Blizzard to Host a Warcraft 3 Tournament

With World of Warcraft and Hearthstone taking up so much of the cultural memory surrounding Azeroth, it’s very easy to forget that the series started as an real-time strategy title called Orcs vs Humans, which would evolve into Warcraft as a series. The RTS game culminated in Warcraft 3, which had a number of expansions before World of Warcraft would come out and steal the spotlight. Blizzard itself seemed no more interested in continuing the mainstream Warcraft series, as the lore continued through the MMO, and their RTS talents went straight into Starcraft.

That said, Blizzard has taken an increased interest in their older games in recent years, and while so far all we know is that the first Starcraft will be getting an HD remake, it doesn’t seem unlikely that Warcraft, specifically Warcraft 3, is up for a similar treatment. And just toady, over on their forum, they dropped another, non-direct hint that that’s the direction they’re going, specifically by announcing, pretty much out of nowhere, that on February 27 and February 28 they plan to stream an all-day Warcraft 3 tournament over on Twitch.

“Over 15 years since the release of Reign of Chaos, Warcraft III has a new major patch coming and your favorite players are throwing the first Warcraft III Invitational to celebrate it!

We love and continue to support our Warcraft III community, and we’re excited to see classic competitors like Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen, Park “Lyn” Joon, and Kim “ReMinD” Sung Sik try out all the new PTR changes for themselves—including balance adjustments to many heroes, widescreen support, and more – all playable now on the PTR!”

You can find out more about the upcoming Warcraft 3 tournament on the blog post. It looks like it’ll be a lot of fun for old-time fans, particularly if you recognize some of the old pros they’ve invited to participate. If it actually is a sign of bigger things to come, though? Well, that’s just me.

But fingers crossed, eh?