As we approach the end of the year, teams want to wind down as well.

More games, more fatigue. Despite winning the previous SL, EG will not be able to defend their title as they still have to play through all the brackets from qualifiers.

Starladder’s group stages have ended, and as the regional divisions come to the playoffs, EG has announced their withdrawal from Starladder Season 11 (SL 11).

The regional playoff stages of Starladder plays out in a double elimination format for the top 4, and single elimination for the bottom 4 after group stages amongst the 8 teams.

Look for Team Secret and SNA to have breakout performances, with VG as a looming threat.

For the European division, the top four teams after group stages immediately qualify for the LAN Event, which will be played out 15-18 January 2015.

This year has borne witness to a huge number of DoTa 2 events, EG having attended 10 LAN tournaments this year, 6 of those which are overseas.

The season always picks up after June – A hectic next half of the year compared to the first 3 months.

It is very, very comforting to know that there is no shortage of tournaments to play in, but the calendar of professional teams, in the case of EG, seems to be insanely crowded towards the end of the year, in fact, 4 of the 10 LAN events were played in a 3-month window of October – December.

Long days but players are expected to be at their best always; something’s gotta give.

Imagine how tiring it must be for these professional players – Up to 14 hour days, depending on the number of rounds played.

Practice and scrimmages between other teams in the downtime to make sure you’re ready for your games, and getting into the tournament mindset for each BO3 or BO5.

Travelling to LANs is no joke as well, players often can become homesick in the rush of travelling; playing in the comfort of home is already more or less forgone when you’re part of a professional team.

Even though they are professionals, they are human as well, and more so since they are young – For EG, the youngest player is 17 (zai), the oldest only 26 (Fear).

EG has just finished The Summit 2, and have yet to play any games in SL 11. Taking their place in SL11 are Wheel Wreck While Whistling (Wh.US), a recently formed American pro team.

EG’s statement for their withdrawal:

Hey guys, unforunately I have some bad news as Evil Geniuses Dota 2 will be withdrawing from Starladder Season 11. With 2014 coming to a close, we’ve been exhausted from travel as a team. In the last 6 months I think we’ve been sleeping in hotel beds longer than we have been in our own.

And this, along with the fact that we haven’t played any games yet in the season, are the sole reasons we’re pulling out of Starladder. We will still play out the remaining tournaments that we’re in, including DotaPit and D2L and afterwards, we plan on spacing out our LAN commitments.

I want to thank Andrey (x3m4eg) who has been nothing but helpful, understanding and professional during every single Starladder we’ve attended and competed at. We look forward to being in season 12 again.

Player fatigue due to tournaments year-long has made their play less sharp. They showed signs of weakness in The Summit 2, where they could not even take a single game from Team Secret, a team they previously beat in Starladder Season 10.

Starladder has also issued a statement expressing their understanding:

We fully understand the situation EG are having now. Successful performance has turned out to guys being exhausted by flights. They simply cannot perform as they are expected in such condition, they simply need to rest. We know from our own experience what longflights are, so there are absolutely no claims from our side. We will be glad to meet guys in 12th season – fresh, new and ready to win.

There are no shortage of tournaments, but sometimes there are simply too many.

Fans have expressed their disapproval at Starladder’s frequency: 11 seasons over a span of 3 years since December 2011. Indeed, it seems that there is a lack of downtime between SL seasons (roughly 15-25 days inbetween each season start and end).

DoTa 2’s tournament windows are still in the wild west stage: there are no long-term set time windows for each international major, only short-term planning around major tournaments by organizers.

Take Starcraft 2 for example: Blizzard has taken most of the major tournaments under its WCS wing, forming a legible timeline for viewers to follow. There are prominent “off-season” periods where there are no major tournaments, allowing players to rest.

Valve, other than their iterations of The International, perhaps need to take things into their hands in taking care of how often pro teams have to play. The current opt-out system more or less obliges teams to participate: They do not want to disappoint their fans, and when they take a break it always has to be substantiated. Teams need to be able to take a break, to plan for their holidays rather than have to forgo tournaments to have some time to themselves.

A little sidenote: Amazon, who has recently purchased GoodGame Agency, now owns the D2L tournament. This is a small step towards an external agency having enough power and capital to buy over and re-organize tournaments to favor themselves. Who knows if companies won’t buy starladder for the advertising? 110k peak live viewers is no joke, especially when SL effectively occurs all year round.

If control of tournament schedules goes out of hand (since for now it is organized in good faith) we might see overlapping tournaments competing for views. This is bad competition since we might have a cluster of tournaments all vying for attention instead of a well-spread out schedule for both players and viewers.

There needs to be some kind of agreement for an off-season in DoTa 2. Even as SL 11 plays out, the viewership numbers are already not as high as the popular teams are not playing in the tournament. SL can be considered to be a major, but when it comes so often, it is very difficult to view it as an occasion to look forward to.

Chen Yiji
The Gaming Ground