Blizzard is trying to build an esport discipline out of Hearthstone, organizing a huge competition next year with a sweet 1 million prize.

2016 Hearthstone Championship finals will be held in 2016, but the first event in the series of competitions has already started. There are month of competitions ahead. Finalists will fight during the Hearthstone World Championship for a $1 million prize pool. This is a huge pool for Hearthstone: four times the $250,000 Blizzard gave for the 2015 Hearthstone championship. The studio also want to spend $100,000 for each of the nine Season Championships.

Obviously it means that Hearthstone will most definitely become the next esport discipline from Blizzard. This game most definitely has a lot of potential. It’s number one in the $1.2 billion card-battle game sector and makes about $20 million every month. The tournaments and events the company will hold the more money players will most likely spend on card packs and new adventures.

Some esport experts are not content with the way Blizzard is developing the game. Creators of Hearthstone still haven’t been able to bring balance to the game. A lot of professional sportsmen are still fighting with the same decks and the way these competitions go are sometimes extremely predictable to a knowledgeable player.

Blizzard might be able to make the battles more interesting by providing more formats. We expect to see more competitions with 9-deck matches, Last Hero Standing battles and so on.

Either way It’s great to see Blizzard investing so much in esport and building a

Source: venturebeat.com