While the current season of competitive Hearthstone is winding down towards the 2016 World Championship Finals at BlizzCon, Blizzard is already looking forward to next year's edition of the digital card game tournament with massive changes planned.
The coming overhaul was revealed by Blizzard through a post on the official Hearthstone blog, which stated that the changes were based on feedback from players.
Here are the changes that are coming to the Hearthstone Championship Tour starting next year.
Global Season Championships
Blizzard will be combining the regional Season Championships into the global Season Championships, in a bid to have more global matches over next year. The global Season Championships will be taking place in selected host regions, and in locations where fans can attend and cheer for their favorite competitive Hearthstone players in person.
Season Playoffs
Regional Season Playoffs will be replacing the regional Season Preliminaries, with the four regions each sending four representatives to the Season Championships for every season. The Season Playoffs will feature the format of a Swiss Tournament and will still include the local Tavern Heroes. However, it will be more challenging to qualify for them, with deeper prizes to reward a higher number of players participating.
Championships In Line With Standard
Blizzard will be aligning the Hearthstone Championship Tour tournaments with the Standard year and the associated expansions. Next year, the global Season Championships will be held within their own content cycle, and the 2017 World Championship will be held at the end of the next Standard year, which will be in early 2018.
With the current pace of three add-ons released per year, there will be a competitive season tied to the releases, ensuring a fresh meta for succeeding tournaments.
Points Adjustments And Cup Improvements
Players could also expect adjustments to come to the number of points that they can earn in tournaments, with Ranked Play to see a more even distribution with more players. The Cup system will also be seeing improvements.
Bigger Prize Pool
Blizzard also announced a prize pool of more than $2 million for next year's Hearthstone Championship Tour. The World Championships will feature a prize pool of $1 million, Season Championships will feature prize pools of $250,000 each and Season Playoffs will feature prize pools of at least $20,000.
New eSports Programs
Blizzard will also be launching two new eSports programs next year. The first one is the Hearthstone Global Games, which will have teams from various countries going up against each other weekly in a global league. Teams will be made up of the country's player with the most Hearthstone Competitive Points earned, along with three fellow players from the country that will be voted by the community.
The second new program is the Hearthstone Inn-vitationals, which will feature various fun Hearthstone formats with the favorite Hearthstone personalities of players, including celebrities, popular streamers and tournament winners.
Next year's competitive Hearthstone scene is already looking like a great one with these changes and additions. What do you think?
