Time to pack it in, Western Dota 2 teams: South Korea just won a premier title by sweeping the reigning International champions, Evil Geniuses, in a lopsided final to conclude the Dota Pit League playoffs.
It’s hard to believe that it was only last summer that we all enjoyed the heart-warming success of MVP Phoenix, the underdog Korean Dota 2 team, at The International. While Korea is a stronghold for elite League of Legends and StarCraft players, Dota 2 had never really caught-on among the top organisations and MVP’s efforts had always seemed a little quixotic. It was fun to cheer for them as a prelude to EG’s championship victory. StarCraft fans tried to warn people about what it meant, but did the world listen? Of course not.
They looked much stronger at the Shanghai Major earlier this month, but even then you could have argued that they’d largely upset Chinese teams who universally under-performed at the tournament. But today, after notching wins against Frankfurt Major champions OG and a solid Complexity team, MVP just took a hammer to Evil Geniuses, one of the best teams in the world.
They were so unstoppable that eventually they started diving EG all the way back to their own fountain just to finish wiping-out EG.
While this victory was “only” worth about US$100,000 ($131,487), which is a fairly small grand prize next to what’s at stake at Majors, that doesn’t take away from MVP’s achievement. They played in a tournament with the best in the world, and they crushed all the opposition. And if MVP is doing all this now, how long before likes of CJ Entus or, heaven help us, SK Telecom show up?
Top photo: MVP Phoenix celebrate together at The International in 2015, by Valve Software. Source
Comments
5 responses to “Korea Just Found A New Game To Dominate: Dota 2”
God damn it, Korea. You’re making gaming tournaments so boring.
You’re like Canada and the winter olympic games, Brazil at a soccer game, or a 100m dash featuring mostly black guys and one white dude. I wonder who’s gonna win?
I’m sure if Neopets were an esport, Korea would probably dominate that, or die trying in an internet cafe somewhere.
Idk really – I’m an MVP fan ‘cos QO (their safelane carry) is from Australia and also they play more exciting dota than most pro teams at the moment. Though then again, I used to only cheer them on because they were an underdog…
… I completely agree about Neopets though 😉
Brazil?
errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
HA we really did. After Ti5 I was like ” Korea will finish top 4 at a major tournament within the next 12 months” and everybody laughed and laughed.
And this wasn’t me knowing a lot about Dota. I just know what koreans do to practice, learn, adapt and win. They’ve been good at it for a very long time.
The fact is, the Korean esports infrastructure is second to none. If they put effort into a game, it’s only a matter of time before they’re going to be successful.