Written by: ReiNNNN
Valve has announced the final invitees for The International 3 and it will be none other than LGD International and Invasion-MUFC. With the addition, The International 3 will be represented by six Asian teams and seven Western teams including LGD.Int. Two more teams, one from the East and one from the West, will qualify through the qualifiying stage. The 16th slot will be saved for wildcards. This article will serve as a short recap of what has happened during the past week when Valve periodically dropped information of the prestigious annual event. We have also made a prediction on which eight teams will be invited to the qualifiers.
Table of Contents
Date and location
The International 3 will once again return to Seattle this year and will, once again, be hosted at the Benaroya Hall. Last year, The International 2 was hosted sort of in conjuction with PAX Prime. The crowd was massive due to loyal fans and alternating crowd between the two events. This year, the tournament will run as a stand-alone event from the 7th of August until the 11th of August. Valve has invited 13 teams and it can be assumed that the selection process was done by judging the teams' performance and stability since The International 2. Three other teams will have to go through grueling qualifying sessions before earning their place in the annual event.
Qualifiers
West
The Western qualifiers for The International 3 has been stamped for the 13th of May and it will run well onto the 19th. The official broadcaster and host of the Western qualifiers will be TheGDStudio, famous for their map board, Draksyl and who else can forget Bruno. No information on the teams have been released but Valve is expected to do so later this week.
Highest possibilities:
Evil Geniuses 
Mousesports 
RoX.KIS Empire
Kaipi
Absolute Legends QPad Red Pandas
DD.DotaEast
The Eastern qualifiers will commence on the 20th of May, one day after the Western qualifiers and run till the 26th. It is unfortunate as the final days of the qualifiers will be clashing with G-1 League's offline finals. Your host for the Eastern qualifier will be the boys from BeyondTheSummit, extremely well-versed with their knowledge of the Asian scene. Similarly, the teams participating in the qualifier will be released soon.
Highest possibilites:
MiTH-Trust 
First Departure[f]China[/f] Vici Gaming 1
Neolution.Int 
Rattlesnake TongFu 
Joenet
Mineski The second placers of both the qualifiers will still be flown out to Seattle and play the wildcard game a day before the main event. A best-of-five format will be deployed here and the winner will be the 16th team of The International 3. More information on the qualifiers will be announced on the 2nd of May.
Casters
Nothing much has been said about the casters of TI3 apart from a few Weibo and Twitter announcements. Besides that, no English casters have also been appointed although we would imagine most of the casters from last year will return. So far, three Chinese casters and two Russian casters have been invited. Out of these five, only two did the cast for The International 2.
Timeline:
3rd April - LaoDang received invitation
4th April - v1lat received invitation
5th April - v1lat stated CaspeRRRR has been invited to cast TI3
12th April - Haitao and Melody invitation announcement on Weibo
25th April - BTS and TheGDStudio hosting and casting TI3 qualifiers
Interview with Brax
Hello Brax. Congratulations on the invite to TI3. How are you feeling right now?
Thank you! I'm very happy and excited.
How does it feel being able to compete in The International 3 on home ground? Will you have fans coming to cheer you on?
It feels amazing. My dad actually wants to fly in from California to support me! I'm so happy I can have the love and support from my family and friends.
Does your dad understand Dota at all or is it just purely to cheer you on?
That's a funny story actually. Ever since I told my dad about the move to China, he's been nothing but supportive. He asks me about the game and tries to learn. He's never played a game before but I'm so happy I have people supporting from back home. I like to think he understands a little bit more than just killing each other's base!!
Now that Valve has completed their list of invited teams, who do you think is the strongest contender going into TI3?
iG. They aren't unbeatable but they have the best chances. iG has shown consistency in their performances ever since TI2. They always play at the top of their game.
At current level and condition, what do you think about LGD.Int's chances on the million dollar first prize?
We have a decent chance but it all depends on how well we adapt to other team's playstyles. We're in the process of changing roles and still trying to get used to it
Do you think there are anybody in the invited list that should be replaced by another team?
I think the invites are perfectly fine. There are just a lot more teams that are right at the border that it's hard to choose them. I'd say Mouz, aL, dd, EG, and Kaipi are the teams that will be the hard-hitters in the qualifiers.
Tell us who do you think will win the Asian qualifiers, basically the best non-invited Asian team.
TongFu, RattleSnake and Vici Gaming are all going to be very close but I think Tongfu will win. They are the only top eight team from TI2 who did not receive an invite. We have scrimmed against them quite a bit and they are very quickly recovering from their slump. They've become much more stable after KingJ joined them. VG has done the same after ZSMJ joined their team. VG does has some unexpected strategies that TongFu probably aren't used to like playing against Io. However, TongFu is still stronger in terms of playstyle.
No love for the SEA teams?
I haven't really paid attention to them outside of Zenith, Orange, and MUFC. I don't think I'm in a position to comment about it.
Alright thanks Brax for the interview. Quick shoutout?
Thanks for the interview! Shoutout to our sponsors; Razer, LGD and Taobao. A special shoutout to Nicholas and ruru for being amazing and also Qppt and Shiney!
Interview with WinteR
Hello Winter. Congratulations on getting invited to The International 3. What was your first reaction when you heard the news?
I was very nervous because it was already getting to the end. We did everything we could to win our official matches the past couple of weeks.
Who did you first tell when you heard about it? All my teammates and my boss. We were all very happy about it since everyone was pretty nervous.
Alright. In any case, your team is relatively new compared to the rest of the teams invited. A lot of people are saying that you guys don't deserve the slot. What do you think about that?
I don't think we are that new since we have been playing together in ABC. We started playing somewhere around mid-January, assembling and testing different players with me, TFG and HonTrashPlayer as the core.
Which other teams on SEA do you think have been left out?
I think all the teams invited deserve it. You can't invite every single team. However, I do think that MiTH-Trust deserve an invite too but they will have to go through the qualifiers again.
MUFC currently has a six-men roster. How do you decide who gets to go and who doesn't?
Oh Sharky is just our substitute player. We will most probably go with our core five.
God forbids MUFC loses early in TI3, will you pick up a microphone and start shoutcasting with LD?
I don't know about casting... (laughs) I just want to focus on the tournament now with my team.
Thanks WinteR for the short interview. Would you like to give a shoutout?
Thanks to our sponsors Invasion, AMD, Armaggeddon and Jerry (MUFC's CEO).
