What’s a bit of social distancing without a fun esports tournament thrown into the mix? Blizzard has announced a new event for Hearthstone, the Outland Inn-vitational!
This isn’t the kind of tournament with an open sign up to crown the next king of the Inn, though. Blizzard has invited twenty well-known personalities in the Hearthstone scene to come and compete. There’s even a new format called Demon Hunter Duel-fest!
It's time to enter the fray – #AshesOfOutland is now live, and the Year of the Phoenix is officially here!
🔥 https://t.co/S9GnOMCIpS pic.twitter.com/3uFYPX384H
— Hearthstone (@PlayHearthstone) April 7, 2020
“The Outland Inn-vitiational will use a new format we’re calling Demon Hunter Duel-fest, where both teams play against each other through 4 rounds of best-of-three matches.” Blizzard writes in their announcement. “Each player will represent one of the ten classes and play as that same class in every match. However, on rounds 2 and 4, one full team will play as the Demon Hunter!”
The teams will be as follows: On the first team, the Feisty Fiends, we have Kripp, Trump, Slysssa, Purple, RDU, BoarControl, Dawn, Tom60229, Masaru, and ShtanUdachi. On the second team, the Salty Satyrs, we have Brian Kibler, Firebat, RegisKillbin, Thijs, Dog, Flurry, DDaHyoNi, Nayara Sylvestre, Solary, and Sinedd92.
Points are awarded to the winner of each best-of-three match-up, with two points being given to a victor. At the end of the four rounds, the team with the highest point total wins.
While it might sound a little silly, the prizes on the line are pretty serious. There’s a prize pool of USD $100,000, with the ten players on the winning team taking home $6,500. Of course, there’s still a “consolation prize” of $3,500 to the losing team, so no one is going home empty handed. There’s even a kicker of $1,000 being awarded to the three players with the highest scores!
These matches will be streamed by the individual players from their own channels, as social distancing is still very in effect. On top of that, Blizzard’s official Hearthstone Twitch and YouTube channels will be providing match commentary and updates on the tournament as a whole as it rages on.
Viewing gets you more than some great entertainment, though! Blizzard is doing some Twitch Drops from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. PT on April 21st. Watch two total hours of any of the Hearthstone streams on Twitch to get an Ashes of Outland card pack, with another being given for every additional four hours. Make sure your Twitch and Battle.net accounts are linked, though, or your time won’t count for the Twitch Drops!
The tournament kicks off soon, so keep your eyes peeled and root for your favorite team!
