The eight coveted direct invites to Valve’s first seasonal Major Dota 2 tournament since this summer’s The International are out and it’s bad news for Europe and CIS as South-East Asia dominates.
The Boston Major will be our next chance to see the best Dota 2 players in the world go head to head.
Among the invited are TI6 winners Wings Gaming, obviously, with an unaltered line-up and runners-up Digital Chaos. The Chinese teams joining Wings will be EHOME and Newbee, fresh from their second place finish at MarsTV Dota League. The MDL winners, Evil Geniuses, also secured their invite while third place OG seems to have convinced Valve their TI6 performance was a low ebb and their new squad is up to the task of being the EU region’s sole invite.
However the real surprises are a total lack of CIS teams on the direct guestlist while the tiny SEA region has snagged two invites for both Execration and Korean side MVP. As always, the post-International period has been a game of musical chairs with rosters, so judging which teams are on form will probably have been a difficult process for Valve. Still many expected Fnatic, formed from a merge of OG-slaying TI6 team TnC and the equally succesful fourth-place Fnatic team at the tournament, to see their own invite. Such is the unpredictability of digital sports.
The CIS region suffered another blow as the regional qualifying teams were announced initially with Team Empire on the list, however a clerical error gave them the place of Team Secret making for an awkward transfer in the Europe region.
You can see the updated Boston Majors invite list to see who will be fighting through each region’s qualifying tournaments, while Team Empire begin their battle through the open qualifiers along with every other scrub team tomorrow.
The open qualifiers will be held through FACEIT over the 23-24 and a second round of qualifiers over 25-26 October, so there’s just about time to sign yourselves up for a squad. Even if you’re solo, FACEIT will team you up with someone, so why not?