The road to the 2016 Call of Duty® Championship, Presented by PlayStation® 4 is nearly set. Team Envyus, Mindfreak and Millenium won their respective regional finals in the Call of Duty® World League, Presented by PlayStation® 4 Stage 2 Pro Division matches yesterday at the ESL Studios in Burbank, and will move onto Call of Duty® XP this September to play for the overall winner's share of the biggest prize in Call of Duty® history of over $3.5 million.
Yesterday's regional finals capped an exciting day of competition as eager fans in attendance, online via livestream, and tuning-in directly through an in-game (BOIII PS4) Live Event Viewer, witnessed the thrilling conclusion to months of rigorous competition of Stage 2. Team Envyus took home the North American honors after topping surprise finalist, Dream Team four maps to one.
"All year long, from our qualifying events early in the year to the Stage 2 Finals, the CWL has been an amazing showcase to watch the best Call of Duty players in the world compete at the highest level. We're thrilled with the season thus far and are very excited for the future of Call of Duty eSports," said Rob Kostich, General Manager and Executive Vice President of Call of Duty. "Next up is our grand finale, the CWL Championship at Call of Duty XP September 2nd-4th. It will be the biggest Call of Duty eSport event we have ever put on, and it will be an epic conclusion to the season that fans won't want to miss."
The top eight North American Call of Duty teams battled it out over the weekend. After the dust settled, thousands of Call of Duty fans witnessed Team Envyus emerge victorious as they were crowned Stage 2 champions and secured their spot in the highly-anticipated Call of Duty Championship this fall at COD XP in Los Angeles.
"Even though we were coming into Stage 2 finals as the top seed, we felt like other teams weren't taking us seriously," said Bryan "Apathy" Zhelyazkov of Team Envyus. "This win is great for us, but we are now fully focused on the CWL Championship in September."
The ANZ region featured key match ups between Mindfreak and Orbit with Mindfreak continuing their ANZ dominance taking the top prize four maps to two. The EU region had multiple top teams vying for the Stage 2 prize pool. Millenium and Team Infused met in the finals with Millenium becoming a two time CWL Pro Division Champion by winning the series four maps to two.
Here are the final rankings for each CWL Stage 2 Pro Division region:
North America
- Team Envyus - Qualified for CWL Championship
- Dream Team - Qualified for CWL Championship
- Luminosity - Qualified for CWL Championship
- Rise Nation - Qualified for CWL Championship
- Faze Clan - Qualified for CWL Championship
- Optic Gaming - Qualified for CWL Championship
- H2K Gaming
- Cloud9
Europe
- Millenium - Qualified for CWL Championship
- Team Infused- Qualified for CWL Championship
- Splyce - Qualified for CWL Championship
- HyperGames - Qualified for CWL Championship
- Epsilion eSports
- Supremacy
Australia/ New Zealand
- MindFreak - Qualified for CWL Championship
- Orbit - Qualified for CWL Championship
- Chiefs eSports
- Team Immunity
As part of the action this weekend, the Stage 2 finals held an exhibition tournament featuring 16 international all-stars, voted in by the fans. A donation to the Call of Duty™ Endowment was made on behalf of the winning team: Havok of Cloud9, Pizzurp of H2K Gaming, Qwiker of Hypergames, and Skrapz of Epsilion eSports. The donation will support the Call of Duty Endowment's efforts to connect veterans with high-quality jobs. In 2015 alone, the Endowment funded the placement of 10,492 veterans at an average cost per person of under $600 (one fifth the cost of government efforts), by finding and supporting the best non-profits that do this work. As always, you can re-live the Stage 2 action on the Call of Duty YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/CALLOFDUTY/videos. Be sure to check out https://www.callofduty.com/esports as well.