UC Berkeley Golden Bears: 2015 "Heroes of the Dorm" Champions

By Megan Weyrauch on May 6, 2015

“We still can’t believe that our passion for gaming has paid off in college tuition,” said Richard ‘PandaJigu’ Xue, captain of the winning team of the 2015 Heroes of the Dorm competition, the UC Berkeley Golden Bears.

Do you remember when we published an article on an exciting eSports tournament where the grand prize was college tuition coverage? Well, folks, we have a winner!

According to this recent press release, thousands of student gamers from more than 460 schools across the U.S. and Canada took part in the Heroes of the Dorm tournament featuring Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.’s online team brawler, Heroes of the Storm, and the UC Berkeley Golden Bears emerged victorious.

Heroes of the Storm brings together a diverse cast of famous characters from Blizzzard’s gaming universes, such as Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo, challenging them to compete in epic, adrenaline-charged battles. Participating students received closed beta access to Heroes of the Storm, which is officially launching June 2 following an open beta testing period beginning May 19.

Fighting through a formidable pool of challengers, four teams of college students took the stage at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in LA on their quest to become champions, and by defeating the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Mad Banners and by weathering an epic five-game onslaught from the Arizona State Dream Team, the UC Berkeley Golden Bears earned the Heroes of the Dorm title.

The Golden Bears players will receive the grand prize of tuition to cover the remainder of their college careers.

“I’d like to congratulate our Heroes of the Dorm, the UC Berkeley Golden Bears, on their epic victory run,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “Watching this tournament has been incredibly exciting for me—even if my bracket didn’t pan out as expected. We’re big fans of eSports at Blizzard and this event was just one example of our ongoing commitment to competitive gaming.

The Heroes of the Dorm tournament marked the first time a collegiate eSports event was telecast live on ESPN2, according to the release. The “Heroic Four” semi-finals were delivered on ESPN3 while the championship match and closing ceremony were streamed in prime time on ESPN2. Coverage of the event was also viewed online at WatchESPN.com, on smartphones and tablets via the WatchESPN app, and streamed on televisions through Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

The tournament also took the Twitter world by storm as fans of eSports and newcomers tuned into the ESPN2 telecast due to the non-stop action on display during the back-and-forth series and commentary from the announcing team of Dan ‘Artosis’ Stemkoski, Nick ‘Tasteless’ Plott, Sean ‘Day9’ Plott, Manuel ‘Grubby’ Schenkhuizen, and Tim ‘Trikslyr’ Frazier.

Offering nearly half a million dollars in lucrative prizes to student competitors and viewers, Heroes of the Dorm broke new ground for collegiate eSports. Thousands of members of the Heroes of the Storm community filled out fantasy brackets with their predicted winners, with $10,000 going to the viewer with the “best bracket.” In addition, the top 5 bracket predictions will receive the same epic gaming systems as awarded to all 20 members of the “Heroic Four” teams and many other prizes will go out to randomly selected participants.

Learn more about Heroes of the Storm by visiting their website. Want to work for Blizzard Entertainment? Check out jobs.blizzard.com for information on their numerous positions and how to apply.

“Competing in the Heroes of the Dorm tournament has been an amazing experience for our team,” Xue said. “College eSports is awesome, and we hope Blizzard and TeSPA bring back the tournament next year so we can defend our title! GO BEARS!”

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