picture courtesy of PGL
Last year they were the first team announced to participate at ESL One Genting. This year, the organizers saved them for the last invite announcement. Fnatic close the direct invites list for the biggest Minor of the Dota Pro Circuit.
If we look at their results so far in the new competitive season, Fnatic’s direct invite to the ESL One Genting 2018 Minor might come as a strange choice, to say the least for many Dota 2 fans. But what’s even stranger is ESL One’s choice of words for the announcement, which was made a few moments ago on twitter.
“Completing our direct invites for #ESLOne Genting are none other than FNATIC” say the organizers but only yesterday, 5th of December they released an image with all the direct invites slots plus the qualifiers spots allotted for their event. According to their visuals, ESL One had prepared for the 2018 Genting Minor a total of nine direct invites and seven qualifier spots for teams to fill up, two of the qualifiers slots being reserved for the Chinese region.
Members of the Dota 2 community tweeted at ESL for a clarification on what happened with the ninth direct invite but no official answer has been posted from the organizers yet. GosuGamers have also contacted ESL One’s communication manager, Marie-Luise Fakesch for a clarification but we received no reply.
Until more info will be released on the direct invites and regional qualifiers spots for the ESL One Genting 2018 Minor, the full list of directly invited teams to the event is as follows:
ESL One Genting 2018 Direct Invites:
Newbee
Mineski
Virtus.pro
Team Liquid
Evil Geniuses
Team Secret
Vici Gaming
Fnatic
ESL One Genting 2018 will be held January 23-28 at the Arena of Stars in Genting’s Highlands Resort with a $400,000 prize pool and 400 qualifying points counting towards the TI8 direct invites up for grabs.
