I will agree, that they are trying to spin it to hide their frugality, and that is pretty much where my complain lies.
I care little about what Blizzard actually wanted, because that is quite clear. What i find problematic, is that they thought of something bad and tried to hide it behind a well meaning attitude, of giving players a way to HELP contribute to prize money, not having them overtake the cost entirely.
But when you crowdfund, you often give a reason why you can’t pay for it yourself.
Blizzard can easily pay for the prize pool and have done so before. The normal reasoning behind prize pool crowdfunding, is that the company would like a higher price pool, and let me put pressure on Higher, and ask the community to help increase the pool. They get to see the prize pool increase with every purchase and in exchange the company can boast about having a more rewarding tournament.
In the normal scenario, the company keeps a standard clear, creating a prize pool to start from and allowing every single purchase to increase it. In the Blizzard example, if not enough toys are bought, the prize pool is not increased and 100% of sales goes to the pocket of Blizzard.
Activision CANT have any of its games in the ‘‘e-Sport’’ category for a simple reason.
Every single game they have is beyond ‘dead’ compared to its ‘rival’
HotS , its a joke to compare it versus DotA or LoL
Diablo franchise is irrelevant and PoE is light years better compared to Diablo III
World of Warcraft - Arena & M+ its doomed to have this low viewerbase because people doesnt care at all it seems
Hearthstone & Starcraft as ‘e-Sport’ i have no clue so i dont wanna judge something i have no idea about but i cant see how ‘‘exciting’’ can be a tournament based on Hearthstone or how many thousands it can reach , not to mention RTS / Starcraft
Overwatch , the only beacon of light for Activision but still im not sure if it can gets half the attention or prizepool CSGO is getting
But Blizzard aren’t going to give you a reason why, because as I already said – referring to Heroes of the Storm and its HGC league – it comes down to finances.
And we both know that it will take more than heartfelt words to convince disgruntled community members that the billion-dollar company cannot afford to run an eSport tournament for one of their games.
But it’s not a matter of affordability, it’s a matter of budgeting.
The eSport division gets a budget that reflects how well it performs.
If they have few spectators, small sponsors, little media coverage, and a tiny pro scene, then their budget is set appropriately.
If they wish to maintain their tournament quality, then they have to cut costs where it’s possible.
They can fire some staff…but that would affect the quality.
They could make the tournament format smaller…but that would also affect the quality.
Or they could crowd-fund / outsource the prize pool cost…that doesn’t affect quality! So that’s what they do.
Again, Blizzard aren’t going to come out and say:
“Hey guys. The WoW eSport scene is actually not very popular, so our eSport division can’t make a case for why it should warrant a crazy high budget. So therefore we would like you to pay some of the bill, because the guys over in finance won’t let us spend hundreds of thousands of dollar on something that’s not very popular to many.”
You obviously don’t need a higher education in marketing to understand that saying something like that sends the wrong signal to the fans of the eSport.
This is not about HoTs or other tournaments. I get that they are not turning profits, just like many other tournaments. Tournaments are nearly always an investment in the community and not being about getting enough viewers to gain income.
But we are also mostly talking about WoW M+, which is surprisingly popular and should not be an event, that is closing in on being a negative for the company. Its increasing in viewers, so why all of sudden are Blizzard not seeing it as a plus for the game? O.o
So yeah, when it comes to income with E-sports tournaments, outside of the big 3-5 like CSGO and League, the income matters less than community engagement. So talking about money is misdirecting what is in focus.
HE IS RIGHT THO
If you are so scared to give your opinion, maybe leave the forums ? You arent very welcomed here, in case you havent notice,and many ppl have your trolling already rigged out by now, pal
Have something to say, fine, dont have anything of value to add, fine also, DONT ADD ANYTHING
U r just making propaganda here
Though you may not like it, I’ll bring up Heroes of the Storm again.
The HGC league had an estimated cost of 6 million, per year.
It’s difficult to justify such a cost by just going: “But community engagement!”
Everything has a price, and 6 million a year is a hefty price for community engagement when it doesn’t actually engage a very big part of the community.
I suspect it’s the same with WoW. That AWC and MDI tournament format has to cost millions of dollars to run each year. It makes sense to seek ways to reduce those costs, and I think selling in-game toys where part of the sales go to the prize pool is a good way to go about it.
Good friggin’ riddance. 
As long the game keeps distracting me from the real life pain, I dont care what they do. Just make the game fun. I will have complaints but what game doesnt have flaws.
Ive tried all mmorpgs and i still prefer WoW at the end.
We are not going to agree. It does not state in any way shape or form that they are putting up any of the money and using the proceeds on top. I do not understand how any one could draw that conclusion from
Show your support for WoW esports with two new toys, now available in the Blizzard shop and in-game shop.
For a limited time, every purchase of the Transmorpher Beacon or Lion’s Pride and Horde’s Might Fireworks, 25% of the proceeds will contribute toward the year’s finals LAN event prize pool for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event.) Your support will help take the WoW esports prize pool to the next level.
NEW TOYS FOR ME? I PROMISE I WON’T BREAK THEM THIS TIME!
As both Arena and MDI grow, we want to give fans a chance to further support the programs—and have some fun along the way! Soon we will introduce two new in-game toys to our shop (details to follow). A portion of the sale of these toys will contribute to the prize pools for both WoW esports programs.
These toys will go on sale in the spring. As the proceeds will contribute to the year’s final LAN event prize pools for AWC and MDI, those prize pools will be announced later this year.
We can’t wait to get things started. Be sure to follow World of Warcraft on Twitter and Twitch to stay up to date on all the latest WoW esports news, and bookmark WorldOfWarcraft.com/esports so you don’t miss a thing!
All their publicity for this was about them giving fans the opportunity to support the event and contribute to the prize pools. There has been no deception.
I really don’t see how much plainer they could have put it.
Exactly this really, I knew what I was in for and to be honest. Those toys 
I’ve definitley made my money’s worth of using the transmorpher, but then again people at the moment are looking for almost any excuse to jump down blizzard’s throat after recent events.
This one does not come up enough …
Yeah,if 25% of the toysales dint make 500k,then theyd pay the difference to 500k out of own pocket.
Youd still have people get madd then and interpret a totally different message
I mean it’s their company and their esport scene, if they want to damage their esport scenes then let them, i hope they’ve accounted for the potential death of these two wow esport scenes. Perhaps the intent is to pull an hots soon on arena & m+?
I still think they should’ve added 500k on their own since they can easily afford to. Having your customers foot atleast the majority of the prize money while this game also has a sub and features macrotransactions.
They don’t need anymore bad pr right now.
There is no bad PR in this case but some are certainly trying to misrepresent the issue.
They worded it in such a way you couldn’t really tell what, but industry standard is base price pool + part of revenue so we went with that. In the mind of thinking Bliz wouldn’t sink so low to not atleast contribute the quarenteed amount to their own price pool. But here we are, they sunk even lower on people’s list of respect. So from now on every time Bliz hold an e-sport event we have to pay all the price money? That’s a potential future we are looking at if people just talk this good aswell. That’s also a good one the Blizcon ticket last year went up in price due to classic beta, the price didn’t went down. So they better have a DIV demo running or something or they will get even more bad PR.
Blizzard is now the only e-sport company who pays nothing of the price money, every other provides the base price money and a percentage of revenue. If they are competing for the worst company of 2019 they are going great! But although they are close Bethesda is still 1 step ahead. Weird to see a year where EA can’t win…
we want to give fans a chance to further support the programs
proceeds will contribute to the year’s final LAN event prize pools
25% of the proceeds will contribute toward the year’s finals LAN event prize pool for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event.)
So ‘quarenteed minimum pool’ says only it will be atleast that no matter what how much sells or how little. Not that they would expect us to to complety fund it. Like they did now.
What “industry standard”? There is no “industry standard” for how a gaming company funds their E-sports, or even how crowd funding is run.
Industry standard is stuff like making sure your machinery conforms to standards set by industrial bodies and trade regulators. About making sure you obey the rules about pricing, again, set by similar bodies.
There is no overarching body whom determines what is “proper” crowd funding in terms of an industrial standard. Nor a similar body for setting rules about funding E sports events in various ways.
There are simply actors in the market, like blizzard, and the methods they use until such a regulatory body comes into existence.
The fact that several different companies use similar methods does not mean that is now industry standard. That’s not how it works. In the same way my friends and I using the word “Whodawg” to communicate “who are you/who is that” does not mean this word is now the standard way to express such sentiments. Unless the word is recognised by the dictionary (Oxford) we’re e just doing our thing. If added, THEN it becomes a “standard” expression. Similar principle here. A body with the power to enforce and determine a standard must be involved and typically that body exists outside of companies.