Blizzard Entertainment announced this Thursday, March 30 to begin the 2nd Overwatch World Cup and the tournament will end in BlizzCon 2017. Number of participants is also be increased to 32 nations.
The 2nd Overwatch World Cup will be a 4-phase event that culminated in the BlizzCon 2017, Game Rant reported. As Blizzard Entertainment officially announced the championship, the first phase already began. The game maker will start the scouting process to assess the skill level of the top 100 players from 50 countries who will be invited to compete.
From the 50 countries and 100 players, Blizzard will invite players from 32 countries to compete in the 2nd Overwatch World Cup. The invitation will be sent on April 24. Afterward, the second phase began.
The second phase of 2nd Overwatch World Cup will determine which players represent each country. Subsequently, the third phase will commence as the group stage of the tournament. The final phase or the fourth one is the playoffs in the four international events at the BlizzCon 2017.
Last year, South Korea won the 2016 Overwatch World Cup, ESPN reported. Its player Gong Jin-hyuk was voted as the tournament's Most Valuable Player. This year, South Korea expects to defend its title in the 2nd Overwatch World Cup.
The game is very popular in South Korea and many gamers have tried to use hacks to play the game using hourly rate from Battle.net rather than purchasing the game. Following the unsuccessful attempt to permanently block the Battle.net from accessing the game server, Blizzard allowed the South Korean players to use the Battle.net account to access the game since February 2017, but the players need to provide their social security number.
"Overwatch" is the latest edition of multiplayer first-person shooter video game from Blizzard Entertainment. Since its official release in May last year, the game has become very popular and the company started the tournament in 2016. Watch the report regarding the 2nd Overwatch World Cup from IGN below: