Blizzard’s Heroes Of The Dorm Returns For Second Round On ESPN

The Heroes of the Storm college eSports tournament, Heroes of the Dorm, will return in 2016. Blizzard announced details and the prize pool for the event Thursday, which will once again be broadcast by ESPN.

Registration for Heroes of the Dorm have opened on the official website and will remain so through February 18. Registered teams will then compete in online qualifiers between February 20 and March 6. These elimination rounds will weed out the best from hundreds of competing schools down to a 64 teams to compete in the ESPN broadcast event in March and April for a chance to win $500,000 in tuition and other prizes.

The “Round of 64” stage of the Heroes of the Storm tournament will take place on March 19, followed by the “Round of 32” on March 20, the “Round of 16” on March 28, and “Round of 8” on March 27. Each round will be broadcast live on ESPN3, Twitch, and YouTube.

The Heroes of the Dorm will then take a short break and return on April 9 for the “Heroic Four,” which will be broadcast exclusively on ESPN 2 and WatchESPN. The Grand Finals will then take place the following day on April 10 with the same viewing methods.

“Last year’s Heroes of the Dorm was an amazing experience for the students playing and everyone watching, and we’re excited to again offer college athletes an epic opportunity to team up and compete for scholarships in 2016,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “It’s inspiring to see players from last year’s championship team, the UC Berkeley Golden Bears, now thriving in pro esports careers—we look forward to seeing how this year’s competitors shape the future of competitive gaming.”

ESPN recently added its own eSports reporting division after recognizing the explosive growth in the competitive gaming scene over the last couple of years. Last year’s Heroes of the Dorm was a success for the company along with broadcasts of Dota 2’s The International tournament in 2014.

This happened despite one of ESPN’s radio personalities This came despite one of its own radio hosts threatening to retire over its addition threatening to retire over eSports being covered by the network. He’s now left the broadcaster and is filling the air waves with his grief elsewhere.

[Image via Blizzard]