Read about Blizzard's plans for Heroes of the Storm esports in 2017 on the Heroes of the Storm esports website and here at Gosugamers.
As detailed in the articles and the video, the four major regions are now getting leagues. Each major region will have a league with eight teams. Blizzard will pay all teams participating in the league $100,000 for players participating the entire year. For a team that only participates before the Mid-Season Brawl or only after the Mid-Season Brawl, it's reasonable to assume they will be paid $50,000.
Qualifying for Leagues
In a drastic change from this year, where most money earned in Heroes of the Storm esports is prize money, 2017 compensation is going to come predominantly from Blizzard salaries for participating in leagues (other than sponsorship/streaming revenues that players get on the side). This means qualifying for leagues is incredibly important to teams, so let's look at qualifying process for the leagues for North America and Europe (we'll find out more about the process for Korea and China at a later date).
The two teams that represented the region at BlizzCon have all gotten free seeding into the leagues, so that leaves 6 spots up for grabs. There will be 3 qualifiers, with two teams qualifying for the leagues from each qualifier. The qualifiers are single elimination best of 3 matches until the semi-finals, where the teams will play a best of 5 match and the winners will qualify for the region's league.
In order to get the strongest level of competition within the leagues and to do right by the players, it would be ideal to make sure that the best two teams from each qualifier qualify for the league. The problem is, single elimination brackets cannot determine who the two best teams are. For all we know, they played each other in the qualifier and thus only one of those two teams qualified.
You might say that a team had 3 chances to qualify and they didn't, so too bad. There are multiple problems with this line of thinking. What if some teams can't participate in all the qualifiers due to members of the team having prior commitments? What about the teams in the final qualifier - could a team who really wasn't one of the best 8 teams in the region qualify due to the bracket?
There's really only one way to fix that problem: make the final 4 of each qualifier double elimination. I know Blizzard did it this way to save time. But the quality of competition of the leagues is too important an issue to be left to chance - Blizzard should do their utmost to ensure that we truly have the best 8 teams in each region's league.
Regional Clashes
After 5 weeks of league play, there will be an Eastern Clash and a Western Clash. The Western Clash is made up of the top 3 NA teams and the top 3 EU teams (by current league standing), as well as the top Latin American team and the top Australia and New Zealand team. Similarly, the Eastern Clash is made up of the top 3 Korean teams and the top 3 Chinese teams, with Southeast Asia and Taiwan both getting a spot.
The regional clashes are a brilliant idea. They accomplish several important things:
- They provide more opportunities for teams from minor regions to experience playing against teams from major regions, which gives them valuable experience and insight that they can use to improve their quality of play.
- More cross-regional play exposes all teams to different metas and styles of play. This shake up after 5 weeks of league play could see teams returning from the clashes with new ideas for both drafting and approaching the game strategy wise.
- Regional rivalries are exciting for viewers. Raising the viewer count is definitely a goal of HGC 2017, and these clashes are a good step towards making sure all regions' fans are invested in their regional Heroes of the Storm teams. Right now, fans often turn on their regional teams when they are perceived as not having any chance of winning the major international events. This isn't conducive to a vibrant e-sports scene.
Qualifying for the International events
The top 2 teams from each region qualify for the Mid Season Brawl, and the top 3 teams from each region qualify for the HGC Finals. The top team in each region after the end of the league qualifies directly to the Mid Season Brawl, while the #2-#6 teams in the region participate in a stepladder format playoff. Similarly, the HGC Finals sees the top 2 teams in the region after the end of the league qualify directly for the HGC Finals, and the #3-#6 teams in the region participate in a stepladder format playoff.
The brilliance of this system lies in the auto-qualification of the top finisher(s) in the region to the international event that follows. Without that, no format other than Double Elimination really ensures that you are getting the best teams of the region into the following international event, and Double Elimination is time-consuming in the sense that a lot of matches have to be played in order to determine who those teams are. This way, there is only one team that needs to be determined from the playoffs, and multiple formats that are much more time-efficient are viable ways to determine the final seed to the following international event.
Another huge benefit of the auto-qualification and step ladder format playoff lies in the emphasis on having a good performance during the regular season. If they simply had a league and then a standard playoffs, teams wouldn't care about their finish as long as it was in the top 6. This would negatively impact game quality during the league and lead to hiding strats being a viable tactic. Now, matches late in the season are likely to have almost playoff-like atmospheres, as teams go hard to attempt to lock up an automatic international berth or a higher seed so they have to play fewer matches during the playoffs.
It's also nice that the HGC Finals will see the number of teams from each major region increase from 2 to 3. This BlizzCon still saw many top level teams miss out on participating, namely Misfits from Europe and MVP Miracle/Tempo Storm from Korea. All fans and players benefit when the top teams get to participate in the major international events.
Remuneration for Pro Heroes Esports players
This year, more than $4 million US was up for grabs in Heroes of the Storm events around the world. What does it look like in the coming year?
On first glance, the announcement that teams in the leagues were going to be paid $100,000 annual salaries sounds like Blizzard just made a massive investment in Heroes of the Storm esports. The facts, however, suggest that this is really more of a redistribution of the current Blizzard investment in Heroes esports rather than a massive new investment that it was hyped as:
- There are 4 major regions that have a league consisting of 8 teams, so that is 32 teams earning $100,000 (well, assuming that there are no relegations; otherwise there will be more teams but Blizzard's total payout will not change) for a total of $3.2 million US in salary obligations.
- Prize Pool money is way down, unsurprisingly. So far, we have a total of 4 clashes, each with a $100,000 prize pool and a Midseason Brawl with a $250,000 prize pool, for a total of $650,000 US.
- The Prize Pool for the HGC Finals has not been announced yet.
So is this a good thing for players?
Well, the security of a guaranteed paycheque for the top 8 teams in every major region is great for the health of the overall scene. This allows players to feel more secure in dedicating their time to playing and getting better at the game, leading to higher quality overall play. We should definitely see regions become deeper with more quality teams due to this change.
However, this change also means that there is very little top teams can do to greatly increase their earnings. This is a concern, particularly since teams like MVP Black have in the past voiced thoughts towards leaving the game. Since the HGC Finals Prize pool hasn't been announced yet, it represents a major opportunity for Blizzard to shore up a crucial concern about rewarding top performing teams in Heroes esports. Maybe we'll even get a chance to contribute to the prize pool!
Korea
One of Heroes esports main problems in 2016 was shaky production of esports events, as downtime in between sets was a major flashpoint before Summer and has again stepped into the spotlight during BlizzCon. While most productions of Heroes esports has been hit or miss, OGN has proven to be adept at Heroes production time in and time out during the Spring Global Championship and particularly, the 3 Superleagues for Korea.
Despite that, there is no word that OGN will be producing Heroes events in 2017, which is a big shame. This is particularly concerning considering that OGN is one of the main ways people in Korea watch eSports, so we have to wonder whether Korean viewership will be affected if OGN doesn't return to producing Heroes events in 2017. It's not like they can realistically watch the BlizzHeroes twitch channel, as that will undoubtedly be in English.
I know that getting all leagues on one channel is a priority for Blizzard, but in this case, they should recognize that Korea as a region has different infrastructure than other regions regarding esports, and make allowances for that so that the Heroes scene in Korea is as healthy as possible. It certainly sounds like Blizzard will do so with China and Netease, so why not with Korea?
In Closing
Generally, Blizzard's plans for Heroes of the Storm esports in 2017 is a promising step in the right direction. There are lots of good ideas that should help Heroes grow as an esport in the coming year. However, there are also concerning developments and issues that will need to be resolved if Heroes is to become as successful as it can be. Let's hope that 2017 will represent a massive step forward in success for Heroes of the Storm esports!
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