StarCraft II World Championship Series

Despite the fact that StarCraft: BroodWar gained immense popularity as an e-sports discipline in South Korea, Blizzard Entertainment had no direct benefits from this, apart from advertising the game. During the launch of StarCraft II, part of Blizzard's strategy was to establish control over e-sports: the game lacked the ability to play on the local network, so all tournament games were held on Blizzard servers, and the tournament itself was regulated by a license agreement. With the support of GomTV, which received exclusive rights to broadcast the tournament, the Global StarCraft II League was organized; in the rest of the world, many major third-party tournaments have sprung up, including Major League Gaming , North American Star League , IGN ProLeague, DreamHack, and ESL . Blizzard did not interfere in the organization of the tournaments, however, they charged a fee for holding them. This approach caused a lot of problems: tournaments varied greatly in quality and organization methods; often overlap in time, competing for spectator attention; in addition, without a single rating, it was impossible to determine the best player in the world. By 2012-2013, this led to the decline of StarCraft II as an e-sports discipline ^[1] .

In 2012, the Battle.net World Championship Series was announced, part of which was the StarCraft II World Championship , named the 2012 StarCraft II World Championship Series . In 28 countries, national tournaments were organized, the winners of which passed to the continental finals, and then to the world final ^{[1] [2] [3]} , held in Shanghai ^[4] .

In 2013, after the release of Heart of the Swarm , with the support of leading eSports organizations, a single StarCraft II rating system was introduced. In the three largest eSports regions - Korea, America and Europe - tournaments were organized, divided into seasons according to the GSL format. Occupying high places in e-sports competitions - both in WCS events and in third-party tournaments - participants received WCS points; The 16 players who scored the most points for the year received the right to speak at the final. The final of 2013 was held at the renewed BlizzCon exhibition (the exhibition was not held in 2012) and was broadcast on Twitch as part of a partnership agreement ^{[1] [4]} .

Because WCS was positioned as a global competition, Blizzard wanted to encourage the flight of e-sportsmen to neighboring regions. This led to the fact that American and European competitions were flooded with Korean e-sportsmen, who played much better than the rest of the participants. In 2013, 15 of the 16 final participants were Koreans; in 2014, there were no finalists from other countries at all. This alignment, on the one hand, caused a decrease in interest in competitions among Western audiences, and on the other, a decline in e-sports in South Korea, where there was a massive outflow of talent. In addition, the glut of regions with “official” competitions led to the closure of independent tournaments, which, in turn, led to a decrease in fees for e-sportsmen and the closure of e-sports teams ^[1] .

In 2015, a regional block was introduced, which significantly reduced the number of Korean participants in European and American competitions. In addition, it was possible to calibrate in regions that had previously been avoided by major competitions — Latin America and Oceania ^[1] .

In 2016, with the release of the new addition to the game, Legacy of the Void , the WCS rating system was divided into two: WCS Korea and the WCS open rating ( English WCS Circuit Standings ). WCS Korea is designed for top-level players and is therefore open to all comers, and WCS Circuit Standings is designed for regional tournament stars around the world and is protected by a regional lock. At the end of the year, 8 players from WCS Korea and 8 players from WCS Circuit Standings received the right to participate in the final championship: from the side of Korea - two winners of the Global StarCraft II League , two winners of StarCraft II StarLeague and 4 players with the highest rating, and from the open side WCS ranking - winners of the WCS winter, spring and summer championships, as well as 5 players with the highest rating ^[5] .

In 2017, the system did not undergo significant changes. With the help of DreamHack , 4 tournaments in the open ranking were organized, the winners of which received an invitation to the final. In the Korean region, Intel Extreme Masters in Gyeonggi-do and three GSL seasons became qualifiers. In addition, the winner of the Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice received an invitation to the finals, participation in which was open to both regions. The remaining places were distributed among the players with the highest ratings in their regions. The final tournament, as in previous years at BlizzCon , was organized with the support of the Electronic Sports League ^[6] .

A significant innovation in 2017 is the introduction of a trophy fund ( eng. War Chests ) - purchased items in StarCraft II , 25% of the proceeds of which are used to increase the prize pool ^{[6] [7] [8]} . In addition, support began for broadcasting competitions in regional languages ^[1] .

The system remained the same in 2018 ^[9] . In 2019, the system underwent minor changes: the division into open and Korean ratings remained, however, one of the tournaments was replaced with the online tournament WCS Winter ^[10] .