Heroes Lounge Division S will be a high-level competition where the top teams from Europe and NA can compete in their own region.

Division S is a plan we've had sitting on a shelf for almost two years now. However with Open Division being the step between professional play and amateur play we never felt it was something the community needed. With the recent changes in the Heroes landscape and Open Division and HGC being canceled the plan was taken off the shelf. We have a full team working around the clock to dust off the plan and make some minor changes to reflect the current state of the game.

We hope to attract some former pro players and inspire players to improve at the game. We understand that the pro scene as we had during HGC is dead, but we want to give the best players in the game a place to compete on their level and something to strive for.

So far several former pro players like HasuObs, Mene and Zaelia as well as some former open division players have expressed their interest in playing.

Every penny of the money raised trough Matcherino will go to the players playing in division S, equally split between Europe and North America. There will be a pay out for every player participating and extra for the winning players. The exact distribution between the prize pool and the participation pay-out depends on the funds available for this season but we will calculate it using the following percentages.

The league will have a double round robin format, every team faces each other twice in a Bo5 match. Meaning that the league will last 14 rounds, with a round per week. The top 6 teams will then enter the playoffs, a double elimination tournament. The bottom 2 teams will enter crucibles where they will fight to remain in Division S or be replaced by a new team.

Everyone who has a battle.net account and is registered on the Heroes Lounge website is allowed to participate. You will have to adhere to the Heroes of the Storm user guidelines and you can not change your battle.net account during the season. You can not participate in both Division S NA and Division S EU, you can however participate in the amateur league as well as Division S. If you're HEroes Lounge staff, moderator or hold any other official position in Heroes Lounge you're also not allowed to participate.

First of all you have to create an account on our website. (For this you’ll need a battle.net account and a discord account that has joined the Heroes Lounge discord server). You can then either join an existing team by being invited by the captain, or create your own team and invite your team members. Once your team has 5 players you can sign up for the qualifiers by going into your manage team page and tick on the qualifier weekends you want to join and press update participation. Important, all division S teams have to have exactly 5 players.

Teams can qualify for the first season via our qualifiers. Every weekend in February will have a single elimination qualifier tournament per region starting the 2nd of February. The winner of each qualifier weekend will qualify directly for Division S. The rest of the teams will collect points based on their result in the qualifier weekend (see below for point spread). After all 4 weekends are over, the top 4 scoring teams will be added to the 4 winning teams to form our first Division S season.

Position	Points
1st	Automatically Qualify
2nd	160
3rd - 4th	100
5th - 8th	65
9th - 16th	40
17th - 32nd	30

Midway through the first season we will announce new qualifiers for our second season. The qualifying teams will enter the crucibles where the top two teams will be added to division S.

Not long after the qualifiers. We will start around the middle of March, with the exact date to be announced soon.

A team must consist of 5 players. Players can not be part of multiple teams. Every team has to have a captain, the captain does not have to a player for the team, so an owner, manager or coach can be added to the team as captain. In case your team runs into an issue the following sub-rules are in place:

A substitute can be put in place for a member of the team roster, this substitute and the team must fulfil the following requirements:

• The request to use a substitute player must come from the captain
• The team can only use substitutes up to two times per season
• The substitute player must fulfil the Eligibility requirements, and can not be a player from a different team participating in Division S.
• The substitute player may not play for more than one team per week.
• Heroes Lounge may allow additional substitutes in extreme circumstances.
• Substitutes must be reported to and approved by a Division S moderator.
  
  

We realise that crowdfunding will not be sustainable in the long run, so the moment we decided to launch Division S we reached out to several organisations. We are currently talking to ensure the financial support of this league for several seasons.

Heroes Lounge has a team of volunteers with a heartfelt love for this game. This means that no one in the organisation is being paid for their efforts in Division S. For the full list of Heroes Lounge volunteers please check out our staff page.

Via email on divisionS@heroeslounge.gg 

Via Discord: 

• TinyOwl#8888 
• Heartless#2138 
• Eef#5578