Hearthstone World Championship 2022: A look into the World of Hearthstone Esports

With the Hearthstone Season concluding soon with the Hearthstone Masters Fall Championship 2022, let's look at the Hearthstone World Championship and the Hearthstone Esports Scene.

Hearthstone Esports: A Retrospect

Hearthstone is Blizzard Entertainment's online collectible card game. The game's esports scene has tournaments with prize money as high as $1 million. Blizzard conducts the tournaments throughout the year for the game.

The game also became an Esports with the launch. BlizzCon 2013 was the first Hearthstone tournament. The tournament was only a few months after the release of Hearthstone's closed beta and before its official release. Eight players played in the tournament. Daniel Ray Stemkoski, aka Artosis, won the tournament and was crowned the Grandmaster of the Hearth.

With the game's official release in 2014, multiple tournaments followed. The inaugural world championship was part of the BlizzCon 2014 with a total prize pool of $250,000 which followed the last hero standing format. James "Firebat" Kostesich defeated Wang "Tiddler Celestial" Xieyu in the finals to become the first World Champion and earn $100,000.

2015 saw the introduction of Open Amateur tournaments in Hearthstone, and the final 16 players played Blizzard events to garner points in the World Championship. Blizzard also introduced region locks in 2015, with four players from Europe, Asia, the Americas and the LATAM playing at the World Championships.

2016 introduced the division of a single season into four seasons and Seasonal Playoff tournaments. Multiple sponsors poured in, and the conclusive World Championship had a prize pool of $1 Million. The 2017 and 2018 years followed the 2016 format.

In 2019, Blizzard replaced the previously used tour system with Three variations of a Single Class deck called Specialist. The Grandmaster season 2 changed it to the four-deck ban system used today. 2019 saw two world championships, with the second tournament being the one followed now.

The defending Champion and the winner of the 2021 Hearthstone World Championship is Japanese Wataru "Posesi" Ishibashi, who defeated the 2020 Champion Kento "Glory" Sato.

World Championships 2022 Format:

Blizzard will announce the place and date of the World Championships four weeks before the event. Only invited players can play in the World Championship, which is at Blizzard's discretion.

Four players from Grandmaster Tournaments, together with four players invited from China's Gold series and Eight players from the Master Season Championship, will compete in the 2022 World Championship.

The tournament format will be announced by Blizzard and communicated to the players four weeks before the tournament. The World Championship matches will be best-of-five, 4-deck Conquest with a ban phase format tournaments and will be four Dual Elimination Groups in a Single Elimination Structure. Blizzard will provide Travel and Lodging for the players participating in the World Championship.

The winner of the World Championship will win a total of $100K, second place finish will get $70k, followed by $50k each for 3rd-4th, and $30k each for 5th-8th.

World Championship 2022 Schedule:

The Hearthstone World Championship will feature 16 players. The tournament will be three days long starting on 16th December and ending on 18th December. The first day will feature the group matches, Group Winner matches and Group Elimination matches. The second day will feature the Decider matches. The final day will feature Single Elimination playoffs between the top players. The action will start at 6:00 AM and end at 6:00 PM GMT.

All the matches will be online, and you can follow them on the Hearthstone Youtube Channel. For the update on the participants of the World Championship and all the other details, follow the Hearthstone Esports Twitter.

Image source: Blizzard Entertainment