World of Warcraft is now an online sport!

Electronic sports, better known as e-sports, have been around for a while. Two of the most popular e-sports were Counter-Strike and Quake. They had online leagues and tournaments with real money prizes. In Korea, a popular e-sport called Starcraft; the best players can win $200,000 a year. Now that World of Warcraft just keeps growing bigger and bigger, it was only a matter of time before competitive gaming was also included under the list of e-sports.

When the first expansion pack of WoW, The Burning Crusade, was released, Blizzard Entertainment introduced a whole new idea. This idea was Arenas, this is where groups of 2s, 3s or 5s could go in a ring of sorts and take on another group. Whoever won would get more and better gear. An advanced rating system was used for the Arenas that quickly made it the most competitive part of the game. There would be teams fighting each other day after day to try and make the top ten.

Once Blizzard announced its competition and that the best 3 teams in from each bracket would be invited to a 5v5 tournament. Naturally this ignited not only sparks but flames as well in some teams to climb even further up the brackets but it also caught the interest of many big E-sport sponsors. Therefore, not only were there teams competing for the $10,000 reward but also to be sponsored by the top sponsors in E-sports. This tournament really opened the doors for WoW to become an E-sport.

Soon after, Blizzard made an agreement with World Series of Video Games, an E-sport tournament company. The agreement was to let them host 3v3 tournaments at their events. The grand prizes were $10,000; therefore, many teams practiced for a while and then went to the WSVG tournaments. It was found that the 3v3 was most popular for spectators as it was often faster paced and less players on screen as in the 5v5 bracket. There have already been 3 tournaments and many more are to come.

Not too long ago, Blizzard signed an agreement with CGS to allow them the rights to the 2v2 bracket. CGS is a competitive gaming league that pays their players salaries. A player can currently make about 30 grand a year just by playing in the CGS league. WoW started out as a nerdy role playing game and has turned into a very well known and likable online game. It has grown tremendously in members and in the E-sports area.