NetEase is the exclusive distributor over the China market of the game developer Blizzard Entertainment. The distributor revealed its plan for the year 2019 at a conference held in Suzhou, China. The plan covers many esport games of Blizzard, namely Warcraft III, Starcraft II, Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm.
Partnership director of joint operations team of NetEase and Blizzard in China, Ye Pang, announced the intention to develop a competing system for all esport games of Blizzard. There will be tournaments around the world, different teams from different countries, and a global scoring system. With this system, the company hopes to provide the player a chance to develop themselves from amateurs to professional ones.
Especially for Warcraft III, NetEase invests up to ¥5M ($720K) for the prize pool of competitions throughout the year. This should be a sound investment in China because as legendary as Warcraft III is, it is now mostly played in China only. Warcraft III already has the Gold series, and now it is added with the team competitions feature. The old Warcraft III Champions League Series (WC3L) is now replaced by this new system. It seems like Blizzard kept its promise at the BlizzCon 2018 of an updated version of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne in 2019.
For Hearthstone, the prize will be a McLaren supercar instead of cash in the 2019 CN vs. EU tournament. In 2018, the prize winner of an Aston Martin supercar is Thijs “Thijs” Molendijk from G2 Esports, who won the title 3 years in a row.
About Hearthstone 3v3, its offline competition will be included in the Gold Series league of NetEase. The tournament last 8 weeks each season, and every weekend will be the regular season days. NetEase even took it into a new level where the matches will be held in 8 different cities.
The Heroes of the Storm competitions will be divided into 2 seasons in 2019. The competition system of Starcraft II will be updated, and foreign gamers will be invited to challenge the Chinese ones.