2014 Hearthstone World Championship

The 2014 Hearthstone World Championship was the first year of the Hearthstone World Championship.

Following regional playoffs to select players, the Hearthstone World Championship began on November 2nd/3rd, and concluded at 2014 on November 7th/8th. Matches were streamed live on the official Hearthstone twitch channel. The Championship featured $250,000 USD in total prize money.

On November 8th, 2014, Firebat became the first Hearthstone World Champion, defeating Tiddler Celestial in the finals to claim $100,000 in prize money.

For general information and a list of other years of the Championship, see Hearthstone World Championship.

Structure
The 2014 Championship was a tournament between 16 players, 4 from each region: Americas, Europe, China and Asia (Korea/Taiwan). The Asia contingent comprised 2 players from Korea, and 2 from Taiwan.

These 16 competitors were selected through regional qualifiers, before participating in the Championship at BlizzCon 2014.

Rewards
The 2014 Championship featured a total of $250,000 USD in prize money, awarded in the following scheme:


 * $100,000 for 1st place
 * $50,000 for 2nd place
 * $15,000 for 3rd and 4th places
 * $7,500 for 5th through 8th places
 * $5,000 for 9th through 16th places

World Championship
The 2014 World Championship was played in a best-of-five "Last Hero Standing" format, with 3 classes per player each match. Players losing a match had to switch to another deck, while the winner continued to use their current deck. Each player brought 3 decks formed from their own card collections. Play continued until one player had won three games.

The Championships began on November 2 and 3, streamed live on the official Hearthstone twitch channel, with the games played at ESL’s Burbank Studio. Further matches including the quarter-finals took place on Friday November 7, while the semi-finals and finals took place on Saturday November 8. These matches will take place at BlizzCon, and will also be streamed live on the official Hearthstone twitch channel.

Prior to the beginning of the Championship itself, interviews were held with the final 16 competitors: Americas pt 1 - Americas pt 2 - Taiwan - Korea

On October 30th, Blizzard released parody Hearthstone cards online representing each of the final 16 competitors. The full list can be found here.

Round of 16
Each of the 4 dual-tournament groups in the Round of 16 competed at Burbank Studio, while the deciding matches of each group were played at BlizzCon. Half of these players advanced to the Round of 8 bracket (also played at BlizzCon).

Round of 8
NumberGuy, FrozenIce, Qiruo, RunAndGun, Greensheep, Tom60229, Lu Xiaobu and RenieHouR were knocked out during the Round of 16.

Finals
The quarter finals saw Kolento, the widely-held favourite to win the Championship, knocked out in a tight set by Kranich. StrifeCro, another strong contender, was also eliminated by the lesser-known DTwo. The other series saw Kaor narrowly defeated by the nascent Firebat, and Tarei knocked out by the feted Tiddler Celestial.

Firebat narrowly survived some stiff competition from DTwo in the semi-finals to make it the final series, with some memorable plays including some extreme double-Gadgetzan Auctioneer Miracle Rogue card-drawing action. Tiddler Celestial made a clean sweep against Kranich to join Firebat.

The finals saw Firebat and Tiddler Celestial opening with a druid mirror, which Firebat was able to win. Tiddler Celestial's attempts to counter Firebat's druid deck with both priest and Handlock ultimately proved in vain, and Firebat stomped to victory in a straight-through 3-0 series.

Americas and Europe
The Americas and Europe regions' qualification processes were identical, although each took place separately and featured separate eligible events.

The Americas and Europe regions each featured a regional Qualification Tournament, where 130 players competed to be selected for the World Championships. Invitation to regional Qualification Tournaments was available through several means, including in-game performance in Ranked mode, and participation in a number of appointed events, community-run tournaments and special Last Call Tournaments held to determine the final invitees. The top 4 competitors from each region's Qualification Tournament were then invited to participate in the World Championships.

An official overview of the rules for the Americas and Europe Qualification Tournaments is provided below. For the full official competition rules, see here: Americas, Europe.


 * Players cannot compete in multiple Qualifier Tournaments. If a player qualifies for multiple, they must choose one to compete in.
 * ''The top 16 Legend players from each of the Ranked Play Seasons from April through August for the region will be invited to participate in that region's Hearthstone Qualifier Tournament.
 * ''Each player can only qualify for each region's Qualifier Tournament once. In cases where a player achieves a qualifying rank for a second time or is ineligible to compete in a region's Qualifier Tournament, the next highest ranking player will be selected to qualify for that Qualifier Tournament.
 * ''The top players from select community-run weekly tournaments held between April and August will be invited to participate in that region's Qualifier Tournament. [For further details, including a list of eligible community tournaments, see here.]
 * ''The top 3 players from select licensed events will also qualify for each region's Qualifier Tournament. Further details, including which events qualify, will be announced at a later date.
 * ''A Last Call Tournament will be held immediately prior to each region's Qualifier Tournament to determine any remaining Qualifier spots [up to a total of 130 for each region]. This Last Call Tournament will only be available to players who satisfy residency requirements for that region* [and have reached Legend rank in that region's Ranked Play at least once between April and August]. More details regarding this will be announced at a later date.
 * ''Seeding for each region's Qualifier Tournament will be based entirely on consistency of performance during the Ranked Play Seasons. Achieving a high rank multiple times will positively affect the player’s seeding during that region's Qualifier Tournament.
 * ''Each Qualifier Tournament will be best of five matches.
 * ''The top 4 players from each Qualifier Tournament will qualify for the Hearthstone World Championships at BlizzCon 2014.

* Countries that meet the America region's residency requirements are: United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, and Chile. * Countries that meet the Europe region's residency requirements are: Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Ukraine and The United Kingdom.

Phase 1

 * Phase 1 of the Americas Qualifier Tournament took place September 11-13
 * The Phase 1 matches were streamed live on the official Hearthstone Twitch channel
 * Phase 1 of the Europe Qualifier Tournament took place September 13-14
 * Phase 1 of the Europe Qualifier Tournaments was not streamed


 * ''The Americas and Europe Qualifier Tournaments will each have a total of 130 players and takes place in two phases. These 130 players will be matched against each other based on their cumulative placements in that region's Ranked Play rankings from April to August. The top 2 players with the highest cumulative placements will immediately advance to Phase 2 of the Tournament.


 * ''All matches will follow a best of five “Last Hero Standing” format. Each player will bring three different decks to each match. If a deck is defeated during a game of the match, that player must change to a different deck for the next game of the match.
 * ''Phase 1 of the tournament will consist of “The Constructed Arena Phase.”


 * ''Players will be matched against each other in a Swiss format based on their initial seeding.
 * ''If a player loses three matches (not games) in Phase 1, that player will be eliminated from the tournament.
 * ''If a player ends a round of the Swiss format tournament with a +5 match record, that player will advance to Phase 2. (Match records are determined as Wins minus Losses. 5-0, 6-1, or 7-2 records are all considered +5 match records.)



Phase 1 participants and standings

 * The full list of players who participated in the Americas Qualifier Tournament can be found here, and the standings at the end of phase 1 can be found here
 * The full list of players who participated in the Europe Qualifier Tournament can be found here, and the standings at the end of phase 1 can be found here

Players qualifying for phase 2
The following players survived phase 1 and went on to participate in phase 2 of their respective regionals.

Phase 2

 * Phase 2 of the Americas Qualifier Tournament took place October 5-6, at the Hammerstein Ballroom, New York, New York
 * Phase 2 of the Europe Qualifier Tournament took place September 26-27, at the Ericsson Globe, Stockholm, Sweden
 * Phase 2 of both Americas and Europe Qualifier Tournaments were streamed live on the official Hearthstone Twitch channel


 * ''Phase 2 of the tournament is the “Final Qualifying Round.”


 * ''In Phase 2 of the tournament, only 16 players will remain from the initial 130 participants.
 * ''Players will be randomly seeded into four tournament groups of four.
 * ''The top two players from each group are placed in an eight-player single elimination bracket.
 * ''The top four players will advance to the Hearthstone World Championships at BlizzCon 2014!

Europe Phase 2 results
Phase 2 of the Europe Qualifier Tournament saw Theude and MCPNoisyboy failing to attend, replaced by Phase 1 runners up Greensheep and Kaor.

TheFallen, Lifecoach, Cupcake, Max, Lowelo, Matthew, Reynad and Neirea saw defeat on day 1. Kolento, Greensheep, Kaor and NumberGuy ultimately went on to win places at the championship finals, defeating fellow day 1 survivors MrYagut, Frezzar, ThijsNL and thefishou.

Full results of EU Phase 2, day 1 can be found on DreamHack and on Hearthpwn. Day 2 results can be found here.

Korea/Taiwan

 * Korea: 2 players were selected from the OnGameNet Hearthstone Tournament. For full details, see here


 * Taiwan: 2 players were selected from a Taiwan Qualifier Tournament, in association with the Taipei Computer Applications Show. For full details, see here.

China
The China Qualifier Tournament featured the top 12 Legend rank players from the May and June seasons (6 from each season), the top 8 players from the Gold League tournament, and 9 players from licensed Chinese "competitive events".

For the full results of the China Qualifier Tournament, and videos of all matches, see here. The rules for the Qualifier can be found here.

Viewer numbers
While the Regional Qualifiers saw a maximum of around concurrent 90,000 viewers, the Round of 16 games at Burbank Studio hit a new high point for World Championship (and possibly any Hearthstone tournament) so far, with more than 132,000 concurrent viewers watching the games on November 4th, 2014.

The Championship's final series peaked at more than 135,000 viewers. However, given that it took place at precisely the same time as similar tournaments for both  and World of Warcraft, it is possible the figure could have been far higher.