Controversial Invites to Perfect World Masters
Controversial Invites to Perfect World Masters
Perfect World announced three teams that received direct invites to their minor tournament called Perfect World Masters.
Ten teams will take part in Perfect World Masters, 3 of them received direct invites and the other 7 will have to make it through the regional qualifiers in China, Europe, CIS, North America, South America, Southeast Asia. Two teams will be qualified from the Chinese region, and only one from the other regions.
Yesterday Perfect World revealed two first teams that were invited to take part in the main stage of the minor tournament – Newbee and LFY. It was an obvious decision to invite these two teams – both teams showed great results at The International 2017 (2nd and 3rd place accordingly) and kept their roster without changes.
Today it was announced that the third invited team is Team Secret, which was met with mixed feelings. The thing is that Team Secret’s last big achievement was at The Shanghai Major 2016, where they placed first. But then the team struggled to place high on any major tournament and made several roster changes. The team led by Puppey placed 9-12 at The International 2017, and shorty after that they changed the roster again, bringing in Marcus ‘Ace’ Hoelgaard and Adrian ‘Fata’ Trinks in replacement of Maurice 'KheZu' Gutmann and Noa 'MP' Pyo.
On the one hand, organizers can invite to their own tournament any team they want. On the other hand, high placements on minor and major tournaments give a team Qualifier Points, which will later determine who gets direct invite to The International 2018. Peter 'PPD' Dager, the former captain of Evil Geniuses and the current leader of The Dire, reacted strongly to the situation:
Meanwhile, it is also possible that other top western teams simply didn’t want to take part in a tournament organized by Perfect World, considering how The Shanghai Major 2016 was a total failure both organization- and production-wise.
Perfect World Masters is the third minor tournament of the season, which will be held on November 19-26 in Shanghai, China. At the moment, this is the only tournament to feature more than 8 teams. The teams will fight for a share of $300,000 prize pool and 300 Qualifier Points.