For anyone that may have missed the announcement over the weekend, Blizzard and CGS(Championship Gaming Series) are teaming up to coordinate the drafting and creation of a World of Warcraft 2v2 Arena League for their upcoming series of televised competitions.
The announcement can be found here.
The details are as follows, as posted by Drysc on the WoW forums:
Drysc wrote:
We're pleased to announce that World of Warcraft will be one of the featured games in this year’s Championship Gaming Series (CGS) World Championship. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade players on the European and North American realms have the opportunity to secure a spot in the upcoming CGS draft, to be held at BlizzCon. Players who are drafted onto CGS teams will earn $30,000 - $100,000 or more annually in salaries and bonuses as professional gamers.
Ladders
All teams participating in 2-vs.-2 Arena System matches in each battlegroup will automatically be entered in the competition. The initial phase of the tournament will last from June 19 to July 3, and players can check the rankings by visiting the battlegroup ladder pages. The top five 2-vs.-2 teams in each battlegroup will be invited to the next round.
Qualifiers
Following the end of the ladder phase of the tournament on July 3, the five top-ranked teams from each battlegroup will be selected to participate in the qualifiers, as discussed above. Each of these teams will be copied to a private realm in the corresponding region (Europe and North America), where they will compete with the other qualifying teams from that region's battlegroups. The qualifier round will run from July 9 to July 17 and will utilize the same ranking system as the ladders. At the end of the qualifier round, the top 8 teams from Europe and North America will be chosen to participate in the live CGS tournament at BlizzCon and subsequent draft.
BlizzCon Tournament and CGS Draft
The top 16 teams from the qualifiers will be flown to BlizzCon to participate in a two-day tournament to determine the best 2-vs.-2 Arena teams in the world. The top 8 teams from Blizzcon will then be flown to the CGS World Championship in Los Angeles, where they will compete for cash prizes and immediately begin their careers as salaried pro gamers at CGS. They will join 1 of 8 CGS teams following the 2008 Draft and then compete professionally for their teams alongside team members who play a variety of games, including World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.
Championship Gaming Series (CGS): <a href="http://www.thecgs.com">http://www.thecgs.com</a>
BlizzCon: <a href="http://www.blizzcon.com">http://www.blizzcon.com</a>
Battlegroup ladder pages: <a href="http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/battlegroups.xml">http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/battlegroups.xml</a>
Of note is the mention of salaries, rather than tournament winnings for top teams. It sounds as if each team will be guaranteed a salary of some sorts, based on placings in each televised competition. This is certainly an interesting step forward for World of Warcraft competitive play, although I'm sure many WoW players consider the choice of 2v2 over the better balanced 3v3 and 5v5 brackets as odd; I know I personally do.
What's your take on it? Is this a good thing for the future of WoW Arenas?
