College students across the United States and Canada have the opportunity to team up and win more than $450,000 in tuition and other prizes in what Blizzard Entertainment is calling their “Heroes of the Dorm” tournament.
Not quite the $1 million prize pool offered in the 2015 Call of Duty Championship tournament, but for college students on Ramen noodle budgets, a share of Blizzard’s $450,000 prize pool just may prove beneficial to some collegians.
The tournament, brought in part by North America’s premiere college gaming network, TeSPA, features Blizzard’s free-to-play online team brawler Heroes of the Storm. While the game is currently in closed beta testing, competing teams will gain access to the closed beta in order to participate in the tournament.
ESPN will be delivering exclusive live coverage of the tournament’s competition via television and digital platforms, according to a recent press release the company published on Business Wire. The release quoted Blizzard’s CEO and co-founder, Mike Morhaime, as having said that the tournament “aims to bring positive experiences” similar to college sports “to college gamers.”
College sports do great things for student athletes—they help pay for schooling, build teamwork and communication skills, and create lasting memories […] We believe eSports has the same kind of power, and this tournament aims to bring positive experiences like these to college gamers. We can’t wait to fill out our fantasy brackets and cheer on a new generation of eSports athletes as they compete in Heroes of the Storm.
Teams of college students from across the U.S. and Canada will have what the company called “an epic showdown to determine the strongest scholars in the Nexus,” and with hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition on the line, there’s sure to be stiff competition.
The tournament is open to all active college students in the United States and Canada.
Open qualifiers are scheduled to begin on March 28, 2015.
Single-elimination bracket play begins on April 11, 2015, and “The Heroic Four” (a live event) will be held in late April.
Teams are composed of five players. The five members of the first-place team, the tournament champions, will each receive $25,000 per year in free college tuition for up to three full years of undergraduate studies or up to two years of graduate studies. Seniors and graduate students with no remaining years of enrollment will receive one year’s worth of tuition to help repay any student loans or an equivalent cash reward for those who don’t have any students loans to repay.
ESPN‘s live streaming of the tournament coverage will be available online on ESPN3 under the eSports category at the WatchESPN website, on smartphones and tablets via the WatchESPN app, and streamed on TV through a variety of channels including Roku and Apple TV.
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) is well known for their blockbuster video game hits including World of Warcraft and Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft.
TeSPA hosts gaming events on over 90 campuses across the US and Canada.
The tournament isn’t limited to student competitors, as spectators can also create and share fantasy brackets in a competition with a prize pool valued in excess of $25,000. Prizes include a $10,000 top prize to whoever has the most accurate prediction of the tournament’s final bracket.
In other news about the gaming company here at Immortal News, 10-year World of Warcraft veterans received an orc statue.
Are you excited to win some free college tuition in Blizzard’s “Heroes of the Dorm” tournament?
