by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

Not long ago, Blizzard announced details for their 2016 Hearthstone World Championship Tour. This announcement brought news of a revamped point structure, but maybe the most important point of all is the presence of 3 different huge region-locked events. While China will be left to do its own thing; The Winter, Spring, and Summer Championships, will be played on each of the remaining 3 main areas of competition: The Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

I couldn’t be more excited about these news. Creating additional events will open opportunities for lesser known players to jump into the limelight, and it might just help kickstart some of the smaller regions that have been lagging a bit behind.

But not everyone is as happy as I am about this. A featured article over at Tempo Storm, questions whether Region Locked Finals are actually good. In this Article, while the author recognizes some of the benefits of region-lock. The counter argument is that Europe has long been the strongest region, and by region-locking finals, and allowing people from all regions to qualify to the World Championships, you are just diluting the quality of the main event. Apparently, this will cause the Global Finals at Blizzcon to be plagued by the lesser players of those sub-par non-European regions. And while I tend to agree that Europe is a bit ahead of the other regions, it is nowhere near as big of a gap as this article makes it out to be.

Understanding Competitive Hearthstone

One of the key things to understand here, is that Hearthstone is not a mechanics based game. Hearthstone doesn’t need any manual skill, reflex, or any sort of advanced physical interaction. Hearthstone is a thinking man game, if you can think of a play, you can make it. There aren’t many limitations on who can become a great Hearthstone player, all you need to succeed at the highest level is a good level of intelligence, and more importantly, lots and lots of game time.

More importantly, without having to spend time developing the precise mechanical skills that professionals of other games such as, Starcraft, DotA, and Counter Strike. Hearthstone Players can use all of their precious practice time to develop a great understanding of the strategic portion of the game. While Starcraft players will have to juggle their intense micro, with maintaining their economies, hitting precise timings, and knowing which army compositions will be more effective against their particular enemy in the current map. Hearthstone Players benefit from their game being a bit more one-dimensional, its only natural to believe that you would be able to get to the highest level of Hearthstone much quicker than you would in those other aforementioned games.

This means that any sort of region gap, can be more easily mended. I honestly believe that region-lock, and the new championship structure will be of major help towards fixing this issue. But how will it help exactly? Well, lets look at another key factor, variance.

Hearthstone is a game of wild variance. Sure, there’s enough skill involved so that the better players will consistently get great results; those better players will rise to the top, consistently placing well in events. But there’s also enough luck involved that in any given day, a lesser player can upset a Hearthstone Master just by drawing better, or getting the better of RNG. Because of that luck, you need a lot of repetition to really prove that you belong in the upper echelon of card-slingers. A few wins in a row can be considered a fluke, and if you really want your name to stick out there, you need repetition, you need consistency. But can all players afford to spend the required amount of time playing Hearthstone? I mean, if you really want to maximize your skill you will need to master not only one, but several decks; you’ll need learn lots of match-ups, and practice them over and over.

How to make a great Hearthstone Player

It’s no surprise that the players that are able to support themselves just by playing, or those who can support themselves thanks to previous ventures, have consistently managed to pull off results. Sure, maybe having Global Seasonal Finals would give us a slightly better player pool for the World Championships. But the current system is expertly crafted to give more opportunities for players of all regions to better support themselves through gaming, and this is what will help improve the level of all regions.

I mean its no coincidence that both the best players, and the best, biggest, and highest paying events are all in Europe. And while its easy to argue that those events are happening there because of the quality of their player base. I’m more inclined to believe that its the presence of these events that is allowing the Europe Region to raise its skill level at a faster rate. A vicious cycle of sorts, better players lead to better events, better events lead to better players. Its the prize pools, exposure, and sponsorships that allows these digital gladiators to put all of their time into Hearthstone, and grind their way into consistent results. It is all these opportunities that allow these talented individuals to shine even brighter, and make this game a full-time job.

Now the only thing left to tackle, is the fact that “Iron Sharpens Iron”. How are players from other regions are ever going to improve if they never face their European overlords? Well, it stands to reason that tournament organizers will want to have the WC-bound players in their events. Maybe the winner of the Americas Winter Championship will be from Latin America; maybe he’ll get invited to one of those big money, big name invitationals. Maybe the Asia-Pacific Spring Champion will also start making more appearances in those big international events held in Europe. Maybe even the runner-ups will get enough exposure to eventually get an invite. Or maybe the exposure will help them grow their fan base, and get into bigger, better teams.

So yes, Region Locked Season Finals are a good thing. Investing resources into developing every region can only be looked at as a huge positive, and something that will continuously help improve the level of players throughout the world.

My body is ready for the 2016 Hearthstone World Championship Tour. Is yours as well? If not, what are you waiting for?

This is going to be great!