The silence has finally been broken. Blizzard Entertainment has announced the rest of its plans for Starcraft 2 World Championship Series (WCS) for 2019.
Right now, WCS Winter is currently underway and kicking off the new season pinning some of the best Starcraft 2 players in the world against each other. After the top six from both the Americas and Europe duke it out at the end of the Winter circuit, WCS Spring and Summer will be next, each bringing live events to Kiev, Ukraine. The last circuit event of the year will be WCS Fall which will bring an event to DreamHack Montreal. More details, including qualification events and ticket information, will be revealed at a later date,
The Global Starcraft League (GSL) is also back for 2019. This will include three seasons as well as two Super Tournaments. GSL vs. The World will also be coming back and will be the second global event of 2019.
All of this will culminate at the WCS Global Finals at the end of the year. The best players from both the WCS Circuit and GSL will compete with a prize pool of more than $500,000. This brings the entire prize pool for the year to $2 million globally. Here’s a nice little image showing how the prize pool is spread out:
Lastly, residency requirements have been reverted back to the rules that were in place in 2018. The rule change that was in question was restricting players competing in Season 1 of GSL from partaking in Season 1 of WCS Challenger to limit the number of players in the Korean tournament. However, that led to everyone but one registered Circuit player to exit GSL. This rollback will go into effect for Season 2 and 3.
Last year, the Finnish Zerg pro, Joona “Serral” Sotala, made history as the first non-Korean Starcraft 2 WCS champion after defeating Stats in the Grand Finals during BlizzCon 2018. Before the match, I talked to Serral where he said he was “very confident” going into the Finals.
If you think you have what it takes to be a Starcraft 2 pro, you can pick up the game right now for PC.
The post Starcraft 2 Shares Rest of WCS Plans for 2019 by Michael Ruiz appeared first on DualShockers.