This week in eSports: which StarCraft II tournaments are making the switch to Heart of the Swarm, and which will hang onto Wings of Liberty a little longer? We've got the answers. Also, could World of Tanks break into the eSports scene? With an announced $2.5 million prize pool, it might be on the right track.

Get it? Tanks... and tracks... and... yeah, forget I said anything. Actual content below!

Wargaming.net looks to roll onto the scene
Earlier this week, World of Tanks creator Wargaming.net announced an eSports tournament with a $2.5 million prize pool. Set to kick off some time in 2013, we're interested to see if World of Tanks might be the first non-RTS, non-MOBA to gain a widespread following as an eSport. With its huge player base, especially in the European market, it's certainly a possibility.

StarCraft II


The 2013 GSL Season 1 Code S has progressed to the quarterfinal stage, and both the MLG Winter Championships and the Intel Extreme Masters Season 7 World Championships are right around the corner. The next few weeks are going to be some of the most action-packed in StarCraft II this year, leading up to the release of the Heart of the Swarm expansion.

Upcoming Events
Only eight players remain in Code S for the 2013 GSL Season 1: INnoVation, Symbol, Curious, PartinG, Soulkey, TaeJa, RorO, and MC. The first quarterfinal match will take place Feb. 21, with the semifinals scheduled to start on the 28th, and the finals on March 9. Also of note, the GSL has announced that the Up and Down matches for the next GSL season will take place in Wings of Liberty, rather than Heart of the Swarm.
https://twitter.com/Khaldor/status/302337090199379969
However, the Code A qualifiers will be making the switch to HotS.

Watch it: GomTV

The Intel Extreme Masters Season 7 tournament will run from March 5 through 9 in Hanover, Germany, with a $100,000 prize pool. IEM has announced it will be holding the championship in Heart of the Swarm, and is being advertised as the first global HotS tournament. The 24 qualifiers include MC, Grubby, Socke, Mvp, TLO, Stephano, and viOLet.

Watch it: ESL TV

The MLG Winter Championship's Showdown matches are wrapping up Week 2, with winners of each single-elimination match automatically qualifying for the Winter Championship itself March 15-17. New qualifiers since last week include Rain, SaSe, BabyKnight, Stephano, Bly, and ThorZaIN. Upcoming matches include Ret vs Feast, Creator vs NesTea, and Mvp vs Curious.

Watch it: Major League Gaming

Other Stuff
This week, we got a chance to interview pro StarCraft II casters Alex “Axeltoss” Rodriguez and Nick “Axslav” Ranish.

Day's Funday Monday segment gives the Zergs their turn this week, as he casts replays of fans operating under the restriction that they may only attack using Nydus Worms. If you're looking for something... marginally less cheesetastic, the Day Daily has spent a couple days this week highlighting one of my favorite players since the StarCraft II beta: Team Liquid's TheLittleOne.

Axslav continues to break down the MLG Winter Championship Showdowns in Rules of Engagement. Have a look if you want to familiarize yourself with some of the developing pro strategies in HotS, and want to make intelligent-sounding comments to the people at the BarCraft when the big tournaments roll around in the coming weeks.

League of Legends


In a push to foster more college-level eSports, Riot has announced their official Collegiate Program for League. Using a dedicated site, you can search for an existing club at your school, or start one if such a thing doesn't already exist. We're curious to hear from the university eSports fans out there: Where does collegiate level play fit in, in a scene where so many of the pros are college-aged (younger, in some cases) in the first place?

Upcoming Events
Two teams have established strong dominance in Riot's Season 3 so far. On the North American Circuit, Team SoloMid lead with 1875 Circuit Points, with CLG Prime trailing in second with 1150. In Europe, Moscow Five are showing even greater supremacy: they stand with 1400 Circuit Points, over the mere 650 of second place CLG EU. The season is just getting started, however, and anything could happen. Upcoming matches include Curse vs Vulcun, Dignitas vs GGU, and SoloMid Snapdragon vs Team MRN.

Watch it: League of Legends Championship Series

Other Stuff
The 3.0.2 patch (previewed in the video above) brings some chase buffs for Nasus, adds some more rune choice flexibility for Akali, some power scaling changes to Riven, and some changes to items that reduce ability cooldowns.

Dota 2


In a rare MOBA crossover, successful European Dota 2 (and CS 1.6) team Natus Vincere are planning on opening a gaming house in the U.S., and, they told ESEA News they're considering signing a (likely North American) StarCraft 2 or League of Legends squad. This announcement came on the heels of their Dota 2 team being knocked out of The Defense 3 in the lower bracket by Team Fnatic.

Along with Fnatic, Team Evil Geniuses still remains in the lower bracket, having been knocked down by Virtus Pro. They will have to best the winner of Mousesports vs Team Liquid for a shot at retribution. Fnatic's own fate will be decided when they pitted against the loser of Dignitas vs No Tidehunter, scheduled for tomorrow.

Watch it: The Defense

Other Stuff
Ymir the Tusk has become the latest Dota hero to make his way into the game's current incarnation. Billed as a durable initiator, you can get introduced to him in the video at the top of this section from DotaCinema.

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments what you think of this week's stories, if there's anything we missed, and what eSports events you're most looking forward to in the coming weeks.

This week in eSports: League of Legends Season 3 hits the ground running, MLG is already hosting competitive Heart of the Swarm, In Dota 2, only four teams are still standing in the upper bracket of The Defense 3.
StarCraft II


Heart of the Swarm creeps closer, and at least one major eSports organization is making the switch before it's even officially released. For the first time ever (outside of streams), you can watch high level play of both Swarm and Wings in the same sitting.
Upcoming Events
The GSL 2013 Season 1 Code S Round of 16 in Wings of Liberty is well underway, with Squirtle, MarineKing, DongRaeGu, and Bomber having been knocked out already. InnoVation, TaeJa, Soulkey, and Symbol have secured their spots in the playoff bracket, with the quarterfinals scheduled to begin on February 21. There are still two groups of four left to be decided, however, with the likes of MC, LosirA, Life, and PartinG competing for the final four playoff slots.

Watch it: GomTV

MLG is doing things a little differently for its Winter 2013 season, leaving Wings of Liberty behind in favor of the Heart of the Swarm beta. This has led to some controversy, considering the expansion isn't out yet, and balancing patches are still being dropped in fairly regularly. The format of the Winter Showdown throws each of the 56 players into a best-of-five match against a single opponent  The 28 winners will be guaranteed a spot at the Winter Championship at MLG Dallas in March. Qualifiers so far include PartinG, herO, and InnoVation.

Tonight's match is Rain vs Flying, beginning at 5 p.m. EST/1 p.m. PST.

Watch it: MLG on Twitch
Other Stuff
If you're looking to dip your toe into competitive play for the first time with Heart of the Swarm, Blizzard is trying to make it as gradual and painless a transition as possible. Here's how.

Day has carried his Sky Terran Funday Monday over to the Protoss, requesting that viewers send in videos of playing with only one Gateway and one Robotics Facility. Moral of the story: Phoenixes are really, really "balanced."

Axslav breaks down the HotS Winter Showdown matches between PartinG and Fantasy and RoRO vs. herO on Rules of Engagement. He'll be putting his usual weekly topics on hold to continue recapping these matches throughout the Winter Showdown set. If you're confused about what all these new units are and what it is they're doing, it's not a bad place to get up to speed.
League of Legends


Is Riot's Season 3 a "new beginning" for League of Legends as an eSport? The viewership numbers for Season 2's World Championships seem to suggest that competitive League has already pretty well begun. At the same time, 2012 and early 2013 were laden with player controversies. Though, to be fair, the same thing happens with athletes in just about every other sport imaginable... so it's possible that player bannings and ego trips are a part of the game's growing up. In any case, I'm anxious to see how much higher Riot's shooting star can go.
Upcoming Events
Season 3 of Riot's Championship Series is live. The kick-off was last night, with Counter Logic Gaming besting Team SoloMid and Good Game University, Curse taking a match off of Dignitas, and SoloMid defeating Vulcun. The action continues tonight with Curse vs CLG, SoloMid vs Dignitas, GGU vs Curse, and Vulcun vs Dignitas.

Watch it: League of Legends Championship Series
Other Stuff
In a continuing effort to reward positive behavior in the community, some changes are being made to the Honor Initiative. It's now easier to unlock the Great Teamwork, Leader, and Mentor crests, but more difficult to get Honorable Opponent. This change will retroactively remove Honorable Opponent from players who earned it under the old criteria. You can read about the reasoning behind this change on the official site.
Dota 2


Only four teams remain in The Defense 3 playoffs: Dignitas, No Tidehunter, the come-from-behind Virtus.Pro, and Evil Geniuses. Virtus vs EG will be take place on February 11, and Dignitas vs No Tidehunter has been postponed. Fan favorite teams that still have a shot at the lower bracket (and thus, the overall championship) include Team Liquid, mousesports, Na'Vi, and Fnatic.eu.

Watch it: The-Defense.com
Other Stuff
YouTuber ReevoHGames has put together a set of "visual patch notes" giving you in-game illustrations of the changes made in the most recent balance patch. Check it out at the beginning of this section.

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments what you think of this week's stories, if there's anything we missed, and what eSports events you're most looking forward to in the coming weeks.

Gabe Newell and beard delivered approximately one interesting fact every 45 seconds or so over the course of his recent hour long talk at the University of Texas at Austin. Newell chatted a lot about success of the Team Fortress 2 barter economy and the huge amounts of direct income item makers have managed to turn around in the last year or so.

"To be really concrete, ten times as much content comes from the userbase as comes from us. We think that we're super productive and badass at making TF2 content, but even at this early stage we cannot compete with our customers in the production of content for this environment," Gabe began.

"The only company we've ever met that kicks our ass is our customers. We'll go up against Bungie or Blizzard, or anybody, but we won't try and compete with our own userbase, because we already know that we're going to lose."

Gabe threw out some really concrete and large numbers to illustrate his point. "The most anybody has earned in a single year is $500,000, so they're making content, selling it to other customers, and we have a revenue share with those people and their takeaway is $500,000.

"The first two weeks that we did this we actually broke Paypal because they didn't have - I don't know what they're worried about, maybe drug dealing - they're, "like nothing generates cash to our userbase other than selling drugs". We actually had to work something out with them and said "no ... they're making hats."

It sounds as though professional modelers from within the industry were making a killing. "We knew that people at other game companies had employees that were making more money being users in our framework than they were as employees at their company, so we're like, "okay, this is weird."

"We started to see things like inflation. We started to see deflation. We started to see users creating their own versions of currencies, mediums of exchange. Countries started to create regulatory structures. In Korea you actually have to create the equivalent of a W4 form for your players to account for the virtual income they get in playing your game."

And that was the moment that Valve decided to hire an economist. You can read much more about the intricacies of Team Fortress 2's complex, evolving hat economy on the Valve Economics blog.

Buckle up, because we're about to combine the two most exciting parts of PC gaming news: exponential user growth and graphs! Last Sunday, Steam hit 6.6 million concurrent users. It's an impressive figure, but what's really surprising is how it stacks up against previous totals. Back in January 2012 the service was hitting a high point of 5 million, with them not reaching the 6 million mark until November. That means Steam is currently growing around 300% faster than it was at the start of last year.

So where are those players coming from? To the graph-o-matic!

Source: SteamGraph

Essentially we're seeing massive and steady growth for the (technically) unreleased Dota 2. Less than six months ago the game could beat the then top-dog TF2 in concurrent users, but couldn't surpass the daily peak. Now it's a different story. The latest Steam stats have Dota 2 way ahead with a peak concurrent total of 237,414 players. In second place, still enjoying a post-Christmas boost, is Football Manager 2013 with 78,488 players. Team Fortress 2, meanwhile, has been consistently fluctuating between 45,000 and 75,000 players.

It's a big number, but still one far behind League of Legends, which was pulling a reported 3 million concurrent users as of July last year.

Dota 2 still doesn't account for the majority of Steam's overall user growth, despite the flood of free beta keys it incessantly sends out. And, of course, concurrent users don't give the full picture. We still don't know how many of those are active, or even the collected number of players who log into any particular Steam game over a set period of time.

Even so, it's a great sign of the health of PC gaming. It will be interesting to see how those figures change over the next year, as the console manufacturers creak into life to reveal their upcoming new hardware.