Blizzard has made an announcement regarding one of the biggest esports events of the year for World of Warcraft. The 2020 Arena World Championship will be moved entirely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This program was originally planned to culminate in a multi-region LAN tournament this summer,” Blizzard writes in their announcement via their blog. “Unfortunately, with this move to online-only play, this kind of international tournament cannot be hosted due to differences in regional server ping.”
Moving the tournament online isn’t the only thing they’re doing, though. The tournament will now exist in three major stages. Both the NA and EU will have four cups with eight teams advancing to a circuit. From there, four teams will advance to the finals. The three sections will be orchestrated thusly:
AWC Cups: Eight open-registration online tournaments will be held, with four in North America (including ANZ and LatAm) and four in Europe. Each will have a prize pool of USD $10,000 and will take place from May 22nd through June 14th, competing for AWC points. The top eight teams in both regions will move forward into their respective circuit.
AWC Circuit: The eight teams that move on from the cups will be invited to compete in a round-robin tournament, with a guaranteed prize for qualifying. Each team will play against every other team in a best-of-five series, with one point going to the winning team. These matches will be played over four weekends, dates of which will be decided as they draw closer.
AWC Finals: The top four team from their respective circuits will be seeded into two double-elimination groups. From here, they will battle through the final weekend of the AWC Battle for Azeroth Season. One team will win from each group – an EU and an NA victor – to be crowned as regional champions, as well as earning the majority of the prize pool.
“The World of Warcraft esports team is working hard to bring you all the AWC action through remote online broadcasts for the remainder of Battle for Azeroth,” Blizzard disclaims, urging fans to keep an eye out for the broadcasts. Blizzard seems set to broadcast these on YouTube, with the VoD going up pretty quickly afterward, so you don’t have to worry about missing much action.
Given the success that the MDI has had in their broadcast online, it seems like Blizzard swiftly got the hang of online tournaments. Despite these changes, the Arena World Championship will still be an exciting and intense tournament that you aren’t going to want to miss!