A total of 16 Dota 2 teams are ready to fight it out as the MDL Disneyland Paris Major begins Saturday May 4. At stake is a prize pool of $1 million and 15,000 total DPC points.
Four of the teams in the competition are “relatively safe,” as they have already been guaranteed a slot for the upcoming The International 2019. These are Virtus.pro, Team Secret, Vici Gaming, and Evil Geniuses.
The Group Stage of the Paris Major is scheduled for this Saturday and Sunday. The 16 participating teams are sorted into four groups of four teams each. All games in the Group Stage are best-of three. The top two teams of each group move on to the upper bracket while the bottom two go to the lower bracket.
The Group Stage follows the GSL format. A total of five games are played by each group.
The teams are divided into these groups:
Group A
- Virtus.pro
- Keen Gaming
- Beastcoast (formerly Team Team)
- Team Liquid
Group B
- Team Secret
- Ninjas in Pyjamas
- Team Empire
- Chaos Esports Club
Group C
- Vici Gaming
- PSG.LGD
- paiN Gaming
- Mineski
Group D
- Evil Geniuses
- Fnatic
- compLexity Gaming
- OG
The teams to watch out for include Fnatic and PSG.LGD. For these two teams, a finish of at least fourth place could get them a direct invite to TI9. Another is Beastcoast, which was formerly known as Team Team, who replaced two members prior to the start of the major.
OG is another team that fans are looking forward to watch. It will be interesting to see if the TI8 champions still have what it takes, especially with the return of Anatham “ana” Pham. All eyes are also on Ninjas in Pyjamas to see if they can do what Vici Gaming did in the previous major.
Overall, there is no question that the MDL Disneyland Paris Major is sure to once again excite the Dota 2 community.
English broadcast commentators of the tournament are:
- Kyle (Kyle Freedman)
- Sheever (Jorien van der Heijden)
- SirActionSlacks (Jake Kanner)
- GoDz (David Parker)
- Tsunami (Neal Khandheria)
- Blitz (William Lee)
- Fogged (Ioannis Loucas)
- GranDGranT (Grant Harris)
- ODPixel (Owen Davies)
- Capitalist (Austin Walsh)
