The esports scene is alive and well, and few developers know that as well as Blizzard. With multiple IPs that are massively popular in the esports scene, each in its own genre, Blizzard is one of the frontrunning most notable developers that are pushing the scene forward. From helping define early esports with StarCraft to continuing to do so with Overwatch, there’s few places you can look without seeing their influence.
This month marks the start of their World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth tournament, the Mythic Dungeon International. In this tournament, teams compete side by side in identical dungeons on an incredibly high difficulty, competing for the best time with plenty of snags on the way. Teams are punished with deaths and have certain objectives to meet during their run, so it isn’t as simple as who does the most damage: Teams have to be clean, concise, and most importantly, alive.
Last week saw the first cup of the tournament, the EU/Asia cup, in which Method EU took the win after beating Perplexed in the grand final. This week sees us hopping continents over to North America with the NA Cup 1, the first North American branch of the tournament.
There are eight teams in this cup, and the competition is fierce. Method NA is likely going to be doing everything they can to match their EU counterparts, but no team is going to be making it easy for them. Everyone will have identical guidelines, with each dungeon set to Mythic+19, except for the grand final, which will be a +20. Everyone’s cloaks have been set to level 15, with no corruption cap.
The first round of double-elimination best-of-3’s sees the following four match-ups:
- Method NA vs. Angry Toast
- Complexity-Limit vs. Honestly
- Goosy Bad vs. Big Dumb Gaming
- Ethical vs. Fly Me Out
It’s an intense set of match-ups, and it’s hard to tell who’s going to be able to take the victories. Many have voiced Method NA and Complexity-Limit as favorites.
Once the first round is over, the winners move onto the semi-finals in two more match-ups, while the losers will go down to the lower bracket. Things will progress until we have a winner of the upper finals and one for the loser’s bracket, which will then see these two finalists head-to-head for the grand final.
Judging off of how hectic and intense the EU/Asia cup was, we’re in for a treat tomorrow. The MDI starts at 10:00 AM PT and 1:00 PM EST, so set your watches and be ready to see some dungeon runs!