The success of the previous Hearthstone world competition has prompted Blizzard to raise the pool prize from a measly $250,000 to a more respectable $1 million in the 2016 event. The game developer announced the raising of the prize money as well as other important details about the upcoming world championship on Wednesday.

Like Us on Facebook

According to the Hearthstone official website, the world competition will be divided into four stages, Winter, Spring, Summer and the Finals. The winter season will start this December until February 2016. Spring competition will start in March until May, while the summer contests will run from June up to July. The last stage, which is the World Championship event, will end in November at the 2016 Blizzcon.

Aside from dividing the world competition into four stages, there will also be regional championship tournament at the end of the first three stages. Participating Hearthstone players around the world will be grouped into four territories namely, Asia-Pacific, America, China and Europe. All the regional championships will be held under the same format with the exception of China.

The winner of each event in the Asia-Pacific, America and European regional championship will qualify for the final event. One additional player from each of the three mentioned regions will also join the finals provided that they win an October Last Call Invitational tournament. The 12 lucky Hearthstone players will then be joined by four more players from China. The 16 finalists will battle it out at the Blizzcon event in November next year.

The format of the competition has also gone some alterations from last year. The 2016 Hearthstone event still enables players to get invited, but they will have to play the same opening game as all the others to ensure that everyone is given a fighting chance.

Blizzard also announced that a prize pool of of $100,000 will be given to the winners of the stage competition in every region which will bring the total prize money in the Hearthstone completion to $2 millon.

The 2016 Hearthstone World Championship kicked off on Thursday in Sweden at the Dreamhack Winter esports. Hearthstone players who wish to enter the competitions can visit the Hearthstone official site for more details.

TagsHearthstone, 2016 Hearthstone world championship, Blizzcon, blizzard, hearthstone regional competetion, battlenet, Hearthstone World Competition 2015, Hearthstone World Competition 2016