Blizzard took to the forums early this morning to announce the Starcraft II and World of Warcraft World Championships taking place in Shanghai over the 16th to the 18th of November.
The Starcraft championship will comprise a group stage with eight groups of four players each, with the seeding somewhat obscurely described as conditional, random selection. A maximum of two players from the same continent can be in each group, and every group must have players from at least three continents. The 4 players of each group are split into two pairs and will play each other in best of 3 matches. After the group stage is complete, the sixteen remaining players will be put in a single elimination bracket. Seeding will be determined by the group stage. The matches are best of 5 until the finals, which will be a best of 7.
Warcraft’s offering has a wider scope, with two of China’s top guild, Stars and Supreme Quicksand taking each other on in both Challenge Mode Dungeons and a live raid. Each guild must select a single team and class composition to use throughout the event and will need to be prepared to take on Shado-Pan Monastery, Scarlet Halls, and Stormstout Brewery. Final times will be tallied to determine the winning guild.
The live raid will also be a competition between Stars and Supreme Quicksand, the latter of which beat out all comers in China to compete against Stars, with a full Dragon Soul heroic clear completed in just 1 hour, 13 minutes, and 59 seconds., which would also have put them ahead of both Method and Vodka in their race, which Method won with a time of 1 hour 21 minutes. Stars and Supreme Quicksand will face off in Heroic Mogu’shan Vaults, with the race livestreamed ’til the bitter end!
Saving the best ’til last, the WoW Arena championships will feature 10 teams, one from each continent. We already know the teams from the US and the EU. The US will field Team EG, featuring Azael (warlock), Talbadar (shadow priest) and Cdew (restoration shaman) and Blizzcon 2011 finalists Skill Capped with Snutz (warlock), Venruki (mage) and Kollektiv (restoration shaman).
From the EU, the competing teams are Yaspresents, comprised of Another (DK), Zuniyaki (priest) and Cara (paladin) and a bizarre team who could be this year’s OMG, I’m Just Being Honest, with Swapxy enhancement shaman, Boetar (restoration shaman) and Blukstack (warlock). We haven’t been able to find much information on the teams from other regions, but it’s fairly likely that OMG will return in some incarnation given their Blizzcon 2011 victory against Skillcapped.
It should be noted that the tournament, like the invitationals, will be played with gear and talents as seen on the Tournament Realms, so season 9 gear, and Cataclysm talents and specializations.
The entire event will be livestreamed on battle.net.
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