Blizzard Reveals Its Plans for ‘World of Warcraft’ Esports in 2019
By Stefanie Fogel
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Blizzard recently detailed its plans for “” esports in 2019. It’s bringing back two tournaments — the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) — and launching some new in-game toys to help fund prize pools, it said in a blog post on Thursday.
The Arena World Championship will return with a few “fun” twists, Blizzard said. The North America and European regions will get two Arena seasons each, with six cups per season. During each cup, teams will compete for a $10,000 USD prize pool, an increase compared to last year’s AWC. Each finals event will see the top four point-earners per season from both regions battle for a $100,000 USD prize pool.
The first AWC cup begins Feb. 8, Blizzard said. Signups began last week and end on Monday, Jan. 28 at 10 a.m. PDT.
The Asia-Pacific, China, and Latin America regions will also run cups based on the AWC ruleset. Signups for those begin later this year.
Meanwhile, the Mythic Dungeon Invitational is no longer an invitational in 2019. It’s now open to any player with a Blizzard Battle.net account in good standing. Rebranded the Mythic Dungeon International, it will showcase the world’s best dungeon-running teams and will be split into two regions: MDI East (China, Korea, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Australia/New Zealand) and MDI West (North America, Latin America, and Europe).
Like the AWC, it will be broken into cups. Each cup for MDI East and MDI West will stream live on Twitch every weekend across six weeks, Blizzard said. Winners will share a $12,000 prize pool per cup and will receive MDI points. At the end of the season, the best teams from both regions will compete in a cross-regional LAN event for $100,000 USD.
Blizzard is introducing two new in-game toys to help fund all of these prize pools. They go on sale in the spring. The prize pools for the year’s final AWC and MDI LAN events will be announced later this year after the sale.
