WPC-ACE announced a new season today, it will kick off March 29 and will feature the top Chinese teams such as Vici, iG and DK. Western teams will be playing in an online qualifier league which will see two teams out of four flying to China for the playoffs.
UPDATE:
The tournament structure for WPC-ACE has been revealed. WPC will consist of two separate regional qualifiers for Dota 2 followed by a regular season and then the play-offs, wherein the top four teams will compete for the championship title. Two different qualifiers will be held with 12 Chinese teams competing for 6 slots in the play-offs, whilst 4 European teams will fight for 2 slots for the play-offs. Therefore, a total number of 8 teams will reach the play-offs for WPC-ACE Championship 2014.
Source: WPC QQ
Today WPC-ACE posted a very perky and dashing news, featuring an abundance of exclamation points and words forming the theme "Dream it! Do it!". The post is mainly about announcing the new and upcoming season of WPC-Ace League, lasting for approximately three months. Following up the successful although lengthy former season, this edition will kick off March 29 with open qualifiers taking place the 10th already. It was previously hinted in an interview with v1lat that WPC-ACE will last until June 1st.
The top Chinese teams are bound to compete but ACE also aims to have teams from the rest of the world competing. Western teams were mentioned to be part of the upcoming season, so far only the TI3-champions Alliance were mentioned by name whereas others are still under consideration. How and when the western teams comes into play is yet to be revealed, it is very unlikely that they would join in before a possible playoffs-phase. That being due to the nature of WPC-ACE League having all matches played on location. It would not be benefitial for a top western team to sit out on all the big tournaments in the west to exclusively play WPC-ACE.
Furthermore, the man of patience - Chen Yao aka Zhou is announced to be one of the Chinese casters alongside his former team mate Zhaohui Wang, more known as SanSheng. Which caster or casters will be providing with the English voices for the International ears are yet to be announced. The last season's was quite top heavy in terms of prize allocation, Team DK managed to endure and overcome the hearty best-of-seven series, claiming the championship and the $163,000 to come with it.
Announced teams so far
Team DK
Invictus Gaming
LGD
TongFu.Wanzhou
Vici Gaming
Alliance
more to come
Source: WPC-sports, SCNTV (photo)
