parallel leagues in North America, Europe, and South Korea. More than $1.6 million in prize money will be up for grabs for players in 2013, and fans at home can expect to watch for free in 720p.

Blizzard announced that it will use both GomTV and OnGameNet in South Korea, Major League Gaming in North America, and Turtle Entertainment's Electronic Sports League in Europe. Each will operate their region's WCS league for the year. There will be three separate seasons in 2013 each with regional finals and a season finals event. A unified global player ranking system will be established with points given to players at each event, culminating with the top 16 players in points vying for a spot to be called World Champion at the BlizzCon Global Finals. Next year there will be four seasons.

"I think we just look at the whole ecosystem and recognize that it could be a whole lot easier to understand", Blizzard Entertainment CEO Mike Morhaime told GameSpot. "There are scheduling conflicts that make players have to make difficult decisions where sometimes you don't get people playing in the tournaments they think they should be playing in. It's very hard to follow, to really know what the relative importance of winning various things are. I think it really falls to us, to Blizzard, we're really the only company in position to work with everybody, to help create a single storyline in the ecosystem."

This will mark the first time that OnGameNet and GomTV will be working together. GomTV will run the first WCS league in Korea, beginning with the upcoming GSL Code S season starting in less than two days. OGN will broadcast the event on TV in with their own casters. Both OGN and GSL will broadcast each other's leagues with their own casters and streams. After this season of Code S, OGN will begin their next OnGameNet StarLeague which has been on hold for a while, and act as the main operator of WCS Korea Season 2. Another season of GSL Code S will not take place until OSL is over, and act as the third and final WCS Korea season before the Global Finals.

The Korean eSports Association has been involved every step of the way, Blizzard said.

"One of the really awesome things about all of this is we have all the entities in Korea working together now," Morhaime said. "The Korean leagues will be available to watch both through OGN and GomTV. ProLeague will still be going on and the GSTL will still be going on. We'll have StarCraft II on television five nights a week."

"Blizzard really worked hard for all partners, so we can truly work together in not only Korea but also the world," GomTV StarCraft 2 Manager Chae Jung Won told GameSpot. "For GomTV's perspective, we were working hard to increase our media platform from 2012."

Players must commit to one WCS league at the beginning of the year and cannot change region after, but can compete in any non-WCS events in any region. Each regional league season will run for 8-10 weeks, with all games played on weekdays in a consistent schedule. This will allow players to travel internationally to non-WCS events on weekends. Non-WCS events cannot run events on the same weekend as WCS events. Non-WCS events will be given as of yet undetermined amount of points.

All matches in Korea will be played in studio through GomTV's StarLeague or OnGameNet's StarLeague, while North America and Europe will play Online until the top 16 players. Those top 16 players will compete in a studio environment to determine the best five players in each region. Five players from each region will then compete in the Season 1 finals event, with one additional player to come from the host continent for 16 players total. They will compete for an undermined amount of points. Each continent will get one finals event this year in the size of an event similar to one at GSL, MLG, or ESL.

"We're hoping that by giving the North American and European players their own league, it will make it so they don't have to travel as much and can focus more on practice," Morhaime said. "We think that the level of play will also increase within the regions this way."

The tournament structure has been modeled off of GSL's Code S, Code A, and Code B system and is called Premier, Challenger, and Qualifier. This structure will run for all partners including MLG and ESL. The Challenger events will run slightly different in North America and Europe due to logistics in travel. Players will be able to move up and down within their own region as players do in GSL. Only the OSL will have differences, where there will be an additional Round of 32 added on played in a best of one format.

Players in North America and Europe will be invited to kickoff Season 1 based upon their performances in 2012 across all leagues. Open qualifiers will also be held to determine the final player list. Additionally, the top 200 Grand Masters players on the StarCraft II Ladder will be invited to join the initial qualifiers.

Blizzard says that they have partnered with TwitchTV to broadcast the entire year for free in 720p. There will also be a central hub created for fans to watch the games, follow the storylines, and get all information related to the World Championship Series.

"For all of us in the West, it will be available via TwitchTV" Morhaime said. "We can watch this stuff now. There will be a regular schedule to follow along."

With everything announced, Blizzard feels this will be the best year yet for competitive StarCraft II. With several developers giving support to the competitive side of their game as of late, Morhaime is thrilled to be able to do as much with their own franchise.

"We think the time is right to level-up StarCraft II as an eSport."

For more, check out GameSpot's extended interview with Morhaime.

[Maynarde]

Keeping an eye on these twitters for to the second live reports @TeamLiquidLIVE and @ApolloSC2

[x5_Namakaye]

Summary of how tournament will work:

There will be regional tournaments which are either online or have online qualifiers (not sure about this exactly)

everyone in GM on NA/EU/KR will be invited to that regions qualifiers

Presumably there will be open qualifiers as there are a LOT more than 200 pros in KR.

Points will be awarded to placings and other tournaments (MLG, ESL, GSL etc.) with these WCS tournaments offering more points

EDIT: There seems to be some confusion which i will clear up:

The only tournament that is region locked is WCS. MLG, GSL, IEM etc. are still open to everyone and are completely separate from WCS despite giving points

EDIT 2: https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/319277909619642368 There will be 4 events next year with 2 being in Asia, there is hope for SEA yet

Quick Comments

syfChadMann:

Asia = China and Korea.

[Fenner]

North America and Europe will play Online until the top 16 players.

What. 1.6 mil in prizemoney and people can cheat for it?

Quick Comments

Matt93:

hopefully for a tourney this big there'll be refs in each game/replay reporting

[rezyn8]

I think this is great for SC2 and eSports. Finally a globally unified league that pro players & lesser known players can aspire and be fully recognised for their efforts.

It may kill the SEA server pushing our players to make GM on KR &/or NA. Hopefully the 2014 events where there will be 2 events in 'Asia' will do somethinging to promote the SEA server.

As for BarCraft, we will still be able to run our events for the KR finals for each season including the finals being held on June 1st. Again we may be hamstrung by time zone differences for NA & EU, but we will need to see the schedules when they are released.

It's going to be a great year!

Quick Comments

	Philosopher:	Looking forward to see what Silicon Sports does!
	Another:	SEA pros didnt play on SEA before this announcment anyway..

[Stallion]

Originally Posted by rezyn8

It may kill the SEA server pushing our players to make GM on KR &/or NA. Hopefully the 2014 events where there will be 2 events in 'Asia' will do somethinging to promote the SEA server.

sea already dead and we already have quite a few players in gm na

[VB_Boony]

I think this is fantastic. Really exciting in so many ways.
On a side note: I think it really gives foreigners more chance at getting some proper prize money and will hopefully help motivate some to train more.

[TAXanT]

I don't think this will really change the SEA server GM ladder - most pro's have already ventured off to NA/KR.

But this is some god damn awesome news!

[mGGDrGooSe]

I'm sure no one is surprised that sea and china got left out of the mix, but it does seem as yet another hurdle to ensure only a few SEA players ever get to play outside of SEA. Undoubtedly we can have people capable of making top 16 through the NA route, except the lag will make that far more difficult than it should be, not to mention the massive cost of sending someone to the US for such a tournament. I'm assuming though that with 1.6 mil up for grabs, that even 16th place should cover airfares if nothing else.

I'm assuming that qualifier league or whatever silly name they gave it will be completely open though? I can't imagine someone who practices full time on korea would like having to maintain NA GM in order to qualify for later stages.

[|Erasmus|]

does this actually mean that someone who's elected to play in the WCS region in europe or NA can't play in any WCS Korea events?

Cause if suppy/stephano/thorzain etc. dont' commit full time to korea, they can't even try out for GSL if they are there for training/proleague?

[ToR.Arnor]

Originally Posted by |Erasmus|

does this actually mean that someone who's elected to play in the WCS region in europe or NA can't play in any WCS Korea events?

Cause if suppy/stephano/thorzain etc. dont' commit full time to korea, they can't even try out for GSL if they are there for training/proleague?

It was my understanding that it was only every second OSL / GSL (alternating between the two)that would be a "WCS Qualifier"

which means they could still play in whatever league wasnt the "WCS Korea" for that season

Although im fully aware that ive probably misinterpreted the whole thing

[yongming]

Originally Posted by |Erasmus|

does this actually mean that someone who's elected to play in the WCS region in europe or NA can't play in any WCS Korea events?

Cause if suppy/stephano/thorzain etc. dont' commit full time to korea, they can't even try out for GSL if they are there for training/proleague?

if someone chose to participate in wcs na or eu, they are considered locked in that region for the whole year. it depends on how u want to intepret "locked". 1)either they are no longer allowed to join wcs korea events (pretty much every indivdual events in korea: gsl and osl). 2) or they can play in wcs korea and wcss eu or na but only get wcs points for eu and na.

regardless, it seems that wcs na, eu and korea runs at the same time and the fact that there is locking, it makes no sense for a foreigner to play in gsl.

[Dox]

They've said you can play in whatever you want. You can only elect to receive WCS points from 1 region though. Playing in MLG does not stop you from playing in IEM or GSL.

[|Erasmus|]

Originally Posted by Dox

They've said you can play in whatever you want. You can only elect to receive WCS points from 1 region though. Playing in MLG does not stop you from playing in IEM or GSL.

Cool... just seemed to be some confusion and the way the specifically said "can play in non wcs events in any region" -could- be interpreted as a "but not wcs events outside your region" kind of thing.