WCA 2017 has been reduced to a total of seven participating teams, down from the original 12 scheduled to attend. LAN finals will start tomorrow, April 29th and conclude on April 30th.
**Update** MENA qualified team FATE will be able to attend making the final count 8 teams
Amidst the hype and buzz of the last leg of events in the Dota 2 Pro Circuit 2017-2018 season, WCA 2017 has been quietly inching closer to the LAN finals and making changes as it approached.
The original event was slated to be a 12 team affair, with four teams representing China and eight teams representing the Middle East, APAC, Europe, CIS region, North America and South America. Since the conclusion of the qualifiers in October/November for most regions, little was disclosed or communicated regarding the LAN finals that was originally reported to be held in December 2017.
While the reason for such delays and changes for the LAN event were reported to be holidays and conflicts, the organizers no doubt had trouble retaining participants as scheduling later in the season most likely became increasingly difficult.
According to sources close to the tournament organizers, several teams were not able to travel due to various reasons. This included the winners for MENA having difficulty obtaining visas in time and Infamous, Mineski, and VGJ.Storm all having packed schedules in the Pro Circuit events at the same time.
Team Empire is not attending reportedly due to WCA providing only one slot for the European region now. Instead, it will be only the first place team from EU to be making the trip to China. Although Planet Dog/HellRaisers was picked up by Double Dimension after qualifying, they only had retained one player of the original squad from that run —Alexey 'j4' Lipay. That means, there will be a reunion of the Planet Dog/HellRaisers players in place of the current lineup of Double Dimension.
The only other non-Chinese team that will be competing is Execration, representing the APAC region.
Seven teams will now lock horns at the De Han Hotel in Zhuhai, China between April 29-30th to fight for the lion's share of the $500,000 prize pool.
WCA 2017 participating teams:
Invictus Gaming
IG.Vitality
FTD
Newbee.Y
Team OD
Planet Dog
Execration
