After Halo 4‘s multiplayer community all but died shortly after the game’s launch, 343 Industries and Microsoft focused heavily on the eSports scene to ensure that Halo 5 didn’t meet the same fate. This included the “Halo World Championship” competition, which began with a prize pool of $1 million, and thanks to REQ pack sales in the new game, that number is now much higher.
The Halo World Championship kicks off with “Online Ladders” on December 6, with the finals not taking place until late March. But this long wait should be worth it: As of now, the prize pool stands at $1.7 million, and this number will continue to increase with REQ pack sales over the coming months.
There will be 16 teams in the final rounds, including six from North America, one from South America, two from Australia/New Zealand, one from Asia, and four from Europe. Registration information is available on the Halo World Championship’s official site.
If eSports isn’t your thing, 343 just also gave Halo 5 its first free content update, adding Big Team Battle mode (along with several objective-based variants), 48 new REQ cards, and the four new maps we detailed in a previous post: Guillotine, Recurve, Deadlock, and Basin. “Friendly fire” has also been disabled in the fast-death SWAT mode, which might be met with a bit of controversy.
The majority of the new REQ cards are weapon skins and vehicle skins, including the “Woodland Scorpion,” the “Dying Star” Light Rifle skin, and the “Green Machine” weapon skin. Also included is the new “Shove It” assassination and a number of armor modifications, as well as a special card that is currently donated with “???” on the official announcement page.
With the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops III and Star Wars Battlefront, are you still making your way back to Halo 5: Guardians‘ multiplayer? Let us know in the comments!
