Blizzard has been making some strides in taking "Heroes of the Storm" to the next level. Despite the world champion team disbanding, the company has some drastic plans for 2017 for the esports scene. Right now, Blizzard is taking some inspiration from the "League of Legends" for the said plans.
As stated by Polygon, the game company has announced that they will the Heroes Global Championship (HGC) program. HGC will be implementing new ongoing league especially for North America, Europe, China and Korea. This will give an opportunity for each of the regions' top eight teams to be "be contracted and guaranteed both compensations and regular competition," making both team rosters and the scheduling of matches more consistent.
Riot Games also has a similar strategy for the "League of Legends'" League Championship Series (LCS). In this case, North America and Europe have their separate leagues, while China and Korea have their own system different from the LCS group.
Other than having the regular competition within said regions, Blizzards HGC will be having three annual international events where the top teams from each region compete with each other. This will give teams from outside the main regions, such as those in Taiwan, South East Asia, Latin America and Australia, to participate in the competition as well.
In addition to this, Blizzard will draw also its inspiration from "League of Legends" in which HGC will be carrying out a promotion and relegation system. The teams of the lowest ranks from each season will have a chance to compete with challengers from the Open Division, an amateur circuit sponsored by the game company. Here, these said teams will be replaced if they don't fight for their spot in HGC. This event will happen twice a year.
In other related news, Blizzard has just released its "Machines of War" update for "Heroes of the Storm" earlier, which introduces a new battleground, a feature where each player gets a free hero or 4,000 gold, and a new hero named Alarak, to name a few, according to Gamespot. The new hero and battleground are both "Starcraft"- themed and both provide their own flavor in the gameplay.
Blizzard will be announcing more details about Heroes Global Championship program at BlizzCon on Nov. 4.