The Warcraft 3 ESL Pro Tour 2020 reinvigorated the competitive scene, and while most of the season went under the radar with only dedicated audiences following, the season finale saw viewers tune in from all corners of the globe.
Three new champions were crowned yesterday, and all eyes are now turned to the new season and potentially a Global Final at the end of it.
Warcraft III is far from a new game – originally released in 2002, the game has seen plenty of new releases since then – including the 2020 remaster that, to put it politely, didn’t do so well. Still, the esports side of the popular game is still going strong – in fact, it’s trending up, even after all this time. The ESL Pro Tour 2020 season has quietly chugged along during 2020 with only the final event left for 2021.
The final event was split into three regions – America, Europe, and Asia and regional finals were played yesterday March 7th in an 11 hour long streaming marathon featuring semifinal and final matches from all three regions.
Dmitry “Happy” Kostin, Park “Lyn” Joon and Abdulaziz “CrunCher” Abed were the champions in Europe, Korea and North America respectively. All three players are legends in the competitive WC3 scene, and each victory brought us closer to the memory of how big Warcraft 3 was a decade ago.
The esports betting favorites won in 2 out of the 3 Regional Finals, making the even fairly predictable for punters. Below you can watch the entire 11-hour long stream of the Grand Finals. Additionally, you can look for individual match ups at the official ESL Archives Youtube channel.
Over in Asia, Chinese and South Korean WC3 legends battled for a title that reunited 5 former WCG Champions. Infi, Lawliet, Fly100%, Moon, Soin the list just goes on and on.
By the end of it all, two favorites who are no strangers to each other met in the Grand Final. Lu “Fly100%” Weiliang and Park “Lyn” Joon met for the 8th time in a big event Grand Final, and for the 6th time Lyn came out the victor. The final was there to confirm the arduous grind Lyn had to do over the season to become the EPT points leader and overall favorite for this event.
The Europe finals had eight participants – 2 Human players, 5 Undead, and one Night Elf player. The lineup was a who’s who of European professional players, featuring names like Hawk, Vortix, Happy and Xlord.
Pretty much everyone was hoping for a clash between Happy and Hawk in the event final. Juan “VortiX” Durán had other plans however, as he stunned Hawk in the semifinal and booked his final spot. Before this DreamHack final, Happy was the clear leader in EPT points and the main favorite for the whole event. VortiX on the other hand, barely made the cut with ThorZaIN hot on his heels. The final was a true clash between David and Goliath, but in this case it was the favorite who prevailed with a 3-1 map score.
Finally, the American W3 Final featured only two participants. DuSt Gaming’s Hitman and CrunCher were the two point favorites coming into the event and went straight into the final. After a long season of Hitman domination, it was CrunCher who prevailed this time. It was the 10th time the two players met this season, and Hitman has previously won 8 of them.
America was the only region where the ESL Pro Tour point leader did not win the trophy at the end of it all.
The new ESL Pro Tour is just around the corner as well. Three DreamHack Open events in Summer, Fall and Winter will give out points and prize money until the next WC3 Champion is crowned at IEM China in December. Hopefully, we are going to crown the next champion in a LAN environment in front of a full arena.
Qualifiers for the next season (DH Summer 2021) will run starting in April. These events are open to everyone, so if you are an old WC3 pro hiding in the weeds it might be your time to shine again.
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