This year’s Dota Pro Circuit came to a close with an unprecedented situation. At the end of the last Major before The International 2022, the 12th and 13th placed teams in the DPC rankings, Outsiders and Fnatic, were separated by just a .05 point difference. That was according to Liquipedia, a third party website, that due to the lack of official info and up to date rankings from Valve, has become every Dota 2 fan and pro players main source of information.
However, two days after the top 12 teams in the DPC, which included Outsiders, were decided and everyone was celebrating, Valve updated the rankings on their official website and surprised everyone, placing Fnatic in the 12th spot and sending Outsiders to qualifiers for the biggest tournament of the year. The discrepancy in the points reporting between Liquipedia and Valve seems to have occurred because Valve is rounding up the numbers, although this has never been explained in any DPC rule books.
Obviously, the news was received with great joy by the Southeast Asia fans, who at the end of the Arlington Major had only one team to have secured a direct invite at TI11 via DPC points. But, given the whole situation and the extremely poor transparency and communication from Valve, nobody was really trusting that those were the final standings.
Fnatic themselves ignored for the first two days all the social media activity and the entire points debacle, being sure is “just a mistake” and were already starting to prepare for TI11 qualifiers, as Paolo Bago, Fnatic Team Director told us.
We reached out to Fnatic right after Valve officially announced them to have secured the final direct invite to TI11, and between travelling from Arlington Major to GAMERS GALAXY: Invitational Series Thailand 2022 and having to deal with yet another unfortunate situation for the team, mister Paolo Bago was kind enough to sit down with us and talk about how the team received the news and how their schedule changed overnight.
Hi, and congrats on the TI11 invite. How, are you doing right now, how’s Thailand?
Hello, I’m doing well. Thailand’s been fun so far. Enjoying the fact that this is the first time we’re complete as a team in over a month.
Before we touch on why the team is in Thailand right now, walk us through when and how did you receive the news about the rankings change?
We were actually on our flight to Thailand for Gamers Galaxy. I first saw the tweets about the Dota 2 page rankings, but dismissed it initially as just a mistake. I actually reached out to community people like Ben "Noxville" Steenhuisen to ask about it and he told me that Valve usually has discrepancies on the site. So, I paid no mind to it. The players and I were discussing the possibility, but we all concluded that it’s best not to mind it. We were already readying ourselves for the qualifiers.
By the time we arrived in Hatyai, there wasn’t an update yet. We went to bed after 15 hours of travel and I was woken up by my phone blowing up. That’s when I saw the update from Valve.
I can only imagine what a crushing feeling must be for a team to miss a direct invite to TI based on a .05 point difference and clearly right now the news is absolutely terrifying for Outsiders too. Did you guys have the chance to talk to anyone from them yet?
We haven’t actually. To be quite honest we were focused on the qualifiers and were already booking tickets since qualifiers are much earlier than we originally hoped for. We haven’t had the chance to talk to them.
In true honesty, did anyone from the team ever check the official DPC rankings before, and I don’t mean this year specifically, but in the previous years as well?
I only checked it after I had received the news to be absolutely sure. We were in this sort of limbo phase where even if the official Dota 2 Twitter posted an update, and even though we were informed directly at one point too, we were in a state where it felt surreal. As though we could wake up at any time and it would have all been a big mistake.
How did the team’s plans change basically overnight? I suppose you had plans to gather in a bootcamp for TI qualifiers, what are you going to do now, after Gamers Galaxy Thailand and ESL One Malaysia?
Almost all of our plans were absolutely overturned. First of all, we have 3 tournaments in a row, thinking that if we were able to compete with our full strength, we could get enough points to get us to TI and allow us to rest in September. The Visa situation changed that, paired with our finish at Arlington, it meant that we had to significantly move everything up. We would have taken no breaks after Genting to prepare for qualifiers.
That’s partly why we couldn’t believe what was happening when the first whispers of the rankings started popping up on Reddit. We were mentally readying ourselves for a long September ahead. But now, I guess what you can say is that we’ve been given time back now.
Now, that you are not competing in the SEA qualifiers for TI11 anymore, could you predict who is going to win it?
Hard to say, especially since there’s been some big roster moves and a patch coming up. I think in a vacuum Talon should be the strongest. There are a lot of variables, though, like whether T1 can work on their chemistry and solve the patch at the same time, while SMG has Ice and Ah Fu playing the same lane now, so that can also potentially be a headache for everyone.
What was the target for GAMERS GALAXY: Invitational Series Thailand and ESL One Malaysia right after your Major run came to an end?
When we were first invited, we had a team meeting and everyone wanted to treat Gamers Galaxy and ESL Malaysia as great practice LANs before the big one that is TI. We have a lot of LAN performers in the team like DJ, Armel, Jabz, etc. who enjoy themselves the most when playing at LANs. Since this is the first year where everyone is sort of coming back to events, they wanted to relive what it was like back in 2019 BC (Before Covid). The idea was to play these events, get a feel for how we are as a team in a LAN setting, and then rest up before bunkering down for TI. It seems as though we’re back to that game plan.
Well then, I hope the team can have some fun now at these two tournaments, enjoy the time there and have a great time in Singapore at The International 11 too. Thanks for your time Paolo, and I hope there will be no more visa and travel issues in the future.
Thank you, and thanks to everyone who has been supporting us through all these hectic times!
