For those in the StarCraft II audience who fear for the end of the world this December can rest easy knowing they’ll reach the great beyond with their eSports appetite sated. Before the year is out, several major tournaments taking place around the (maybe doomed) world will feature fierce competition from the game’s best players.

First and foremost is the 2012 Battle.net World Championship in Shanghai, China, hosted by Blizzard themselves and sponsored by Razer and Asus. The WCS is a culmination of continent-wide qualifiers from all the major regions of the world and will feature a prize pool of $250,000 (€196,109). Excited? Good, because the group stage starts this Saturday at 6:45 PST. A free live stream will be available on the official webpage at http://us.battle.net/bwc/en/.

Next up is Intel Extreme Masters Global Challenge VII – Singapore, or IEM Singapore for short. The games will start next Thursday, the 22^nd, and will last through the weekend. Like the WCS, IEM Singapore’s brackets are filled with the winners of qualifiers from many different regions. Better yet, IEM Singapore will also feature League of Legends matches with our own MeetYourMakers competing, in case you feel the urge to change the channel. You can find more information as well as the streaming location at http://www.esl-world.net/masters/.

But in case Asian time zones don’t work out for you, DreamHack Winter will be running on the same days in Sweden. With 24 players competing for a total of $82,231 (€64,505), the format for the StarCraft II matches will be Round Robin with six players spanided into four groups. And as one of the premier eSports events in Europe, DreamHack will also be host to tournaments of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Battlefield 3, Super Street Figher IV, Quake Live, League of Legends and even Dota 2 where our own team will be competing. More info can be found here: http://www.dreamhack.se/dhw12/

Following DreamHack, you’ll have exactly four days to rest your eyes and stock your mini fridge before, last but not least, IGN ProLeague Season 5 in Las Vegas, Nevada. A massive total of 72 players will compete over three days for a total of $100,000 (€78,443). The roster features some heavy hitters, including ten GSL champions such as the four-time winner  Jung “MVP” Jong Hyun, badass foreign player  Ilyes “Stephano” Satouri and ace member of our partnership team MVP,  Park “DongRaeGu” Soo Ho.

Going on at the same time as IGN ProLeague will be the Grand Finals of both the Global StarCraft II League (GSL) and the Global StarCraft II Team League (GSTL). But not only will all three be running concurrently, but the Korean GSL and GSTL will share a venue with the IGN ProLeague, meaning matches of all three will happen at the same time, at the same place in the City of Sin. 

More info on the IGN ProLeague can be found at http://www.ign.com/ipl. Info about the GSL and GSTL, as well as streams and VODs for all games leading up to the grand finals, can be found at http://www.gomtv.net/.