Modern Times Group properties ESL and DreamHack have entered a three-year strategic agreement with Blizzard Entertainment.

StarCraft II and Warcraft III: Reforged will receive their own ESL Pro Tour circuits with respective prize pools of $1.8 million and over US $200,000 in 2020 as part of the deal.

As a replacement of the StarCraft II World Championship Series, the ESL Pro Tour StarCraft II will have tournaments in at least four continents. The qualifying format for the circuit will be based off of the existing WCS system, with the first season being made up of seven tournaments: two IEM events, four DreamHack stops, and a Masters Championship at IEM Katowice in 2021.

Sebastian Weishaar, CPO at ESL discussed the deal in a release:

Sebastian Weishaar said: We feel extremely honored to establish a new home for RTS esports fans and be responsible for two of the most prestigious esports titles of all time. ESL and DreamHack are deeply rooted within Blizzard esports games and have built ecosystems around them for years now. Tying both StarCraft II and Warcraft III into the ESL Pro Tour narrative is our contribution to these passionate communities and will provide both titles with a promising platform to continue writing esports history.

The ESL Pro Tour WarCraft III: Reforged has also been announced, comprised of one ESL competition and three DreamHack events – all working towards a championship tournament to be held later in 2020. The newly-announced ESL Pro Tours will have weekly ESL Open Cups to support the amateur communities of each title.

J. Allen Brack, President of Blizzard Entertainment also commented on the landmark agreement:

J. Allen Brack said: We are so proud that StarCraft II and Warcraft III are home to two of the most passionate, storied and devoted communities in esports history. Both ESL and DreamHack have been long-standing partners for our esports, and we want to give our players, talent, content creators and fans the stability inherent in a long-term relationship, keeping these communities thriving for yearsto come.

WARCRAFT III: REFORGED RELEASES ON JANUARY 28, 2020

As you may have heard...

The drums of war thunder once again. Warcraft III: Reforged - the recreation of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne - will be available at

3 p.m. PST on January 28, 2020.

Blizzard said: Though we’ve been working hard to get Reforged in your hands before the end of the year, as we started approaching the finish line, we felt we’d need a little extra development time for finishing touches. As always, our goal is to honor the high standards you hold us to. We’re looking forward to kicking off whole new era of Warcraft III, and we can’t wait to face off with your mighty armies online starting January 28!

1.32.0.4 BETA NOTES

Pete Stilwell said: Howdy Friends, The time for custom games in Reforged Beta has arrived. There will be bugs. Custom games are a complicated marriage of your creativity and the engine’s cantankerous habit of rejecting that which does not please it. So, say it with me now, “There will be bugs.” We’ve put great energies into addressing crashes, desyncs, and conditions that destroy gameplay, but there are millions of maps that have utilized triggers in billions of ways. Can I get a, “There will be bugs”? The purpose of the beta is to speed the process of getting this game ready, and we appreciate everyone who is gutting this out with us. We expect this first deploy to expose a lot of good data. Data that will direct our efforts toward the preservation of this game’s great history - and bright future. At the risk of being redundant, there will be… SPECIFIC CHANGES & IMPROVEMENTS Custom games Replays Full map pools KNOWN ISSUES https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/warcraft3/t/beta-known-issues-list/ 219 UPCOMING We’re starting custom games on a Monday morning to give us the optimal amount of time to find and fix problems. We expect to patch aggressively.

Terrain Board Reforged


“Level design, or environment design,[1] is a discipline of game development involving creation of video game levels—locales, stages, or missions.” - Wikipedia, article on Level Design.


As you probably don’t know, the Terrain Board (which you probably didn’t know existed) is gathering dust. There is the occasional visitor, spurring up a whirl of dust to place a painting among the fading gallery or to visit some of the ancient bearded hunched-over men sitting by their solitary desks, introspectively flipping through their gallery albums, dreaming of better days. The golden days when there were roughly 20 active terrainers in the terrain board. All too eager to make their meaningless existence gain some meaning by helping some young, impressionable, modder in need of terraining advice. Indeed most have left, and some lie dead by their desks, and those few that remain are now so maddened that they will try to claw their long, terrain-addled, fingernails into your skin and make you stay forever, make you love a dying art. A meaningless, useless, dying art. The art of Scenic Terraining.

Yeah, this is a pretty bleak picture, but it’s a pretty accurate one as well. And I am not going to be coy: I am one of the few that has been an active part of making this happen. Because the Terrain Board has always been the home of scenic terraining, and most of the most active users that frequented this place were always more into scenic terraining than actual useful terraining, the kind of terraining that is professionally known as “Level Design”, and hively known as “Playable Terrains”. And while scenic terraining is very fun to do, and provides a pretty picture to look at, it doesn’t in any way serve our modding community in the bigger picture: To educate our users about the importance of level design and to encourage aspiring level designers to hone their skills in order to serve a modding team properly by providing a beautiful location for the mod to take place. But what is actually the importance of level design? Why should you care?

Well, of course it’s a matter of opinion, but seeing as this is my post, I’m going to try to convince you that my conviction is the right opinion. The level designer's job is both an artistic and a technical one, on the one hand they create the largest visual representation of the game, and on the other hand they have to make a gameplay environment where said gameplay can happen unhindered, or in accordance with the virtual space they have created. So tell me, when you play games like Skyrim, Horizon Zero Dawn or The Last of Us, do you take the world that you move around in for granted? Or do you sometimes just stop playing altogether, just to admire the scenery? If you've ever done that last thing, then know that in a way, that is exactly what the level designer wants you to do. And yes I know that gameplay, story and overall conceptions are important too, and more important to some of you, but the true mark of a great game is a game that scores on all counts. And the same goes for modding, something that can really lift a mod from good to great is the addition of a good level designer to your modding team.

Image above is from Horizon Zero Dawn

This, you could say, is at the very heart of the new vision for the Terrain Board. Seeing as things moved a little faster than I antisipated, a few observant people among you might have noticed a couple sneaky changes that has already happened. For one, I have now officially stepped back into the role of Terrain Moderator and plan on dedicating all my time on the hive to reviving, and to a certain degree, repurposing the Terrain Board. Which in turn has also gotten a new name, "Terrain and Level Design", as well as a new home, it has been moved up from the Artist's Discussion category and is now the closest neighbour to the Map Development sub-forum. No longer will the Terrain Board be under the yoke of artists trying to enforce their artisitc tendencies onto level designers! But what do these changes actually mean?

Good question! Of course we will not kill scenic terraining, neither will we take the art out of the terrain board, I plan on doing scenic terraining myself in the future. So put down your torches and pitch-forks, you three, we won't kill your dreams. However, we will be shifting the focus and purpose of the terrain board to better suit a modding community that needs level designers. To that end, I will be making some changes to the terrain board, so it aligns better with the changes that have already been made. That is why the terrain board was moved, because the new vision for it fits better along-side the map development and world editor sub-forums, rather than next to the Sound and Music Art forum. Additionally, when Reforged rolls around, we'll start hosting a new type of contests in the arena, called "Level Design Contests".

As opposed to our traditional terraining contests, where the unwritten formal agreement was that every fifth contest would be a playable terraining contest, these new contests will focus exclusively on the creation of physical space, to cater better to our level designing vision. And calm down my ghosting terraining old-timers, we will still be hosting scenic terraining contests from time to time. They will just be separate concepts from now on, and scenic terraining contests will probably be a bit rarer. But seeing as they are separate concepts, it’s mostly up to whoever wants to host them how often they get hosted.

There are other, more subtle, changes at work or in the plans that will influence the terrain board in the future, and maybe even some of the other arts and modding forums, but these ideas are in early conception and we’ll talk more about that at a later point. For now I want you all to know that my love for the terrain board, and my will to elevate the terrain board to new and exciting heights is what drives me to commit to these changes and to forge this new path. I do this with the terrain board’s, and the modding community at large, best interests in mind. I do sincerely hope that there are some among you out there willing to support this idea and to help me realize it, but also know that I am open for suggestions, ideas and constructive criticism. In the end: What I do I do for you, so make sure you let me know if I do it right or not.

Image above is from Skyrim SE

Finally, I’d like to add that any and all opinions and suggestions should be kept civil and that I work to cater to the community as a collective group, and not to satisfy individual desires or feelings. I will listen to rational voices and the voice of the community.