The StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) was a professional StarCraft II tournament series created and officially supported by Blizzard Entertainment. It ran from 2012 to 2019. Except for its first year, it was the top level of professional StarCraft II competition. The longest version of the series included two regions: World Championship Series Korea and World Championship Series Circuit. Global WCS events brought together players from both regions. The grand finals were held every year at BlizzCon in Anaheim, California, except in the first year, when the finals took place in Shanghai, China. WCS Circuit events were shown on Twitch, while WCS Korea events were available on Twitch, YouTube, and afreecaTV.
Professional competition in World Championship Series Korea was organized by afreecaTV under the name Global StarCraft II League (GSL). Events included GSL Code S seasons and GSL Super Tournament competitions. Professional competition in World Championship Series Circuit focused on tournaments named World Championship Series Circuit, with preliminary tournaments called World Championship Series Challenger.
World Championship Global events included two major competitions each year. These were ESL's Intel Extreme Masters World Championship in Katowice, Poland, and afreecaTV's GSL vs. the World event in Seoul, Korea. For its last two years as part of the WCS system, the Intel Extreme Masters event and the Global Finals event used crowdfunding to fund prizes. This was done through the StarCraft II War Chest system, which let players buy in-game cosmetic items, with 25% of the sales used to support professional competitions.
History
The StarCraft II World Championship Series began when Blizzard Entertainment decided to use a shared brand for their competitive games and tournaments called Battle.net World Championship Series. This brand also included competitions for World of Warcraft. The first year of the series, in 2012, had over 30 events, such as national and continental championships, which led to the grand finals held in Shanghai, China, along with the World of Warcraft finals. Events lasted only a few days or weeks and had rules about players' nationalities. This format made the events popular but not considered the top level of StarCraft II competition, especially for events that did not include Korean players or had strict rules about players' nationalities or regions.
The shared branding plan ended in 2013. Starting then, each game’s events no longer ended at the Battle.net World Championship and instead had their own names as more Blizzard games developed their own professional circuits.
When StarCraft II’s first expansion, Heart of the Swarm, was released, the World Championship Series changed its format to focus on events run by Blizzard, making it the highest level of professional StarCraft II competition. In 2013, the WCS changed to a league format inspired by Korean leagues, with seasons lasting weeks or months. These leagues were called WCS Premier League, with lower-level competitions named WCS Challenger, similar to Korean leagues Code S and Code A. Korean leagues that influenced this new format were included in the WCS, with points and prize money used to determine who qualified for the Global Finals. Nationality rules were removed for the first year of the new format, though they returned in 2014 with limited regional restrictions. This allowed Korean players, who had historically dominated in professional StarCraft competitions, to win all leagues across regions for both years of open play. The 2013 WCS included cross-league seasonal finals, but these were removed in 2014.
In 2013, two Korean leagues, Ongamenet Starleague (OSL) and Global StarCraft II League (GSL), were included in the new WCS format. These leagues alternated, with the first and last seasons of WCS 2013 in Korea being GSL events, and the second season being an OSL event. In 2014, all Korean leagues were GSL events as OSL officially stopped operating.
In 2015, non-Korean leagues were combined into one, the WCS Premier League, while Korea introduced a new league, the StarLeague (SSL), organized by SPOTV, to run alongside the GSL. For the first time since the league format began, strict regional rules were added, leading to the first non-Korean WCS Premier League champion. Some Korean players continued to compete by moving to the United States and meeting new residency requirements.
In 2016, with the release of StarCraft II’s second expansion, Legacy of the Void, the WCS format changed again. After 2015’s consolidation, the WCS Premier League was replaced by regional qualifiers and large weekend tournaments. These qualifiers became known as WCS Challenger. Starting in 2016, Korean and non-Korean rankings were separated, with the new WCS Korea and WCS Circuit rankings each contributing half of the players who qualified for the Global Finals.
In late 2016, after the 2016 Global Finals, Blizzard announced a standard format for 2017 and 2018 that would not change. This included three seasons of Korea’s GSL Code S, shorter week-long GSL Super Tournaments for WCS Korea, and four weekend events for WCS Circuit, with regional Challenger qualifiers for six regions. Two official WCS Global tournaments, IEM Katowice and GSL vs. the World, were held each year. Other events could join the WCS if they met requirements, but these were the official events for 2017 and 2018.
In 2017, a crowdfunding system called War Chest was introduced. Players could buy in-game items, with 25% of the money going to increase prize pools for events. The first event to reach its target prize pool was the 2017 WCS Global Finals, which received $200,000. This system was later used to fund $200,000 for later Global Finals and $150,000 for IEM Katowice events.
In 2019, the year’s World Championship Series moved from a single event to two online leagues with live finals, WCS Winter America and WCS Winter Europe. Two of the three remaining WCS Circuit stops were organized by Star Ladder, reducing Dreamhack’s involvement to one event compared to four in previous years. Despite these changes, the tournament format remained the same beyond the addition of WCS Winter.
In early 2020, Blizzard announced the end of the World Championship Series and the start of a new professional circuit, the ESL Pro Tour StarCraft II (EPT), run by ESL and Dreamhack with prize money funded by Blizzard. Events run by Dreamhack would keep the same format as the WCS Circuit, but the overall structure changed. The final event of each year was moved from BlizzCon to IEM Katowice. The EPT was planned for three years, with increased prize pools for 2020 to celebrate StarCraft II’s tenth anniversary.