Blizzard to make major changes to Hearthstone Masters Qualifiers, introduce single-elimination tournaments

Blizzard implied earlier this year that fans could expect to see changes made to the Hearthstone Masters Qualifiers going forward.

It looks like some of those changes are finally here, including a plan to reduce the overall number of qualifiers.

Starting on June 7, Blizzard plans to reduce the number of Masters Qualifiers. In order to balance this change, each Masters Qualifier will award two invites to its respective Masters Tour event. Blizzard is also considering reducing the number of maximum players per tournament in the future, but no action has been taken on that front just yet.

The Hearthstone team said it received quite a bit of feedback concerning Masters Qualifier events taking too long. In order to remedy this, Blizzard will be introducing single-elimination tournaments that will replace some of the scheduled Swiss events. The team also plans on monitoring upcoming Swiss and single-elimination tournaments to see if a switch to single-elimination only is viable in the future.

Blizzard wants to better reward consistent high placements in Masters Qualifier events, too. Moving forward, players who make the top eight of a Masters Qualifier six times within the same qualifying season will earn an invite to that Masters Tour event. This new rule will be applied retroactively.

If you’ve participated in a Masters Qualifier event, Blizzard wants to hear from you. The team will be sending out a survey through Battlefy to all players who have competed in a Masters Qualifier to help gather feedback about additional changes it could make in the future.