With moderate fanfare, we are pleased to announce that Season 1 of the Hearthstone Premier League will begin this Sunday at 00:15am GMT (EU) and 05:15am GMT (NA).

Which also means that we are calling time on Season 0.5.

Among the lessons we learned from Season 0.5, is that divisions of 10 players seem to be too large, and five weeks seems to be too long.  The dropout rate in season 0.5 was significantly higher than we had anticipated, rendering at least one division largely inoperable.

So we've shortened the tournament to six games over three weeks, limited division sizes to 7 players, and will continue to evaluate both numbers going forward.  We've retainined the all-play-all round robin format, but are actively canvasing opinions on the overall structure of the league here: (link)

Whereas Season 0.5 allowed players to play their games in whatever order they wanted with a soft "two games a week please" fixtures structure, Season 1 specifies a window during which each game must be played.  While the approach we took in Season 0.5 appeared desirable, we believe it ultimately resulted in games not getting played in a timely fashion; very few players were able to arrange and play their games on schedule, and we are optimistic a more structured approach will yield better results.

We were deliberately lenient in how strictly we enforced tournament rules in Season 0.5, possibly to the league's detriment.  Recognising that for many players this would be their first tournament, we wanted to make the experience as welcoming as possible.  In Season 1 rules will be adhered to in as officious and coldhearted manner as we are able, with punishments ranging from game losses to ritual dismemberment, with the resulting pieces auctioned off and used to fund a towering monument to our magnificence.

Signups for season 1 are open now for both EU (link) and NA (link), and don't forget to tell us what to do by doing this survey thing (link)