Registrations for a South African Dota 2 league closed as 116 teams signed to compete. The “Do Gaming League” otherwise known as the DGL has become, by player entries, the biggest Dota 2 tournament to date, almost doubling the size of the most popular tournaments from around the world.
Entries opened in November for this gargantuan tournament, and closed on Sunday. The Summer Leg starts in just a weeks time on January 29th, where teams will battle it out until March 25th. It all kicks off again with the Winter Leg later in the year, culminating in the Championship to decide the winner. Last year the tournament gave away over 500,000 Rand in prizes, which equates to a respectable £35,000/$55,000.
DGL are no strangers to the tournament scene, running regular tournaments for some of the biggest e-sport games such as League of Legends Counter-Strike, Starcraft 2 and more. Now Dota 2 graces the ranks for a second time after smashing the expectations of the tournaments hosts. All eyes are on last years champions “Bravado Gaming” to see if they can retain their title, which should prove much more difficult with the abundance of talent this year.
South African players are currently plagued with poor ping due to the distance between them and the European servers. The average player will run up close to 150-200ms in ping, which can mean life or death during twitch based play. Although everyone will be at the same disadvantage, maybe this is the interest Valve needs to commit its resources into a South African server.