Not too long ago, we reported on the Hearthstone Masters Tour being relocated from Indonesia to Los Angeles amidst concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, which then hadn’t quite hit the global scale it had now. However, as things progressed, the Masters Tour was eventually changed from its Los Angeles location to complete online play, with no in-person events to prevent large gatherings of people in spreading the virus.
That isn’t to say that there will be no festivities. Blizzard will still be holding a handful of online events. Each match will also be broadcasted live on YouTube via the HearthstoneEsports account, being casted by Dan “Frodan” Chou, TJ “Azumo” Sanders, Erik “DoA” Lonnquist, and Michael “Heatwave” Lancaster. Over 300 players from more than 40 countries have been invited to play in this online-only Masters Tour, competing for glory and their share of a $250,000 prize pool.
The broadcasts will be live from Blizzard’s NGE Studios with no live audience, beginning at 9:00 AM PDT each day of the tournament. Viewers should expect the tournament to take place between March 20th and March 22nd, barring any extreme events that may delay it.
Upon further review of the coronavirus situation given the broad international nature of our event, we have made the decision to hold Masters Tour Los Angeles entirely online.
More information can be found here: https://t.co/tznP5uaOZC
— Hearthstone Esports (@HSesports) March 6, 2020
Invited players will compete in a 4-deck best-of-5 Conquest with an available ban. Those that manage at least a 7-2 result in this tournament will be qualified for the next stop of the Masters Tour in Jönköping, Sweden, as well as the fourth stop of the tour which hasn’t been announced yet.
On the first day, players will compete in five rounds of Swiss. By the second, players with three or more match wins will then play through four more rounds of a Swiss tournament. By the final day, the top 8 players will advance into a single-elimination bracket to decide the winner.
The tournament will also be streamed in eight different languages, including English, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, Latin American Spanish, Arabic, and Russian. Players will be competing for their share of a quarter-million USD, which is only part of the $3,000,000 total prize pool that Blizzard has dedicated to Hearthstone in 2020.
Simply put, there’s a great deal on the line for the hundreds of players that will be competing in this tournament. While it might seem a bit strange at first for such an event to be held in a purely-online format, it seems that the tournament will still be continuing on with all the drama and glory that a traditional esports tournament would have had.
Make sure to tune in early on March 20th to voice support for your favorite contestant and catch the drama as it unfolds!
