We’re now witnessing the rebirth of the best real-time strategy, especially when it comes to its cybersport future. WCS is already past, but thanks to ESL and Dream Hack, the tournaments are going to reach the next level. Today we will speak about StarCraft 2.
Goodbye WCS
World Championship Series has been conducted since 2012. A fun thing is that there was only one winner of WCS over the past 7 years that was not from Korea. It was a player from Finland with the nickname Serral. The last winner of this tournament is a Korean Zerg named Dark, who won a mirror against an Italian player named Reynor with a score of 4:1. The 8th event in 2019 was the last, and its official website and mobile app were closed at the beginning of 2020.
What next?
Fortunately, Dream Hack and ESL are now in charge of the SC2 cybersport future. They both have announced two successors of WCS – ESL Pro Tour StarCraft 2 and Dream Hack SC2 Masters. There are going to be 4 tournaments from DreamHack and 2 from ESL, including special events 1 week before each tournament.
When to expect it?
Blizzard is now working at e-sport tournaments in Korea that have a chance to occur in 2020. The superfinal though is going to be conducted only in 2021 during IEM Katowice World Championship, which is taking place in Poland. Translations are going to be available on Twitch, all the announcements will be posted in ESL and DreamHack Twitter pages.
Money talks
The cybersport itself and SC 2 particularly have become not only the places to show your strategies and skill. Winning a big tournament now means becoming a rich man, which has always been a dream of youth but not only them. According to the info from Blizzard, the annual prize fund of the tournaments will exceed $1.2 for the next three years. What is more, in 2020/2021 prize fund will be around $2 million commemorating the 10th anniversary since StarCraft 2 release.
Conclusion
It`s a pleasure to see that Blizzard is not giving up on SC2. With their financial support and organization from the biggest digital hosts in cybersport, the beloved by many people’s real-time strategy is finding its second wind.
Also, you can read Reasons Valorant Will Be the Next Big eSports Title.
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