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The playoffs for the ESL One Los Angeles Major Southeast Asian qualifiers just started today and the first Dota 2 series was already affected by internet issues.
When Fnatic went up against Team Adroit in a clash for a berth at the LA Major, Adroit were forced to abandon the first game since their players were unable to connect to the game. While they finally managed to join in for the second game, it took less than five minutes before Adroit’s players started dropping like flies.
After Adroit exhausted their pause time limit, Daryl “iceiceice” Koh even graciously expended Fnatic’s own timer to allow the pause to continue.
Iceiceice’s words referenced a similar situation that occurred during the qualifiers for the previous Leipzig Major. TNC Predator were placed in a similar situation vs. Cignal Ultra. TNC also opted to provide Cignal Ultra with their own pause timer and captain Park “March” Tae-won opted to unpause the game after 20 minutes when both teams’ timers ran out.
Related: Cignal Ultra’s internet issues cause anti-climatic Dota 2 Leipzig Major SEA qualifiers
The irony was almost palpable since Cignal Ultra is sponsored by Indonesian telecommunications company Cignal TV, whose parent company, PLDT, provided the team’s internet connection.
Adroit’s woes continued throughout the game. Players intermittently lagged out and the game rapidly slipped out of the team’s hands. The combination of internet frustrations and an in-game dismantling proved to be too much for Adroit, who conceded at the 17-minute mark.
At the very least, Adroit managed to find some humor from the situation. The Filipino team proceeded to lambast their internet provider with a game result mock-up, citing a loss against Converge ICT Solutions.
Adroit’s journey to the Major isn’t over just yet, however. The Filipinos will have to fight IO Dota 2 in a best-of-three series to take the third and final Major slot. Adroit were one of the three qualified teams for the first Major of the 2019-20 Dota Pro Circuit season, while IO Dota 2 is a newly formed qualifier stack led by legendary Malaysian player Chai “Mushi” Yee Fung.
The team has relocated to an internet cafe for the rest of the day in the hopes that internet issues won’t derail their campaign and rob fans of fantastic Dota 2 tomorrow.
