The next step to the 2016 Hearthstone World Championship will be taken by the Top 8 players of the 2016 European Winter Preliminaries who qualify for the 2016 European Winter Championship. This weekend February 13 to 14 starting at 14:00 CET/8 am EST over 140 players will battle it out on different locations all over Europe. Selected games will be streamed on the official Hearthstone stream on Twitch.
Quick Info
Players: 128 qualified + 20 Tavern Heroes
Prize: Top 8 qualify for the $100,000 Winter Championship
A lot has happened on the way to this tournament that should warrant careful examination by Blizzard staff in order to really make Hearthstone a legitimate esports contender with the level of professionalism associated with such status.
Here are some key points:
Lesson #1: So where can you earn those points, exactly? This has been unclear on several occasions, and even resulted in players missing out on the preliminaries.
Lesson #2: LAN locations and their selection. Players in many countries needed to travel abroad to participate in the preliminaries: Finns, Danes, Irish, Italians...
Lesson #3: What were the rules, again? Players getting disqualified on the tournament site, the surprise ban on pen & paper.
Lesson #4: You want me there how fast? And on Valentine’s Day? There was less than a week from the final confirmation to the event.
Lesson #5: Why did we have a double elimination bracket again? Double elimination without a flipped lower bracket is not a good method to find out a top 8 or top 16, only the top 2. Flipped lower bracket, or better yet, a Swiss tournament, would be a much better way to find the top players.
Lesson #6: Casters, casters. On a positive note, the "So you think you can cast" campaign turned out to be a success!
So...the big names are all out at this point. None will make it through.
From what I've seen, the lesser known players who're winning are essentially a card or two off what you can find on Tempostorm now.
Wonder if this concerns Blizzard? Obviously you want some turnover at the top, but this doesn't seem like a good outcome for their eSports aspirations.
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2016 European Winter Preliminaries
The next step to the 2016 Hearthstone World Championship will be taken by the Top 8 players of the 2016 European Winter Preliminaries who qualify for the 2016 European Winter Championship. This weekend February 13 to 14 starting at 14:00 CET/8 am EST over 140 players will battle it out on different locations all over Europe. Selected games will be streamed on the official Hearthstone stream on Twitch.
Quick Info
Players
Locations
Stream
A lot has happened on the way to this tournament that should warrant careful examination by Blizzard staff in order to really make Hearthstone a legitimate esports contender with the level of professionalism associated with such status.
Here are some key points:
Lesson #1: So where can you earn those points, exactly? This has been unclear on several occasions, and even resulted in players missing out on the preliminaries.
Lesson #2: LAN locations and their selection. Players in many countries needed to travel abroad to participate in the preliminaries: Finns, Danes, Irish, Italians...
Lesson #3: What were the rules, again? Players getting disqualified on the tournament site, the surprise ban on pen & paper.
Lesson #4: You want me there how fast? And on Valentine’s Day? There was less than a week from the final confirmation to the event.
Lesson #5: Why did we have a double elimination bracket again? Double elimination without a flipped lower bracket is not a good method to find out a top 8 or top 16, only the top 2. Flipped lower bracket, or better yet, a Swiss tournament, would be a much better way to find the top players.
Lesson #6: Casters, casters. On a positive note, the "So you think you can cast" campaign turned out to be a success!
I elaborated fully on the subject in a blog post: http://www.kilkku.com/oldguardian/2016/02/lessons-to-be-learned-from-the-2016-hearthstone-championship-tour-europe-winter-season/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/OldGuardian
Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/old_guardian
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Old_GuardianHS
Blog: http://www.kilkku.com/oldguardian/
So...the big names are all out at this point. None will make it through.
From what I've seen, the lesser known players who're winning are essentially a card or two off what you can find on Tempostorm now.
Wonder if this concerns Blizzard? Obviously you want some turnover at the top, but this doesn't seem like a good outcome for their eSports aspirations.