Epic Games have announced the Fortnite Winter Royale Tournament today with a hefty prize pool totaling $1 million up for grabs. The announcement also heralds some excellent news about improvements to the battle royale game’s tournament system.
Fortnite Winter Royale Tournament
The Fortnite Winter Royale Tournament will be the proving grounds for next year’s Fortnite World Cup. While this is indeed a tournament in its own right, Winter Royale is also being used to make sure that everything on the backend is running smoothly before Epic Games commits to an event of a much larger scale.
The test event will be split into two portions, namely the Winter Royale Qualifiers and the Winter Royale Finals. This is an open tournament that anyone is eligible to participate in.
Players must simply try to get one of the highest scores for their region on the appropriate qualifier days. Those who have had their scores verified by Epic Games will be invited to the finals and have the opportunity to participate in the Fortnite Winter Royale Tournament proper.
Here are the dates you need to know:
- Fortnite Winter Royale Tournament Qualifiers (Open to Everyone): November 24-25
- Europe Winter Royale Finals: November 30-December 1
- North America Winter Royale Finals: December 11-12
Specific times will be made available via the in-game events tabs. A $1 million prize pool will be available for the tournament, although we don’t yet know how exactly it will be split amongst the winners.
Pop-Up Cups
Pop-Up Cups are a new feature coming to the Events tab in the near future. These will be miniature online tournaments with special game rules.
Effectively, Pop-Up Cups are going to be quite similar to Limited-Time Modes, or LTMs. These will be used to test a variety of different in-game adjustments in a more competitive environment. Epic Games advises that players pay special attention to the “Tournament Details” button in the Events Tab before hopping in – you never know what to expect with a Pop-Up Cup!
Online Tournament Fixes
Finally, a number of fixes to the online tournament system are being sorted out thanks to several critical issues being identified by Epic Games. These issues included incorrect point totals and point totals being slow to update.
One of the most critical fixes has resulted in improvements to in-game matchmaking for online tournaments. Players should now be correctly matched against other competitors with similar point totals. This ought to result in more challenging matches as you advance deeper in a tournament.
The Fortnite Winter Royale Tournament is sure to make for a good bit of fun. If you’re not down to practice for that kind of a big commitment, Epic Games has certainly provided some excellent alternatives for players looking for a little structured competitive action.
The Winter Royale Tournament Qualifiers kick off on November 24, 2018.
[via Epic Games]
