Shadowlands has been one of the more popular WoW expansions, and this really carried over to the esports side of WoW as well. Already at launch, Shadowlands vastly outperformed the previous Battle for Azeroth… by 34% going by user numbers, and 50% by earnings.
So, it’s no wonder then, that this season’s AWC events are also highly anticipated – and naturally, that includes the first of the two AWC EU/NA circuits we’ll get to see this year. As always, the four cup qualifiers have already concluded – all that’s left now is the actual circuits, and of course the Finals. Following that will be the second set of circuits – once again, a regular season, then followed by the Grand Finals ending the AWC year for the EU and NA.
The online-only tournament will be broadcast at 10am PT every Saturday and Sunday between March 20th and April 18th, with only one break – the Easter weekend. In other words, it’s a four-week round robin 3v3 fight. Streams will be available in English, German, Russian and LATAM Portuguese.
A lot of $ incentives
For the first season, however, these round robin/double-elim tournaments boast a prize pool of $160k per region – so 320k in total. 8 teams per region are participating, including big names like Cloud9, Golden Guardians, and Method EU.
Four of the eight teams from each region will get to move to the finals of the Circuit events – and of course, only the top teams will receive a split of the prize money. Overall, throughout the season, the prize pool is even bigger – the Grand Finals at the end of the year especially up the overall Blizzard-funded prize fund to almost a million USD. To be more precise, $900.000 are up for grabs.
The tournament
As mentioned, the overall competition takes a round-robin format, with each team competing against each other team, and finally the finals taking on a double-elim format. Each team is allowed to swap rosters for free once per season – any further changes mean a deduction of 50% of their AWC point pool when they swap – in other words, it’ll either happen very early on or not at all, since a team could put themselves out of the race entirely if they ended up losing half their points.
This will be the 14th iteration of the 3v3 AWC program – and just like before, absolutely anyone could sign their team up to compete prior to the qualifiers happening. Of course, by now, the participants are determined – however, the fact that any player can take part in the event series is one of its points of appeal.
If you are a fan of WoW and follow the competitive scene of this title, we remind you that many bookmakers offer odds for WoW tournaments and by following our advice you could win money by betting on esports.