What should have been an exciting tournament can otherwise only really be called cumbersome. The matches themselves were exciting, and most of the teams played quite aggressively, but nearly everything revolving around the tournament made it difficult to watch. First off, the tournament was hosted in Shanghai, so finding a good time to watch was complicated. For us in North America, the matches were starting at the time most of us get ready for bed. Evidently the infrastructure for both playing and streaming the matches wasn’t the best considering the LAN failure, and poor production quality. James “2GD” Harding, the original commentator for the major, was fired for “being an ass” according to Gabe Newell, the managing director of Valve. One of Team Spirit’s keyboards was lost by tournament staff. The Chinese teams didn’t seem too interested in the major at all, and were the first country completely eliminated. Now that the tournament is over, it seems as if there was more talk about how poor of an experience this tournament was for Dota 2 fans than there was about the actual matches.
As mentioned above, all the Chinese teams were eliminated by the second round of the lower bracket, and of those teams, only one, LGD, started in the upper bracket. Both Fnatic and Complexity had good streaks in the lower bracket, but were ultimately eliminated. The finals were really where most of the excitement was. For some the excitement was in anticipation of some excellent Dota 2 matches, and for others it was simply because this tiresome tournament would finally be over. Let’s take a look at the finals and grand finals:
The Finals
- Upper Bracket: Team Liquid vs Team Secret (0-2)
- Team Secret beat Team liquid twice in a row sending Team Liquid to the lower bracket with a chance at redemption in facing EG.
- Lower Bracket: Team Liquid vs EG (2-0)
- Team Liquid beats EG, in fact redeeming themselves and moving on to the grand finals to once again face Team Secret.
Grand Finals
- Team Secret vs Team Liquid (3-1)
- Team Liquid put up a good fight throughout the tournament but in the end lost to Team Secret walking away with a measly $405,000, while Team Secret enjoyed their grand prize of $1,110,000!
Hopefully the Spring Major in Manila will be a more pleasant experience over all. We’ll see what it has to bring this spring!
Featured Image Shanghai Major Logo courtesy of dota2.com
