u/JannesOfficial

Starting July 23
16 Players
8 via Invites (not announced yet)
8 via Qualifiers

1st: $3,000
2nd: $1,775
3-4th: $750
7-8th: $300

You can signup for the Open Qualifier on July 17 via This Discord

Liquipedia

If anyone out there is thinking about getting in to WC3, now is a great time. I am a long time Warcraft fan but a real WC3 novice. I loved this game when I was 8 and a friend's older brother showed it to us, but was absolutely terrible at it. Like couldn't beat an Easy computer bad at it, and got stuck part way through the campaign. Within a year or so, I had found WoW and moved on to that, which I've played off and on ever since. After watching Grubby in OnlyFangs playing hardcore WoW and seeing his first WC3 tournament, I got an itch to try this game from my childhood again. I played a few bot games, did a bit of the campaign, but walked away because online play was intimidating.

Well Grubby's latest Altar of Champions tournament caught my eye and this time I decided to take the plunge about two months ago. I picked Night Elf as my race for aesthetic reasons, and since bears was supposed to be an easy build. I played bot games until I could beat Insane (at least sometimes), banned the maps I couldn't figure out how to AoW creep on, and dove in to W3Champions.

I won my first game in a mirror against a fellow new player and was so proud watching the replay because my timings were just a little faster than his and it made the difference. Then I lost 8 straight. Some I felt like I could learn from. Others, the knowledge and hands diff was so massive that I didn't even watch the replay. All in all, I played 15 games in Season 24, going 4-11 (really 3-12 since one was a pity FF after I'd effectively lost but stuck around to let him test something) and ending at 870 mmr, which was still too high for me. I look back fondly on perhaps 3 of those games in total.

Last week I decided to try again. I loaded up and saw it was a new season and there was supposed to be an updated new player experience. I wanted to try a new race anyways since I felt so helpless in the early game and decided it would be a good time to reroll Undead. I played maybe 5 bot games on two off-meta builds (DL fast expand and CL fiends) since I knew DK/Lich would be more than my poor micro could handle, then back to W3C. I selected "beginner" and despite a 1500 visible MMR, was getting matched with players from 600 - 1k MMR. One guy even commented on it being unfair for him to match with someone 400 MMR higher, then proceeded to kick my ass, so jokes on him. I have now played about as many games as my last attempt at picking this up and... I'm having a blast! I'm 8-6 (really 7-6 since one person immediately proposed a draw then left in 2 minutes). Listed as 936 MMR, but still playing people lower than that and losing as much as winning, so I expect it to dip into the 800s before I settle. At no point have I played a player that felt absolutely unbeatable. I've beaten and lost to all 4 races already. I've had 8 minute games, 35 minute games, and plenty in between. I've been watching my replays and actually been able to apply things I see my opponents doing to my own gameplay, like frost wyrms to counter tower heavy bases. While I can blame some of my better experience on enjoying undead more than NE, a huge amount is that I am playing at a reasonable skill level for me. Last season I played 9/15 games against opponents > 950 MMR. This season I've played 1/14. To whomever put together this new system, thank you so much. I've found a new game to play and hope to hang around here for a while!

TLDR; If you are tempted to pick up WC3 and W3Champions, the updated new player experience gets you into fun games much faster than before!