The Overwatch World Cup is coming back in 2017 and there is a whole new qualification system from Blizzard. As before, the tournament doesn’t allow professional teams to participate; instead favouring nations competing against each other (which resembles the actual World Cup).
Qualification for the tournament is also left to players from each country. What happens this time is that Blizzard is tracking the competitive ranking of the top 100 players from each country. These players form the country ranking for their respective nations, and the top 32 countries will qualify for the World Cup.
For those keeping count, Malaysia currently lies in 44th place. Behind countries like Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and Brazil.
Once a country has qualified, it’s then up to the citizens of that country to vote for the team that will represent them. It sounds like a good idea; but can end up with some professional teams trying to game the system. Like China did at the Overwatch World Cup last year (and still lost to the Koreans).
The chosen teams will then participate in four knock-out tournaments for the chance to make it to the grand finals held at Blizzcon 2017. Sixteen teams will make it the finals, and will compete in a single elimination tournament.
One thing to keep in mind is that it looks like the Overwatch World Cup will not have a cash prize. This isn’t explicitly mentioned in Blizzard’s announcement, but it was the case from last year. Still, not many people will turn down the chance to attend Blizzcon for free.
[Source: Overwatch]
