Blizzard has announced the first World of Warcraft: Classic official esports event! The developers are planning to bring PvP into the professional scene of the title with the new Summer Bowl Warsong Gulch event!
“For the first time in WoW Classic, World of Warcraft Esports presents the Summer bowl,” Blizzard wrote in an official post earlier today. “The WoW Classic Summer Bowl is a 10v10 Warsong Gulch tournament beginning June 17th.”
If you don’t play World of Warcraft, Warsong Gulch is a PvP battleground that consists of a 10v10 Capture the Flag match. The first team to capture the opposing flag three times wins! It’s also the one that becomes available the soonest, opening at level 10.
That said, contestants won’t be able to hop on their twinked-out Gnome rogue to compete in the tournament. All players must be level 60 to be eligible.
The Summer Bowl will be split into a North American tournament and a European tournament, as many WoW esports typically are. The matches will take place on the live servers for WoW Classic using the War Game feature.
Teams of ten players will sign up for their region via the sign ups available on Blizzard’s site. There, the tournament will be split into qualifiers and finals stages. When signing up, players will sign up for the qualifiers, with the top six teams moving onto the finals for their region.
Using the War Game feature, players will queue up in battlegrounds against other teams in their region. The top six teams of both regions will move on to compete for their share of $4,000, as well as the obvious bragging rights of winning the first official Classic esports event.
The events will be staggered a bit, with the European region getting started a week earlier than the North American region. Europe’s sign ups will close on June 18th, whereas North America has until the 25th of June to sign up.
From there, the action begins on June 20th for Europe and the 27th for North America. Both regions spend a weekend finding the six best teams to push forward to the weekend of July 4th and 5th, which will see the European Finals and the North American Finals played out.
It’s fantastic to see Blizzard putting some love towards Classic and bringing the modern world of esports to a title meant to imitate a 2004 release. With the two colliding in such a way, players are certain to get the best of both worlds.
