SK Gaming is a professional esports organization based in Germany that has teams across the world competing in different titles. SK is particularly known for their success in Counter-Strike (CS) tournaments. SK's Brazilian CS team won the ESL One Cologne 2016 Major. SK currently has players and teams competing in League of Legends and Hearthstone. SK Gaming was founded in 1997 by a small group of Quake players in Oberhausen.
Spodek is a multipurpose arena complex in Katowice, Poland, opened on 9 May 1971. Aside from the main dome, the complex includes a gym, an ice rink, a hotel and three large car parks. It was the largest indoor venue of its kind in Poland until it was surpassed by Tauron Arena in 2014.
BlizzCon is an annual gaming convention held by Blizzard Entertainment to promote its major franchises including Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch.
Jang Jae-ho is a South Korean professional gamer of the popular Blizzard real-time strategy games Warcraft III and StarCraft II. He is seen by many as the best Night Elf player in the world. Jang Jae-ho is a five time world champion and has won three televised national Korean WarCraft III Championships as well as four seasons of MBCGame's World War. He is particularly known for his excellent micromanagement and innovative strategies. He is often seen using strategies that later set the benchmark for many Night Elf players and was nicknamed the "5th Race" by Gametv.com. He has played and won more televised WarCraft III games than any other Warcraft III players. Jang Jae-ho is featured in the documentary film Beyond the Game. Moon transitioned to StarCraft II and was without a team for a while, before retiring from professional gaming in order to fulfill South Korean military service requirements. After completing his military service, Moon returned to Warcraft 3 and is currently active.
The expansion to the computer game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, known as The Frozen Throne, had an active professional competition scene, particularly in China, Germany, and South Korea. The game was featured at eSports festivals including the World Cyber Games, the Electronic Sports World Cup, the World e-Sports Games, the World Series of Video Games and the International E-Sports Festival. Outside of the professional circuit, the game had many active competitive circuits, with users at Battle.net ranging between 70,000 and 100,000 at any given moment. In China, in which Warcraft III was extremely popular due to it being easily available through piracy, fans and users often used an alternative client due to the country's poor internet connections to the outside world. Around 3,000,000 copies of the game were sold in the country. 500,000 Chinese competed in the Chinese qualifiers for the 2006 World Cyber Games. The amount of prize money through the years has been significant with top players winning hundreds of thousands of dollars. As usual in competitive gaming, income for Warcraft 3 professional players flowed from various sources like team salaries from pro-gaming teams and sponsorships usually computer technology related. A famous example was the Danish gaming organization known as Meet Your Makers which boasted of paying their players US$300,000 on an annual basis. Similar to older games with huge competitive scenes like Starcraft:Brood War and Counter-Strike 1.6, the popularity of Warcraft 3 steadily declined and towards the end of the previous decade almost all tournaments and players were Chinese. After 2010, with Starcraft 2, League of Legends, and Dota 2 being released and becoming popular, Warcraft 3 gave up its position as one of the prime eSports titles.
The Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) is a series of international esports tournaments held in countries around the world. These Electronic Sports League (ESL) sanctioned events, sponsored by Intel, as of 2022 currently host events in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and StarCraft II. Other game titles were hosted in the past. The body that owns the league is Turtle Entertainment. The League has operated 17 seasons as of 2023. The season finals, with the largest prize pool, takes place in Katowice, Poland. Mid-season events are held in numerous cities around the globe, including Chicago, Shanghai and Sydney.
Hearthstone is a free-to-play online digital collectible card game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Originally subtitled Heroes of Warcraft, Hearthstone builds upon the existing lore of the Warcraft series by using the same elements, characters, and relics. It was first released for Microsoft Windows and macOS in March 2014, with ports for iOS and Android releasing later that year. The game features cross-platform play, allowing players on any supported device to compete with one another, restricted only by geographical region account limits.
The ESL Gaming GmbH, doing business as ESL, is a German esports organizer and production company that produces video game competitions worldwide. ESL was the world's largest esports company in 2015, and the oldest that is still operational. Based in Cologne, Germany, ESL has eleven offices and multiple international TV studios globally. ESL is the largest esports company to broadcast on Twitch.
Lu Weiliang, who also goes by the pseudonym Fly100%, is a Chinese professional esports player of the real-time strategy game Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. He previously been a member of Team Hacker, EHOME and Mousesports. He is considered one of the best Orc players. He had one of the longest playing careers of professional players of Warcraft III.
Park "Lyn" June (Korean: 박준) is a professional Starcraft II Terran player and former Warcraft III Orc player from South Korea. Lyn was a successful Warcraft III player before transitioning to Starcraft II. He is the only player to have won almost all of the premier tournaments, including the World Cyber Games, Electronic Sports World Cup, BlizzCon and Intel Extreme Masters. The only two premier tournaments which he has never won are the World e-Sports Games and International E-Sports Festival, instead placing second in the World e-Sports Games in 2008 and 2010, and in the International E-Sports Festival in 2007. The total prize money Lyn has won playing Warcraft 3 is behind only Jang "moon" Jae-ho.
The StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) was a StarCraft II professional tournament series organized and sanctioned by Blizzard Entertainment that ran from 2012 to 2019. For all but its first year of operation, it was the highest tier of professional StarCraft II competition. Its longest-running iteration featured two regions, World Championship Series Korea and World Championship Series Circuit, with World Championship Series Global events featuring players from both regions. Grand finals were held annually at BlizzCon in Anaheim, California, except for the first year of competition, when the finals were held in Shanghai, China. WCS Circuit events were streamed on Twitch while WCS Korea events were available on Twitch, YouTube, and afreecaTV.
The Flash Wolves are a Taiwanese esports organization with players competing in Arena of Valor, Hearthstone, and League of Legends: Wild Rift. They formerly had teams competing in League of Legends, Overwatch, Special Force II, StarCraft II, and World of Tanks.
Intel Extreme Masters Season X – San Jose was a video game esports tournament occurring on November 21–22, 2015 in San Jose, California, US. It was the first tournament of 10th season of the Intel Extreme Masters and featured League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournaments. There was a combined US$175,000 prize pool across both games. In the case of the latter it was the first Counter-Strike event an IEM since IEM Season VI in 2012. Mark Cuban and Brian Krzanich played a charity celebrity exhibition match of League of Legends benefiting The Cybersmile Foundation.
Intel Extreme Masters Season IX – World Championship Katowice, also known as IEM Season IX World Championship took place in 2015. Intel Extreme Masters World Championship was held in Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland from March 12 to March 15, 2015. The World Championship has sanctioned official events include events of Starcraft II and League of Legends. It was the final event of Intel Extreme Masters Season IX.
Tempo Storm is an American esports professional video game team that has teams competing in Age of Empires II, FIFA, Magic: The Gathering, fighting games, and Shadowverse. They have formerly held divisions in Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Fortnite, League of Legends,Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch, Vainglory, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege,World of Warcraft, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
Jason Tran, better known as WildTurtle, is a Canadian professional League of Legends player who is the bot laner for Counter Logic Gaming of the LCS. He previously played for Cloud9, Team SoloMid, Immortals, and FlyQuest. WildTurtle played in the 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2020 World Championships.
The Intel Extreme Masters Season 12 – World Championship or IEM Katowice 2018 was the world championship for the twelfth season of the Intel Extreme Masters. It was held at the Spodek in Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland from February 27–March 4, 2018. The event featured tournaments for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and StarCraft II.
Professional StarCraft II competition features professional gamers competing in Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy game StarCraft II. Professional play began following the game's initial release in 2010, as the game was the long-awaited sequel to StarCraft, considered one of the first esports and the foundation of South Korea's interest and success in competitive gaming. Between 2016 and 2019, competition was centered around the Global StarCraft II League in Korea and the World Championship Series Circuit everywhere else, with all Blizzard-sanctioned events being under the StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) banner. Since 2020, Blizzard changed the format of WCS by entering into a three-year partnership with esports organizers ESL and DreamHack.
The 2017 StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) is the 2017 edition of the StarCraft II World Championship Series, the highest level of esports competition for StarCraft II. The tournament series' Global Finals were won by South Korean professional player Lee "Rogue" Byung Ryul.
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