StarCraft 2 Battle.net World Championship finals heading to Shanghai

Blizzard have announced that the grand finale of the Battle.net StarCraft 2 World Championship will take place in China on Novemeber 17-18. Shanghai will host the event, which will also feature the finals of the global World of Warcraft Arena competition and give attendees the chance to sit down for some "hands-on play time with some of the latest Blizzard games."

The event is being organised through NetEase , which publishes StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft in China. CEO William Ding is unsurprisingly also quite keen about the whole thing: “We're excited to partner with Blizzard to co-host a world-class eSports event here in China," he says. “There are millions of eSports enthusiasts in China and we're looking forward to presenting them with the opportunity to come together, have fun, and celebrate their passion for professional gaming.”

For more on the competition, check out the World Championship page on Battle.net for an overview of how each region breaks down ahead of the finals. There's already a big e-sports audience in China, but there's potentially a much, much bigger one to be won with centrepiece events like the Battle.net World Championships.

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.