Hearthstone Global Games announced

Blizzard Entertainment just announced the Hearthstone Global Games.

The Hearthstone Global Games let people from 48 countries face off online in an international tavern. The winners will go on to face off in the finals that will take place later this year.

Here are the official rules for the Global Games. The Hearthstone Global Games will have multiple phases.

Qualification
Format
All three phases will use a best-of-five, class vs. class format with 9 unique classes per team.
Each player on the team will have two classes they are able to play.
The ninth class will be designated as the “Ace Deck” and may be used for game 5 instead of previously un-selected decks of the “Ace Player”.

Phase 1
The 48 participating teams will be placed into one of the 8 groups and seeded based on their country’s total Hearthstone Competitive Points for the Winter Season.
Each group of 6 teams will compete online against each other with each team playing each other once (Round Robin).
The top 3 teams from each group will advance to Phase 2.

Phase 2
The remaining 24 teams will be seeded into pools. From these pools teams will be placed into one of the 6 groups.
Each group of 4 teams will again compete against each other in a Round Robin.
The top 2 teams from each group, and the 4 highest 3rd place teams based on tie-breakers will advance to Phase 3.

Phase 3
The remaining 16 teams will then be seeded into a single elimination bracket.
The top 4 teams will advance to the live Global Games Finals.

Global Games Finals
Format
The finals will use a best-of-nine, class vs. class format similar to the qualification period.

Finals
The final four teams will be seeded into a single elimination bracket.

Details on voting will be announced at a later time by Blizzard.