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With the regional qualifiers ending with 16 final teams qualifying for the Dota 2 International 10, the community fell into a stand-still as there were no tournaments scheduled before the ultimate one. But today, ESL announced an online tournament, which comes as a breath of fresh air for Dota 2 fans, as the meta was growing stale.
Since the regional qualifiers ended, the Dota 2 Pro Circuit for this year had come to an end. Along with the end of the season, there were no more tournaments for the Dota 2 community to look forward to.
While the community waited in hopes for at least a patch update from Valve, nothing was delivered by them to provide a change in pace. As a result, the already set meta has affected most players that play the game, resulting in, once again, the decline in active players per day.
But with this upcoming online tournament, ESL looks to reignite the dying spirit in the hearts of the Dota 2 community.
Dota 2 ESL One Fall Schedule and format
As per the member of the ESL team, Dirk, the tournament will be an online one, as all the players that participate can play from their boot camps. The tournament will take place between August 21-29, with a total of 12 teams participating.
Among these 12 teams, ten teams will be invited to the tournament directly, while the remaining two teams have to qualify through the closed qualifiers.
The qualification process will take place in three steps:
- Open Qualifiers 1: August 7th
- Open Qualifiers 2: August 8th
- Closed Qualifiers: August 9-11th
Of the 10 teams to be invited, ESL has already confirmed the identities of five of them, with the other five likely to be disclosed soon. The five invited teams so far are:
- Alliance
- T1
- Team Spirit
- Team Liquid
- Thunder Predator
The main tournament will feature two segments - Group Stage and Playoffs. The Group Stage will feature two groups of six teams that will battle in a single round-robin, with all the matches being of the best-of-2 format. The top two teams from each group after the group stage will carry forward to the upper bracket in the playoffs as the 3rd and 4th position teams will be moved to the lower bracket.
The playoffs will start on August 26th, and it will feature a double-elimination bracket with all matches except the grand final boasting best-of-3 Dota 2 matches. The grand final will feature a best-of-5 series.
The total prize pool of this online tournament is set to be $400,000. Although this does not stand out as a major tournament, it will certainly help the teams participating to test out their current situation before TI10.
