The 2019 WCS Global Finals are launching soon

StarCraft Esports
October 22, 2019
Mel Hawthorne

With just a little over a day left, the 2019 WCS Global Finals are almost upon us, and it’s a bigger event than ever. With a total prize pool of $600.000, to be split among 16 competitors, with the first-placed player getting a cool $210k, the second place getting $96k, 3rd and 4th place will receive $51k, the 5th through 8th places will get $24k and finally 9th through 16th place will get $12k.

2019 WCS Global Finals

© Blizzard Entertainment

The event will take place in two separate locations – both in Anaheim, California, and Seoul, South Korea. Between October 24th and October 27th, four different group stages, lettered A through D are taking place. By November 1st, the Global Finals are starting!

The opening week itself is taking place in Seoul, while the Grand Finale is happening in the Blizzard Arena in LA. As for the opening week group stages, they will all take place with a live audience and be best-of-five matches. That means that all four of the group stages will follow the same format throughout the week that they are running.

In memory of iNcontroL

Online, fans and players are already pretty hyped, with a lot of fans looking forward to seeing pros like Serral, Neeb or Reynor playing for the big win. On a slightly more somber note, in order to honor a player that passed away earlier this year – Geoff ‘iNcontroL’ Robinson – Blizzard has created a pack of items that will be available to every player for free, forever. Geoff was a long-time payer who achieved pro success as early as 2007, when he won a national WCG championship.

Since then, he’s had a very impressive career, and plenty of fans, so it’s no wonder Blizzard decided to honor him. It’s perhaps a little more regrettable that all this is happening in the wake of the huge publicity scandal that was Blizzard’s suspension of Hearthstone players over taking part in the Hong Kong protests.

That incident and the ensuing international backlash is still casting a shadow on the lovely gesture the company is making now. While plenty of people are looking forward to what is one of the biggest Starcraft 2 events of the year, there is still an air of distaste, along with plenty of hard feelings on the stance Blizzard took earlier this year. If you aren’t familiar with what happened – as a fallout to suspending some Hearthstone players, quite a few dedicated Blizzard fans went and deleted their accounts, ended their subscriptions etc out of protest against the actions Blizzard took.

Read also: Blizzard’s fall from grace continues: update on banned Hearthstone players

Waiting for the 2019 WCS Global Finals

Still, fans will get to enjoy a pretty great Starcraft tournament featuring the best of the best as far as top pro players go. It’s something to look forward to – you can catch the latest Starcraft news and the live streams of the competition on the official Blizzard and Starcraft Twitch channels, so be sure to tune in for some exciting Starcraft action when the first group stage kicks off on the 24th. Don’t miss out!