WoW Tournaments – 2023 WoW Tournaments and Winners

World of Warcraft

April 23, 2023

Logan Tooker

Set in the fictional world of Azeroth, World of Warcraft, or just WoW, is one of the most popular MMORPGs that allow players to create avatar-style characters and explore the world while interacting with NPCs and other players. This game was released in 2004, and back then, there were no WoW tournaments available. This was primarily due to the fact that back then, there was an apparent lack of PvP and other game modes.

The actual PvP idea would be included in the World of Warcraft about six months after the game’s release, as Blizzard added the PvP Honor System. Later on, in Patch 1.5, players were introduced to Battlegrounds, which gave them a reason and a place to fight. At the end of each week, players would be ranked based on the honor points they acquired.

That said, it still took Blizzard another year before World of Warcraft esports competitions came into play. In the 2.0.1 Patch, the Arena battles were added into the game, along with seasons and an even better honor system. Over the following years, Blizzard kept adding new seasons and new arenas to the game, and in 2007, the WoW tournaments began.

@ Blizzard

WoW Tournaments and Most Active Teams

The World of Warcraft tournaments are held several times a year, and the winners go home with a prize pool. The most popular World of Warcraft event of all time was the World First Mythic Queen Azshara in The Eternal Palace, held in 2019. So far, there have been a total of 327 tournaments, with the most active WoW esports teams being:

Method Black – with 110 total matches played.
Cloud9 – with 96 total matches played.
Method Orange – with 85 total matches played.

WoW AWC Tournaments 2023

After a weekend of WoW PvP ranking action, Luminosity and Echo became the 2023 WoW AWC champions. Echo team won the European WoW AWC Grand Finals, while Luminosity proved themselves in the NA region. With this win, both teams are featured in the AWC Hall of Fame, among other honorable mentions, such as Method NA, Horizon, Kawhi, Kungarna, and others.

Throughout the finals, Echo managed to stay in the upper bracket before fighting The Agents. When it came down to the fight, Echo was able to defeat The Agents with a 4 – 2 score, becoming the World of Warcraft AWC 2023 champions.

Luminosity players went 3 – 1 against Liquid and then fought Where’s Gordy? After going down the elimination bracket, Luminosity players were able to climb back up to the top and have a rematch that went 4 – 0 against Where’s Gordy?, earning them the victory.

WoW MDI Tournaments 2023

Twenty-four teams have raced against the clock in the Time Trials phase, making it to the MDI Group Stage. After that, only eight teams advanced further to the MDI Global Finals, with Echo players taking the victory. The Group A team raced through dungeons between February 17 and February 19. Teams Sloth and Echo are the ones who came on top. Afterward, Group B raced through the dungeons between February 24 and February 26, earning Perplexed Donuts a spot in the Global Finals.

@ Blizzard

Within the Group C race, teams Mandatory, previously known as Monka, and Thundered, got spots in the finals, as well. The Last Stand Tournament was held from March 10 to March 12, where the teams Cheese and Legendary secured the last two spots in the Global Finals. The Finals were held from March 31 to April 2, and after the race, the team Echo became the six-time World of Warcraft MDI Global Finals champions.

The Future of WoW Esports

With a game that’s 15 years old, keeping things interesting for the old and new players is crucial. This is something that Blizzard has been struggling to provide in the last couple of years. When talking about WoW esports, they are not as popular as some other competitive games. This might be because watching WoW esports is not as engaging for others as it might be for the players.

That said, the esports scene peaked in 2019, with over 192k viewers watching at one point. The year 2022 only had around 45k viewers, while this year, there were 77k + viewers enjoying the championship.

One could argue that the popularity of WoW esports mostly depends on the overall popularity of the game, which all comes down to how much Blizzard plans to improve gameplay and provide new content. After the release of Dragonflight, Blizzard announced that there would be a total of six patches until the end of 2023. Patch 10.1 is coming in early May, and you can expect the continuation of the Dragonflight story along with other interesting game aspects and content.