The format
As announced earlier, the WCS format is modeled after how GSL works, with two league running simultaneously and players able to climb up or fall down at various points of the competition.
A few exceptions and changes have been made to how the format works, hover. As this is the first WCS season for Europe and North America, the player distribution and format for the first season only will work like that. For the next seasons, the algorithm will be as follows:
Notice that there are differences between NA/EU and Korea in terms of how the challenger circuit is structured. For NA/EU, said circuit will consist of 40 players while Korea will feature a total of 64. Furthermore, top finishers in Korea's open qualifiers will be able to be seeded further into the Challenger Circuit, something that was previously unavailable. Said Challenger Circuit will itself see restructuring, now split into bracket and group stage phases.
The point system
When the point system for WCS was announced, along came the question how much non-WCS tournaments will weigh as compared to the Premier/Challenger leagues of the Blizzard circuit.
As seen on the graph below, the bulk of the points will come from finishing high in the premier league and the season finals. The rewards to come from non-WCS tournaments like DreamHack, IEM and the likes will be significantly smaller than the premier league awards (despite still being way more lucrative than doing well in the challenger tear). Thus, they are most likely to serve as point boosters rather as a tool to force yourself high into the WCS ranking.
The prize pool
The $1,6 million total prize pool is distributed equally across the three regions with the season finals numbers seeing a steep increase as compared to the premier league ones. Naturally, the grand finals at Blizzcon will be where the big money are at with the World Champion banking $100,000.
Links
Battle.net - Source
