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Blizzard Global Finals 2013 will be held next year during BlizzCon, which will make its return following the cancellation of BlizzCon 2012, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime confirmed during a press conference at the Blizzard World Championships held this year in Shanghai, China.
This year's Global Finals, the culmination of the Battle.net World Championship Series, were held in China. The Shanghai tournament for StarCraft and World of Warcraft arena players ended over the weekend after a series of 30 national and continental tournaments were held around the world.
Looking to the future, Morhaime stated he hopes to see fixes to the current challenges that face both viewers and participants of e-sports.
"There's some challenges just with all of these tournaments going on, as a spectator, not knowing what to watch or what the significance is of winning this event or that event," said Morhaime of the current state of e-sports events. "Having pro players put in a position where they have to choose between two important events - those are some of the things we'd really like to avoid in 2013. We'd like better coordination and cooperation between partners."
Morhaime added that Blizzard's foray into e-sports is on a par with the events held by Valve and Riot Games despite the large prize pools offered by those companies.
"We're also making significant investment. We may be doing it in a different way, we spend an awful lot of money in terms of travel, hotels, making it easy for all of these pros and people involved in putting on these tournaments are able to get to the places they need to be. Maybe it's not as flashy as putting all the money into prize pools, but it's still significantly expensive, and, from what we're told, that's actually more helpful for the ecosystem than just the flashy prizes."
Early in the year, the company announced its "jam-packed" development schedule for Diablo 3, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria and StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm meant it would not hold its annual BlizzCon event in 2012.
