14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Blizzard working on Heroes of the Storm is announcing that the eSports circuit associated with the Multiplayer Online Battle Area title is being improved in 2016, and the most interesting addition is the Global Championship Circuit, which will feature the best teams from all over the world.
Fans of the game will be able to pick their favorite teams from Australia and New Zealand, China, Europe, Korea, Latin America, North America, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan and there are three full seasons for them to try and dominate, with more than 4 million dollars (3.7 million Euro) to battle over.
The official announcement delivers more information on the various events associated with the Global Championship Circuit for Heroes of the Storm and explains how gamers will be able to watch the matches via streaming solutions.
It seems that most of the preliminaries will take place online and that players will have to travel to a variety of locations to take part in the finals, increasing the presence of Heroes of the Storm in the countries where the MOBA genre needs a popularity boost.
Blizzard wants to make the Global Championship Circuit an important on-going competition and says that more information about the summer and fall seasons will be offered all through the year.
The new competition is part of a wider plan to increase the eSports exposure for video games published by Activision and to attract a wider audience for the biggest matches and the most talented teams.
Heroes of the Storm is also getting regular drops of new content
Blizzard has recently announced that Greymane is now live in the MOBA, with gamers able to play as a powerful assassin who can shift between its human and Worgen forms to take out his opponents.
The character comes complete with his own mount and a variety of cosmetic tweaks for those who want to take out enemies in style.
The company is also offering new deals weekly and is introducing a number of other tweaks for the game via smaller patches, trying to improve the overall balance of the experience based on the information offered by the fan community.
Activision has recently acquired Major League Gaming and all its assets to get a solid foundation on which to build future eSports projects, although it has not offered details on their exact nature and on the associated prize pool.
Heroes of the Storm is designed to be the most approachable MOBA on the market at the moment and needs to offer a variety of new content and solid mechanics to compete with League of Legends from Riot Games and with DOTA 2 from Valve.
The International remains the tournament with the biggest prize pool because of the way fans are asked to fund it, but no info about its 2016 edition has been revealed yet.
Activision is also running a big World Championship for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 at the moment and is expected to announce big eSports plans for Hearthstone, Starcraft 2 and other titles.