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Blizzard’s 21-hour Heart of the Swarm launch broadcast begins now; Day[9]’s King of the Beta tournament to come later

StarCraft II

Top StarCraft 2 players have been embedded in Blizzard’s Irvine headquarters today in anticipation of Heart of the Swarm’s staggered global release across the next two days. Under the seasoned eye and inspired commentary of Sean ‘Day[9]’ Plott, they’ll clash in King of the Beta tournament matches, to be broadcast alongside international launch events and community-created videos in a 21-hour stream on Twitch.

The broadcast begins this morning at 10am GMT / 3am PDT / 2am PST with livestreams of launch events in Australia, South Korea, France and the US. We’ll then be treated to Day[9]’s King of the Beta tournament, as well as “exclusive content” and community-created features, before local festivities kick off in the Irvine Spectrum Mall at 4am GMT/ 9pm PDT / 8pm PST.

The tournament will feature pro players from the US and South Korea – namely Grubby, White-Ra, Minigun, Polt, MorroW, TLO, IdrA and CatZ – for a prize pool of $3,500.

“The StarCraft community has been anticipating Heart of the Swarm for a long time,” said Blizzard father figure Mike Morhaime. “I believe you will find it was worth the wait. We’re looking forward to celebrating the release by hosting an awesome global launch party and delivering our best StarCraft content to date.”

You can find the full schedule the HotS launch stream over at Blizzard’s site. What will you be tuning in for, if anything?