The Weekly CourierKuala Lumpur Major Qualifiers Conclude and Twitch Gets Banned In China

By eggs on Sep 22, 2018 16:15 UTC

Kuala Lumpur Major Qualifiers Conclude

Over the past week, fifteen teams from six different regions qualified for the Kuala Lumpur Major. With just barely a few weeks of an off season, teams are setting up to kickoff the next Dota circuit.

EG, Forward Gaming, and Marchoutofarmy clinched the North American spots. Marchoutofarmy, whose name refers to team member March leaving Dota to fulfill his military service in Korea, rolled through the open qualifiers and knocked Complexity Gaming during the Major qualifier brackets. Forward Gaming is the former VGJ.Storm squad at TI, now with Universe in and Sneyking out. Team EG maintains its roster after its 3rd place finish at TI8 in Vancouver.

Coming out of the South American region are both teams from the paiN organization: paiN Gaming and paiN X. While Valve has implemented a rule that bars organizations from having more than one team compete a The International, this doesn't apply to other events, including the Majors.

Team Secret, Ninjas In Pyjamas, and Alliance clinch the three European spots. This will be Alliance's return to a Valve event in two years. They've been competing with the mostly the same roster since 2017, with qojqva taking over Loda's spot, who has now moved into the coaching position.

Virtus.pro and ferzee will represent CIS. The region saw the brief return of Na'Vi's new roster, who came through the open qualifiers but were eliminated early in the main qualifiers. Ferzee was a surprise, as an open qualifier team, but they had a strong showing during the run, taking down Na'Vi and ESPADA in their run.

Fnatic and TNC Predator qualify for the Southeast Asia regions. Following the TI8 shuffle, both teams are sporting new rosters, and both contain former Mineski players from their 9-12th place TI8 run. Ninjaboogie moved over from Mineski to takeover as captain for the TNC squad, while Fnatic added iceiceice, MP, and Jabz.

PSG.LGD, Team Aster, and Vici Gaming are China's qualifier winners. Team Aster features Dota vets Burning, Sylar, and xxS. PSG.LGD maintain the same roster from their 2nd place TI run.

There's still one slot left at the Kuala Lumpur Major. That's left for the winner of the Dreamleague Minor, which begins this Sunday.

China Blocks Twitch

China's government has censored Twitch, which now joins other Western platforms such as Google, Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook on the list. Valve, earlier this year, announced a partnership with Perfect World to launch a Chinese version of Steam. Valve has yet to respond to the move, and if there are any implications with the next TI being in Shanghai. The move may overall have little impact on overseas Dota fans, who still can access games via the client, Valve's Steam.tv stream, or their own host of streaming platforms.

Weekly Courier