An MMO as an esport? This is how it works with World of Warcraft

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The legendary Blizzard MMO is also represented in the esports business. There’s even a lot of prize money to be won here.

The Warcraft universe is one of the oldest video game franchises of all time. In 2004, World of Warcraft, probably the most prominent representative of the series, was released. Although the game is now almost 20 years old, there are still almost five million players with an active subscription in 2022. Most of them, however, are rather less familiar with the esport scene. Yet there is an annual world championship and other major competitions.

How does WoW esports work?

The majority of Esports in World of Warcraft is made up of the so-called Arena Mode. In this PvP mode, two teams compete against each other in 3-on-3 on a designated map. The players put together their team composition from the twelve different classes of the MMO. Among them are warrior, paladin, druid and rogue.

Each team usually consists of a damage dealer, a healer and a third flexible character. Each has different abilities, both offensively and defensively, and must use these optimally against the opponents in battle. The team that can defeat all three opposing players first wins a round. In the best-of-five format, winning three rounds secures the match.

Then there is the wide-ranging PvE part of World of Warcraft. Here, the well-known raids (boss fights) are the focus. These are speed competitions, so-called speed runs. The first person to defeat a boss wins the “World First Kill”.

The History of WoW Esports

Official World of Warcraft Esports competitions have been taking place since 2007. The first tournaments took place at the World Series of Video Games (WSVG) in Wuhan, Louisville, Dallas and Toronto. A year later, a separate tournament for WoW was founded with the MLG Pro Circuit. By 2010, this had been held ten times in the USA.

Furthermore, the game was also represented several times at the Intel Extreme Masters. Well-known organisations such as Fnatic, SK Gaming, Mousesports or Evil Geniuses were there. To this day, the best teams in Europe and North America compete against each other in an annual world championship at BlizzCon.

One million dollars in prize money in 2022

The year 2022 is special for World of Warcraft in that it will be the fifteenth edition of the Arena World Championship. The small anniversary also marks the final season under the Shadowlands expansion.

Since the beginning of the year, all participating teams have been competing for the extraordinary prize pool totalling 700,000 dollars. The Grand Finals will take place on 16 and 17 July and will crown the best PvP team of the season.

The second major event series in World of Warcraft, which has been held regularly since 2017, is called Mythic Dungeon International. Here, all PvE players meet in an exciting competition for 300,000 dollars. The team that completes the dungeon the fastest wins the title. The grand finale in this discipline will take place from 8 to 10 July.

World of Warcraft may not be one of the biggest and most prominent representatives in the esports business, but it still has a right to exist. In the gerne of MMOs, the game is definitely one of the leading drivers.