Invitations for Dota 2 International 7 Event Announced

The invites for the Dota 2 International 7 competition have now been distributed and the teams that received these direct invites are Team Liquid, OG, Newbee, Virtus.pro, Evil Geniuses, and Invictus Gaming. This event will be taking place in Seattle and is set to be up there with the biggest eSports events taking place in 2017.

Currently it is OG who are coming into the event as the reigning Major champions. They captured both the recent Kiev and Boston Majors respectively. Virtus.pro are also a team that will strongly fancy their chances in this event as they are coming off winning the DOTA Summit 7 as well as finishing in 2^nd place at the Kiev Major.

Asian Teams

EG’s last win came during the month of May at the Manila Masters and Epicenter was captured by Team Liquid this month. This was the biggest prize pool when you do not account for the Valve account this season.

Both of the teams from China are also in good form after iG finished in 3^rd/4^th place at the recent Kiev Major and the Newbee team captured the Galaxy Battles and the ZOTAC Cup Masters events. They also finished as the runner-up at the Manila Masters.

There will be a further dozen teams that will qualify for the International 7 as a result of their progression through the regional qualifiers. There are going to be a total of three qualification spots located in Southeast Asia and China. Two spots are going to the teams in Europe West and North America. South America and CISD close out the remaining positions with one qualification spot each.

In total this will bring the number of participants in the International 7 up to 18 teams. These teams will battle it out in two different groups in a round robin format. Each of the teams that finishes last in their groups will be eliminated. After this point the International 7 Main Event will be taking place in Seattle at the KeyArena. The format of the Main Event will be as a double elimination bracket and the teams will battle it out to try and be crowned as the 2017 IT winner.

Changes in the Alliance team until after the T17 event.

It has recently been announced that the Dota 2 payer by the name of Loda on the Alliance team is going to step down from his place on the starting team roster until the International 2017 event has been played.

It is said that this decision has been put down to the fact that Loda has other commitments that means he will not be able to dedicate himself to the game before this event. Era is going to be his replacement, a player who previously played with Ninjas in Pyjamas. As a result of this move it will mean that the team will be forced to battle it out I the open qualifiers to try and qualify for the event.

This is an interesting development and a lot of people will be keeping a close eye on how the team performs with this change.