Blizzard have decided to hold a small anniversary event for its Hearthstone player base, which will award the players' dedication to grinding out Blizzard's TCG game for over six years with new decks and new Tavern Brawl modes.

The anniversary in question will be named The Spirit of Competition and will run between March 4 -17. During the event, the players will obtain six free card packs by simply logging in. The awarded set of packs will contain two packs from each of the expansions, including Rise of Shadows, Saviors of Uldum, and Descent of Dragons. Players will also get a chance to obtain the exclusive Year of the Dragon commemorative card back.

The Spirit of Competition event will introduce a new chain of Legendary daily quests, so you better make sure you have some free room in your Hearthstone quest log. On the first day of the event, Hearthstone players will obtain a quest which will ask them to play two games in any game mode to obtain a reward in from of a Descent of Dragons card pack.

On March 5, another quest will pop up, asking to play 20 cards. For that, the players will get awarded with a Rise of Shadows and a Saviors of Uldum pack. A day later, the final quest of the Spirit of Competition event will drop, which will require you to take 30 turns in any game mode. After completing the final quest, the player will get awarded with two more Rise of Shadows and a Saviors of Uldum packs.

Besides the Legendary quests, the event will also introduce a revamped version of Tavern Brawls. Starting with the first week of the event, Hearthstone players will get a chance to play in a brawl dubbed as The Burndown – Rekindled, which will be more down the alley for players who enjoy the RNG aspect of the game and not so much for those Hearthstone players who don't enjoy brawls where the deck building is out of their control.

In the Burndown – Rekindled, players will be assigned a randomly generated deck, which they will use to battle other players. After playing the game, the loser will be assigned the winner's deck for the next Tavern Brawl match, while the winner gets to keep the same deck until he/she loses a match.

Although one win alone is enough for the player to obtain the free pack for the week, Burndown – Rekindled has the appeal of replayability. What's more, due to its mechanic, where the loser gets assigned the winner's deck, we are bound to see stronger decks as the week progresses. Burndown – Rekindled will also not allow players to pick their class, which brings a breeze of fresh air into the game, as it provides players with zero control over their experience, and that alone does bring a certain level of charm to it. 

The second brawl, which is set to come next week will be an updated version of the well-known Hall of Champions. In this brawl, players will get a chance to play with the winning decks from past Hearthstone World Championships. While that alone may not seem too exciting, it's worth noting that all the decks will be provided to the players in their original form, so all the cards in the deck will be equally as strong as they were back when the deck was used to win the World Championship. This also means that all cards that were eventually nerfed will be provided to the players in their pre-nerf state.

Although a rather short event, Blizzard really outdid themselves with the features and exciting brawls The Spirit of Competition will bring and it's nice to see Blizzard decided to show some affection to its Hearthstone playerbase, which has been playing the game for almost six years.

Hearthstone will celebrate its sixth birthday on Wednesday, March 11.

The post Hearthstone launches The Spirit of Competition anniversary event appeared first on Esports Guides and Esports News.

Blizzard unveiled their planned expansion for the Hearthstone Masters Tour for 2020 season by doubling the number of events from previous years, each with the minimum US $250,000 prize pool with an added bonus from crowdfunding.

As revealed earlier this week, Blizzard has announced ESL and DreamHack as the operators of the Hearthstone Masters Tour, which will allow the expansion of Masters Tour events from three to six events for the 2020 season. The announcement comes only a couple of days after Blizzard revealed Warcraft III and StarCraft II are both receiving their own ESL Pro Tours as a part of their plan to facilitate non-franchised esports other than World of Warcraft.

https://twitter.com/HSesports/status/1214551008061247488

Masters Tour 2019 featured three events in Las Vegas, Seoul and Bucharest. For 2020 season, however, Blizzard already unveiled four venues, with the last two yet to be decided. The schedule for 2020 Masters Tour looks as follows:

Arlington, Texas (31.1. – 2.2.)

Bali, Indonesia (20.3. – 22.3.)

Jönköping, Sweden (12.6. – 14.6.)

TBD, Asia-Pacific region (July/August)

Montreal, Canada (11.9. – 13.9.)

TBD, Spain (November/December)

While each event will offer half the prize money of those in 2019, the overall prize pool for 2020 Masters Tour is bound to surpass that of 2019 ($1.5 million) with the announced added prize pools via crowdfunding, the specifics of which have not been disclosed to the public yet.

The 2020 season will also feature two Grandmasters seasons, starting in April and followed by the second season in August. Unlike Masters Tour, which is an invite-only affair, the Grandmasters Tour consists of only 48 of the world's best players based on their lifetime earnings, competitive points and other criteria.

Last year, we saw Xiaomeng “Liooon” Li take home the title of GrandMaster with her incredible performance when she defeated the likes of Asia-Pacific GrandMaster and 2017 world champion Chen "tom60229" Wei Lin, Season 1 EMEA GrandMaster champion Chris "Fenomeno" Tsakopoulos, EMEA Season 2 champion Kevin "Casie" Eberlein and Americas Season 2 GrandMasters champion Brian "bloodyface" Eason to become the first female to win Hearthstone GrandMasters event.

The announcement regarding the changes coming to Hearthstone competitive scene for 2020 also unveiled each season will consist of eight weeks of competitive play and will introduce a completely new structure of the tournament. 

Week one through four will rotate 16 players in each of the three regions (Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific) competing and earning points based on their final placements. Those points will then be used to determine the player’s seeding into one of the two eight-team divisions. Week five through seven will consist of round-robin play within the two divisions, which is similar to what was seen in previous GrandMasters seasons. 

In the eighth and final week, the GrandMasters season will enter the playoffs, which will qualify one player from each region to the World Championship, set to take place at the end of the year.

Blizzard also announced a change of the format, which will introduce relegations. At the end of Season 3, three players will be relegated and the top three prize money winners from the first three Master Tours 2020 will move up to the Grandmasters.

All in all, some very positive and encouraging changes are coming for the Hearthstone esports scene. The addition of another GrandMasters season and three new events will fill up the Hearthstone's calendar, giving the fans of the game another reason to look forward to 2020.

The addition of ESL and DreamHack as the operators is another massive step forward, yet it does not come as a shock, considering they already took over both StarCraft II and Warcraft III. Nonetheless, it's nice to see Blizzard are taking the right steps towards developing the game's ecosystem and further expanding the competitive scene of their prized card game.

The post Hearthstone expands its competitive scene for 2020 season appeared first on Esports Guides and Esports News.

Though there are scores of free to play online games on the internet, there are reasons to believe that Hearthstone is one such game that has caught the attention of thousands of players across the world. It has won the admiration and acceptance of both young and old players and players across both male and female genders also have started to develop a liking towards it. Hence whenever there is something that happens with regard to Blizzard, it certainly catches the attention of one and all. The recent China-Hong-Kong-protests took a bad turn and it may start directly impacting Blizzard Entertainment.

Those who know Hearthstone would know that Blizzard Entertainment is the producer of this game and therefore the company has quite a bit to win and lose if there is anything positive or negative happening as far as this Hearthstone and other such games are concerned. It is indeed very shocking when we hear the new that Blizzard has taken the extreme step of suspending three young college Hearthstone players. The suspension is for a period of six months. This is perhaps because they had taken part in a pro-democracy protest in Hong-Kong. The protest became all the more direct with reference to Blizzard Entertainment because it talked about boycotting Blizz and freeing Hong Kong from the clutches of what they consider is dictatorship. This news was known while the players were participating in competition stream that was official in nature.

Vice Games Broke The News

The ban was first reported by VICE Games. It comes within just seven days after Blizzard had to take the extreme step of suspending an official and professional Hearthstone Player. The name of the players was Ng Wai Chung – Blitzchung. The ban was a period of six months. The reason for suspending Chung is not difficult to find out. He was suspended for showing support for the various Hong Kong protestors. This was done when he showed solidarity and support for the thousands of Hong Kong protestors. He expressed his support in an interview. This happened immediately after the Hearthstone Grandmaster Competition.

It Created Heartburns

The incident was not well received and there have been widespread reports of complaints pouring in. This is mainly from the gaming community and many within Blizzard also have expressed their support and solidarity for the freedom movement in Hong Kong. Three other players were also suspended and it was carried out the same way. These college players did not receive a single word about their ban. They came to know about it after their sign up was held up for a few days. The Verge has taken the trouble of reaching out to Blizzard for some additional comment on the developments.

Casey Chamber’s Tweet

It would also be pertinent to mention here that Casey Chambers an important team player sent out a tweet through an email. This tweet was a reproduction from a member belonging to the Hearthstone Team located at some office of Blizzard. The tweet shared information that the ban extended to the entire team. The action was taken because the team has a whole had violated the official rules of the company. Casey Chambers and other members of his teammates had specifically done the mistake of violating important sections of the rules. These rules related to sportsmanship. The rule, seemingly states that the players are supposed to stay away from gesture or action that could be equivalent to insulting a group of people. The rules also state that such actions could incite many others to act in such a way that could be called as mocking, insulting, abusive or even disruptive.

Part of Global Protest

It would be pertinent to mention here that this ban from an entire team is just a part of the overall global protest against the various actions of Blizzard. The incident and the discourse that surrounded it are quite significant and important. This led the President of Blizzard Entertainment to issue an official statement. The President, J. Allen Brack, had to come out with a lengthy response. The statement talked about the ban on Chung was not one of the factors based on which the decision to ban him was taken. He also told that the company’s relationship with China did not influence the decision that they had to take as far as this ban was concerned.

It would be pertinent to mention here that Blizzard is just one of the many organizations that are coming under close scrutiny. The scrutiny is for the relationships that they have with China when the protests in Hong Kong are gathering steam. The protests have been building up since February and the protestors are unhappy about a proposed bill that is being planned to be implemented. If it is implemented, it could mean that residents of Hong Kong could be extradited to China and face trial for organizing and taking part in such protests.

The post Banning of Blizzard Players Hong Kong appeared first on Esports Guides and Esports News.