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Written by Justin Robey
on November 08, 2018

All eyes were on the Anaheim Convention Center this past weekend to see what was happening in the fantastic world of Blizzard Entertainment. This annual convention is the mecca of video games to many as it covers all of Blizzards key franchises: Overwatch, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Starcraft. If you weren’t there in person, hang tight as I, Justin Robey, take you through the amazing events that unfolded over this past crazy weekend.

The New Blizzard Esports Stage

First of all, as a result of some changes that took place many BlizzCons ago, Blizzard has now dedicated a stage to each of these awesome franchises to showcase “all things Blizzard Esports.” With one stage for each key franchise, and so many esports events to watch, we here at Continuant simply had to tell you about the big things that happened at BlizzCon.

Put on your best cosplay and gear up for your favorite raid because it is time for me to take you through the highlights. This past weekend, we saw history in the making and a lot of sweeps. Let me start by giving you the “must-know” highlights from the weekend of all things Blizzard.

For the First Time Since Starcraft 2 Launched, We Have a Non-Korean WCS Champion

Starcraft and esports have been synonymous with Korea since the days of the original Starcraft. The thought of having a non-Korean WCS champion is almost unthinkable when you consider how long the Korean scene has dominated the competitive world of Starcraft Esports. However, the rumblings of change have been happening ever since Scarlett beat s0s at the Intel Extreme Masters at PyeongChang ahead of the recent Olympics.

The players to watch coming into BlizzCon were Maru and Serral, playing in the final that everyone expected to be the WCS championship going into BlizzCon. Maru, however, had other plans it seemed, as s0s dropped him early in a 3–0 sweep that turned the bracket on its head.

Was there another Korean player who could take on the dominating performances Serral had been putting on in the WCS, now that Maru was out?

The pressure to keep a Korean as the WCS champion fell to Stats, and what a battle for the stars it was! Serral came out of the gate strong, quickly jumping three games to zero and looking to not only be the first non-Korean WCS champion, but also to sweep the series to take the title. Stats didn’t go down without swinging, though, and answered back with two consecutive wins and taking it to game six in the hopes of tying the series. Serral denied that chance with some masterful, albeit safe, Zerg gameplay against Stats Protoss. He captured the title of World’s Best Starcraft 2 player, taking the title away from Korea for the first time in Starcraft 2 history!

The HGC Finals (Heroes of the Storm Global Championship) Was the Thing to Watch

If you want to know where I was for most of my time watching “the esports” at BlizzCon, it was at the Heroes of the Storm stage watching the HGC! The darling of the series was Dignitas (formally Team Dignitas) whose hopes for a non-Korean HGC champion were resting upon their shoulders. The dominant team coming into the finals was Gen.G, who had won the Mid-Season brawl taking down Team Dignitas earlier in the season.

The ride to the finals for Gen.G was relatively uneventful until the Semi-Finals against Team Liquid. It was a nail-biting series taking it all the way to five games where Gen.G was finally able to finish out the boys in blue and prepare to take on their arch rivals for a repeat of the Mid-Season Brawl. Dignitas, on the other hand, was on fire! They sailed through the group stages, losing only a single map to Miracle before taking their rightful place in the finals against Gen.G.HGC Finals 2018 Quarterfinals

With such a dominating performance through the group stages, everyone was expecting a battle for the ages when these two teams met in the Nexus. Gen.G showed they were not messing around though, and quickly took the series to a dominating 2-0 lead. Not to be counted out, Game 3 is where we saw Dignitas jump to life and right out of the gate began the utter domination of Gen.G. It felt like we had a real final on our hands and maybe, if Dignitas continued to play like this, we might see a reverse sweep.

But in the end, Dignitas pushed too hard.

In the final moments of the game, Dignitas went in for the kill to finish the core and take the series to 2-1. In what was one of the best five minutes of esports, period, everything changed, however. Dignitas failed to destroy the core, taking it down to 3 percent before losing their entire team. Gen.G, taking advantage of the situation, went on the offensive, plowing through the top lane and in a nail-biting finish (with only two heroes left alive at the end), took down Dignitas’s core and swept them in the series 3-0. It was a fantastic finish to the series, and one of my favorite moments of BlizzCon!

South Korea Dominates the Overwatch World Cup

Though the champion of the series was no surprise, everything else that happened at BlizzCon when it came to the Overwatch World Cup was. The United States and Finland, two teams with an abundant amount of Overwatch League Pros, were eliminated early on by Great Britain and China, whose players were all mostly made up of Overwatch Overwatch-497261Contenders. The closest game in the entire series was the Bronze match, where Canada and Great Britain had an edge-of-the-seat series that took it all the way to game five (mind you it was the only series out of the entire playoffs that was even remotely close). The finals, China versus South Korea, was only a showcase of how dominant the South Koreans were at Overwatch as they swept the series 4-0.

In the end, when I was walking out of the arena in Anaheim this past weekend, I was giddy about the amazing games I had the pleasure of attending while being at BlizzCon. The finals of the HGC and Starcraft WCS dominated the conversation my friends and I had as we took the Uber back to our hotel and prepared to wrap up our time in Anaheim.

The crazy part was that this was only three of the six total events that were happening during the weekend we spent at the convention center. We had China finish out the Hearthstone Global Games as they took on their rival Brazil. In the Mythic Dungeon all-stars, we had the darling Method lose out to Free Marsy, to everyone’s surprise. And finally, in the Arena World Champions, it was Method Orange who took the title when they finished out The Gosu Crew in a 4-0 sweep.

While what happened to Diablo Inferno just left me hungry and sad, overall, this past weekend was an unforgettable weekend of esports action and I came away fat and happy with all the action and suspense that took place at BlizzCon 2018!

 

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