The StarCraft II World Championship Series was founded alongside a move to share branding among Blizzard Entertainment's competitive games and tournaments under the name World Championship Series, which also included World of Warcraft competition. 1.3 Region-locking and end of non-Korean leagues (2015-2016).
This was done through the StarCraft II War Chest system, which allowed players to purchase cosmetic items in game with 25% of sales going towards funding the professional scene. For its final two iterations as part of the WCS system, the former has had its prize pool crowdfunded, as did the Global Finals event for its final three iterations.
These were ESL's Intel Extreme Masters World Championship event in Katowice, Poland, and afreecaTV's GSL vs. World Championship Global competition featured two large events each year.
World Championship Series Circuit professional competition centered on tournaments held under the World Championship Series Circuit name with qualifiers held for each under the World Championship Series Challenger name.
World Championship Series Korea professional competition was centered on events organized by afreecaTV under the Global StarCraft II League (GSL) name, including GSL Code S seasons and GSL Super Tournament events. WCS Circuit events were streamed on Twitch while WCS Korea events were available on Twitch, YouTube, and afreecaTV. Grand finals were held annually at BlizzCon in Anaheim, California, except for the first year of competition, when the finals were held in Shanghai, China. Its longest-running iteration featured two regions, World Championship Series Korea and World Championship Series Circuit, with World Championship Series Global events featuring players from both regions. For all but its first year of operation, it was the highest tier of professional StarCraft II competition. The StarCraft II World Championship Series ( WCS) was a StarCraft II professional tournament series organized and sanctioned by Blizzard Entertainment that ran from 2012 to 2019. So, if Blizzard took some attention at it, maybe we could see some increase in the number of players and, in consequence, popularity of SC2.Defunct professional esports circuit StarCraft II World Championship Series Most recent season or competition:Ģ019 StarCraft II World Championship Series The same will happen if 4 M1 in 4v4 with random teams decides to assembly a new arranged team.Īnd this is just one of a lot of other issues with team games. For example: If 4 1v1 GMs makes a new team, the system will acknowledge it as everyone from this team is totally new in the game and it will put those GMs in placements matches against extremly low MMR opponents (who, for obvious reasons, are just crushed over and over again). However, nowadays, team games matchmaking is no more than a frustration factory for new players. And that’s one way how you increase te player base of a game. On the other hand, some people starts just playing some casual team games and later on decides to try some 1v1 matches. While many people does not feel comfortable playing 1v1, some other just like to play games with team x team mechanics. I still think the easiest way to grab new players is giving some more attention to the team games (mainly 3v3 and 4v4), which is some kind of “entrance door” for newbies.