After nearly one year of playing with different teams outside their region, the five ex-MVP Phoenix players are reuniting for the new competitive season.
According to a tweet from Kim 'QO' Seon-Yeob the five South Korean players will play together this season, but no other details have been revealed just yet.
From 2014 to 2016 MVP Phoenix and their sister team MVP.Hot6 were the only South Korean Dota 2 teams to compete internationally and, most of the time, they delivered unbelievable upsets. At TI5 both MVPs made it to Seattle and while MVP Hot.6, featuring back then an European support player, namely Jesse 'JerAx' Vainikka, finished only on the bottom four, the main squad, MVP Phoenix had a marvelous run from the Wildcards to top eight.
With Hot.6 losing all the players in the post TI5 shuffle, Lee 'Forev' Sang-don and Pyo 'MP' No-a actually moving to MVP Phoenix, the main squad quickly became one of the most feared SEA teams. Never threatening too hard in online tournaments, MVP Phoenix were the one of the scariest teams to face in LAN events. Their unique aggressive play, their incredible synergy, and determination to place South Korean Dota on the highest rankings brought MVP Phoenix a handful of prizes.
Throughout 2016, MVP Phoenix finished top 4 at Shanghai Major, top 6 at the Manila Major, won the fourth season of Dota Pit, besting back then Evil Geniuses 3-0 in the Grand Finals and on the back of their achievements they were the only Southeast Asian team to get a direct invite at The International 2016.
Last year’s TI went even better for MVP Phoenix than TI5. The group stage run granted them an upper bracket start in the main event and after sending OG in the lower bracket in the opening series on the KeyArena stage, the five MVP Phoenix lost to Wings Gaming and Fnatic to make a top 6 finish.
However, immediately after TI6 was over, rumors of team disbandment started to become true. The first to leave the team were MP and Forev who moved to Europe to play for Team Secret and B)ears respectively. The other three members tried to keep the MVP banner still fighting but after a bottom four finish at the Boston Major, they followed their former teammates example and all spread all over the globe. QO made an interesting choice and went to US to begin the 2017 year with Peter 'ppd' Dager at Wanted. The project failed extremely fast and after a few months of inactivity, QO moved to Malaysia and reunited with Kim 'Febby' Yong-min who was already playing for Fnatic since January. Kim 'DuBu' Duyoung went to US soil and joined Team Onyx, later on, signed by Digital Chaos. Ahead of TI7, he was joined at DC by Forev who was left teamless after the B)ears disbandment from April.
Spread in three different teams, and three different regions, (Team Secret, Digital Chaos, and Fnatic) the five ex-MVP Phoenix players all made it to The International 2017 but none of them reached even top 8. In an interview with GosuGamers during the media day at TI7, Forev let the Korean fans understand that a reunion of the old MVP Phoenix is not totally impossible, saying back then that everything ”will depend on everyone’s results at TI”, referring of course to all his former teammates results. He also told us that all the players still “want to play together just not in Korea”. (you can read the full interview here)
With no words yet from the MVP organization and only with a tweet from QO that indicates that the five players did indeed reunite for the upcoming competitive season, only speculations can be made regarding their new team. They might end up playing as a secondary team for one of the many already existing organizations, they might very well be returning to South Korea or they might be playing once again as MVP Phoenix only from another country than South Korea, to avoid the in-game latency.
We are weeks away from the first qualifiers for Minors and Majors and all the info will come out shortly. Before that happens we should welcome back the Korean Overlords and wish them the best of luck wherever they choose to play from!
The South Korean reunited roster:
Kim 'QO' Seon-Yeob
Pyo 'MP' Noa
Sang-Don 'FoREv' Lee
Kim 'Febby' Yong-min
Kim 'DuBu' Duyoung
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