1. Groups and Schedule
Schedule (CET):
28 November
18:00 - Alliance vs Fnatic (BO3)
21:00 - Liquid vs Na`Vi (BO3)
29 November
13:00 - Winner bracket final (BO5)
18:00 - Loser bracket round 1 (BO5)
30 November
13:00 - Loser bracket final (BO5)
19:00 - Grand final (BO5)
2. Format
The LAN playoffs, which will be played at DreamHack Winter 2013, will be a double-elimination tournament. All the games will be played on a best-of-three series, except for the grand finals which will be on best-of-five.
The qualifying teams are the top four teams from the double round-robin, best-of-one matches played by the six invited teams over the course of three weeks. All of these six teams will also be competing on the first season of the Asus ROG Dream League next year. This is the result of the league games:
3. Prize distribution
| Asus ROG Dream League Prize | ||
|---|---|---|
| Placing | Teams | Prize |
| 1st place | $25,000 | |
| 2nd place | $15,000 | |
| 3rd place | $7,500 | |
| 4th place | $2,500 | |
This Dota 2 tournament has a $50,000 prize pool, more than 60% than that of last year's $30,400~ (200,000 SEK) purse.
4. Location
DreamHack. Photo taken from GiantBomb
The ASUS ROG Dream League Kick-Off Season will be held at DreamHack Winter, which will take place at Jonkoping, Sweden. Dreamhack, of course, is the world's largest computer festival. It is a three-day, round-the-clock digital celebration. I am sure it would get your inner nerd excited to know that this event has more than 16,000 unique connected devices on its network last Dreamhack Summer - and they are again trying to beat that mark again!
The Dota 2 tournament on the DreamHack Winter last year also put Alliance, then known as No Tidehunter, into stardom. You can read more about last year's DH here. And as last year, we will again have our crew cover the tournament: this time we will be having Sun_Tzu, dopeshow and Svyatio13.
5. Other feature
The Secret Shop
Visitors may purchase Valve merchandise via the Secret Shop. Aside from Dota shirts, hats and microplushies, the fans can also find items related to Counter Strike : Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2. It will be operated by an official Valve licensee in ComputerGames.ro, so of course there would also be digital unlocks (in-game redeemable items) for certain items.
6. Where to watch?
DreamLeague
The English stream will be handled by a number of commentators, most of which have already been covering the Dream League. Among them are James '2GD' Harding, Bruno 'Statsman' Carlucci, Andy 'Draskyl' Stiles and Ted 'PyrionFlax' Forsyth. In addition to them, Toby 'TobiWan' Dawson will also be joining in on the live matches of the playoffs.
DreamLeague GS Studio
The GSStudio is one of the two Russian streams.It will be cast by Nick '4cejka' Kotkov and Aren 'VerSuta' Zarubyan.
DreamLeague v1lat
And this is the latter of the two Russian streams, with the very famous Vitalii 'v1lat' Volochay and Roman 'caspeRRR' Lepokhin' handling the mic.
TV6Play
The LAN playoffs will also be shown on TV6, national TV, on Sweden. Casting are Kim 'Drayich' Larsson, Fredrik 'Slop3' Wahlstedt, Niklas 'Wagamama' Hogstrom and Erik 'Bogdan' Olsson - who have already been covering the tournament. As the English stream, someone else will be joining in them here on DreamHack. On the Swedish cast's case, it will be John 'Boberg' Boberg.
DotaTV
You can watch the games via purchasing the ASUS ROG Dream League ticket on the Dota 2 store for $9.99. The DotaTV ticket will come with a Vestments of the Iron WIll, an item set for Spirit Breaker.
Rotator photo: Petri 'Mumin' Hanninen Blomberg
