The hardest year for all of humanity, 2023 is coming to an end. And Dota 2 also did not escape difficulties – for the discipline it was in many ways the worst period in history. Cybersport.ru talks about three events that greatly upset the fans of the game.
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Cancellation of Dota Pro Circuit
If at first it seemed that the coronavirus would hardly interfere with esports, then the longer the pandemic lasted, the more it became clear that this was not the case. While sports fans sat and waited for the competition to resume, cybersportsmen began to compete in online tournaments sitting at home. But pretty soon, everyone on the professional stage realized that there were still very few LAN tournaments.
The first minus – the entertainment and emotions from watching matches taking place on the Internet cannot be compared with the feelings that confrontation between teams on the stage in front of a huge stadium gives. Even if you follow them on Twitch, you somehow get imbued with the atmosphere at the venue. In addition, it has become almost impossible for content makers to release videos, interview teams. It turned out that professional players were literally isolated from the community, while earlier the LAN tournament was an excellent opportunity to find out as many details as possible about how things are in a particular team. And now, not everyone can even get together at a bootcamp and prepare their own club content.
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Look
How joyful the announcement was, and how sad the result was
First of all, the cancellation of TI affected not ordinary players, but cybersportsmen. After all, each of them first of all dreams of picking up not some ordinary trophy at a Major or an ordinary major LAN tournament, but the Aegis of Champions, and with it a solid amount that can provide him for the rest of his life and recoup all the time spent on the road to becoming the best player in the world. And as soon as it became known that The International, most likely, would not be, almost all the top teams that had hoped to win there lost all motivation to continue the season.
Hold on longest Team Secret… The team literally collected trophy after trophy, smashed everyone to smithereens, while the rest of the top teams simply entered the tournaments and played exactly as much as they could. But even Puppey’s fuse was not enough for the entire distance – at the end of the year Secret began to frankly fail. Some teams had players from other regions, because of this, they had to play with a huge ping, and sometimes they had to be replaced with standins. Yes, in such a situation, teams of lower rank were able to prove themselves, but this could not have a positive effect on the general state of the stage and the level of performance.
Even the most dominant teams end up losing motivation without The International | Photo: Andrey Bosenko, Fotoezh.ru
One could come to terms with this and take everything for granted, because a pandemic is not a joke. But at the same time, Riot Games successfully held the League of Legends World Championship in China – not a single player contracted the coronavirus as a result. Valve was never able to organize The International. To make matters even worse, the company didn’t even try and look for options to resolve the issue. The developers even refused the help of the Shanghai authorities, which were ready to provide all possible assistance in organizing TI. And this is the saddest thing – it seems that Valve has taken the path of least resistance. Apparently, the $ 120 million that the community raised with the Battle Pass is not enough motivation for this company to strain a little at this difficult time and give fans joy at least once a year.
The breakup of Virtus.pro’s golden roster
Until the end of 2016, our region, which is the second largest Dota player after China, rarely enjoyed victories at large LAN tournaments. The line-ups were constantly shuffled, the same persons moved from team to team, occasionally new stars appeared, and the winning of international trophies by teams from the CIS were out of the ordinary events. This continued until the roster appeared Virtus.pro headed by Alexey Solo Berezin…
To end The International 2019 the team replaced only one player – in place Ilya lil me alone Ilyuka, who spent a year in the team, came Vladimir RodjER Nikoghosyan… Players in other positions were rightfully considered the best in the region. Roman RAMZES666 Kushnarev on carry, Vladimir No[o]ne Minenko in the mid, Pavel 9pasha Khvastunov on offlane – it was simply not better to find. To beat VP for any CIS team was a real achievement, even when the Solo roster was not in the best shape. In the region, the team simply had no equal, but on the world stage, the result below the fourth place for these players was akin to failure. Unless at The International, the roster could not achieve the same stability, but each time the fans believed that the unsuccessful performances at TI were just a coincidence. Each subsequent season confirmed this – not a single team in the world at that time played in the Major finals more often than Virtus.pro. And five championship titles at the majors is still a record result on the entire professional Dota 2 scene, which has only been repeated (but not surpassed). Team Secret…
We will really miss these emotions, which brought victories to Virtus.pro’s gold roster | Photo: bc-bg.com
But any fairy tale ends someday. VP’s positions were shaken even after The International 2019, where the roster showed its worst result – 9-12 place. Immediately after TI, RAMZES666 and 9pasha left the team, just before the start of the season, the roster was left without RodjER. Two young players Egor epileptick1d Grigorenko and Vitaly Save-Melnik, and also changed position Roman Resolut1on Fominok in the end, they did not become equivalent replacements. Further changes in the lineup also did not lead to anything, and even a glimmer of hope in the form of first place at ESL One Los Angeles 2023 – Online was just a one-off success. Despite the fact that in the CIS no one could compete with Virtus.pro at a distance, for players with such a track record and history, this is little consolation. And as a result, the team finally exhausted its resources.
Perhaps all these problems could be solved if the Solo team continued to work and tried to return to their former shape. In any case, this does not matter anymore, because the composition that showed the strength of our region, not in words, but in deeds, no longer exists. And even if he gets together again, albeit under a different tag, he is unlikely to be able to return to his former positions. Now we can only hope that the great start of the new VP roster will be supported by great victories in the future. However, no matter how his fate develops, for the fans of the club, the Solo roster will forever remain in history as a team that has given them a storm of positive emotions for three long years.
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