The Intel Extreme Masters tournament series kicks off an exciting, mass tournament for its Season 8 finale, with StarCraft II and League of Legends teams battling it out.

The premium subscription tickets for World Championship Series are currently available on Twitch! They will give fans of StarCraft II eSports access to the highest quality live stream, as well as subscriber-only chat (when available) and eight unique WCS emoticons. Low, Medium and High quality streams as well as VODs will always be free for all.

A few weeks ago, StarCraft II received one of the most significant content patches to date in Patch 2.1. The beastly new patch included a great deal of content, including:

• "Arcade" features are now free: The custom maps of StarCraft II are contained in a portion called the arcade. It is now free with the Starter edition of SC2, and available for download. If you are new to StarCraft, I recommend starting with the games "Raynor Party" and "Mafia", they are great fun. Along with the Arcade, free players will have access to custom games and the beginning of the campaign.
• New extension mods feature: Players can now create custom games with zany modifiers, such as moving minerals and all units exploding on death. This feature allows for smaller mods to be more easily used by average players.
• New level cap for online play: The level cap has been raised from 30-35 for each race, and new StarCraft themed portraits can be unlocked.
• First win of the day bonus: The first win of the day in competitive ladder (only available to players who have purchased the full game) now grants 100,000 experience.
• Classic Soundtrack: The StarCraft: Broodwar soundtracks have been mastered and are available for free in StarCraft II.

If you haven't already, I encourage you to check out the StarCraft II Starter Edition, the quantity and quality of content available for free is overwhelming. We recently had the opportunity to talk to SC2 Senior Game Producer Tony Hsu about some of the patch 2.1 content.

Proleague begins tonight at 7pm KST on December 28, in South Korea. The only remaining StarCraft II Korean team league, Proleague, has a huge prize pool of nearly $100,000, and eight fantastic teams competing. Tonight we see team MVP facing off against SK Telecom T1 and Incredible Miracle playing Prime. The matches are sure to be exciting, and we will likely see a slew of new Korean talent.  The event has the first three caster team, with professional player MoonGlade and former GSTL caster Wolf.

It was 1998. The table I sat at in eigth grade math class was considered the "geek" table, and there was always one thing on our minds when we gathered 'round before class began: Starcraft. As a game that was considered a common late-night or weekend venture, none of us cared much for any activities indoors besides Blizzard's futuristic RTS game. Fast-forward fifteen years later and the one memorable line from Starcraft II's trailer that resonates in everyone's mind is "It's about time." Indeed it is about time, because who would have thought such an IP would have solidified itself for a decade and a half? Now nine months after the first expansion, Heart of the Swarm, there's no sign of this game stopping in terms of popularity.

StarCraft II's 2013 eSports season ended with a bang at BlizzCon, as the Protoss player sOs took a stunning victory. The event was one of the best in StarCraft II history, with over 120,000 viewers tuning in for the final match. Blizzard aims to address many of the problems that the community and professional players had with the WCS eSports format in the upcoming WCS 2014. StarCraft II is arguably the eSport with the highest skill cap, and provides a top tier experience for the viewer. Despite these facts, viewership is down slightly over previous SCII seasons. With the 2014 WCS season, Blizzard aims to put StarCraft II back on the eSports throne.

The 2013 WCS season was very convoluted: tournaments had overlapping schedules, there were periods of very little scheduled professional play and long running tournaments were quite condensed. WCS 2014 aims to fix this by instituting a linear schedule that is more consistent and to ensure more regular broadcasts, as well as making more time for dedicated third-party tournaments. Blizzard also promises more third-party partner tournaments that give dedicated WCS points.

The competitors in this weekend’s Red Bull Battle Grounds will compete for a prize pool of $50,000. A definitive who’s who of the StarCraft II scene, the match-ups at this event guaranteed to be among the best of the year.

If you're not attending the event in person check out the livestream on November 23rd and 24th beginning at 1PM EST. Check out the full schedule below!

sOs, MC, Bomber, PartinG, HyuN, Scarlett, Snute and Golden.

These are the eight top-tier competitors in next weekend’s Red Bull Battle Grounds, vying over a hefty prize pool of $50,000. A definitive who’s who of the StarCraft II scene, the match-ups at this event guaranteed to be among the best of the year. One of the most notable attendees is sOs, the very recent winner of the World Championship Series.

BlizzCon 2013 is over and this year’s event will be remembered for many reasons. Not only did Blizzard announce details of the next World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor, but information was also released on future plans for the immensely popular Hearthstone, due to go into open beta next month. 

The WCS World Finals of StarCraft II kicked off on Friday, November 8. After three seasons of regional qualifiers and world championships, the top 16 players of the year will face off in what is possibly the hardest StarCraft II tournament of all time. The finals are at BlizzCon, Blizzard Entertainment's massive annual convention. The winner will take home a grand prize of $100,000 and a huge trophy.