HCT World Championship 2019: Hearthstone's Best Ready To Battle

Sixteen of the best Hearthstone players in the world will go head-to-head in the upcoming HCT World Championship 2019 to get a large piece of the $1 million prize pool and be declared as World Champion.

This tournament serves as the conclusion to the Hearthstone Championship Tour and is set for April 25 to 28 in Taipei. The Group Stage features a dual-tournament format, with four groups having four players each. Those who make it through the group stage then proceed to the quarter-finals and semi-finals. The Finals are scheduled for April 28. All matches in the tournament have a best-of-five Conquest format.

The 16 players competing at this year's championship are as follows:

David "killinallday" Acosta

Mihai "languagehacker" Dragalin

Brian "bloodyface" Eason

Mark "Ike" Eichner

Muzahidul "Muzzy" Islam

Wu "XiaoT" Juwei

Xu "LFYueying" Kai

Kacper "A83650" Kwieciński

Tyler "Tyler" Hoang Nguyen

Casper "Hunterace" Notto

Raphael "BunnyHoppor" Peltzer

David "Justsaiyan" Shan

Luo "Roger" Shengyuan

Torben "Viper" Wahl

Guan "SNJing" Zhendong

Wu "BloodTrail" Zong-Chang

After the tournament, Blizzard plans on implementing changes to the Hearthstone Championship Tour. The old structure has resulted to confusion, especially with new players. The change is expected to make the structure of the tournament simpler, and ensure that the system is both accessible and easy to understand.

Under the new set up, a three-tiered system will be implemented. This consists of qualifiers, live global tournaments, and an exclusive top tier competition. For 2019, Blizzard revealed that total prizes will be at least $4 million.

Qualifiers will be primarily online, but Blizzard announced that these will no longer be region-locked. This means anyone from anywhere in the world can join in, with the winner getting a chance to compete in the next tier. In 2019, Blizzard will only be holding three invite-only Hearthstone tournaments. Each event offers a prize pool of $250,000.

Premier Play is Hearthstone's seasonal round-robin online tournament. This is divided into regional divisions, with the first tournament to begin at the HCT World Championship. Players who compete in premier will get performance-based bonuses along with automatic invites to the live global events conducted in the prior tier.

A livestream of the matches of the HCT World Championship 2019 is available on their official twitch channel PlayHearthstone.