China’s best Heroes of the Storm team out of major due to last-minute visa issues

One of the best Heroes of the Storm teams in the world will not compete at the game’s biggest international tournament ever due to a literal last-minute visa issue.

Just two hours before the MSI Masters Gaming Arena is slated to kick off at PAX Prime in Seattle, the company revealed that one of its star participants will be unable to play.

[MSI MGA 2015] eStar Gaming, one of the HOTS team is not able to participated in the grand final due to the last minute visa issue.

— MSI (@msitweets) August 28, 2015

The team in question, eStar Gaming, is the winningest team ever in Heroes of the Storm, with roughly $150,000 in prizes to their name. They entered the Masters Gaming Arena as one of the favorites and a threat to prove that Asia dominates all games in the battle arena genre, not just League of Legends.

But it seems they won’t get the chance to compete, robbing fans of their first chance to see China’s top team take on Korea and the West.

The timing of the news is surprising, considering the Chinese team was slated to play Cloud9 mere hours after MSI revealed the news. The second Chinese team qualified for the event, EDward Gaming, also dropped out of the event 10 days ago due to visa problems. That gave organizers enough time to invite a replacement, Cognitive Gaming, the third ranked team from North America. Usually teams know further in advance if their visa situation is not solvent, but it appears eStar Gaming was hoping they had everything settled.

Sadly that means no Chinese team will compete at what was supposed to be the first chance to see the best teams from every major region on the same stage. 

But that doesn’t mean the tournament won’t be filled with plenty of exciting matches. We will see an American team in the final, as the top half of the bracket now includes only the three American entrants. Tempo Storm is the favorite to reach the finals as they’ve rarely lost to their peers. In the bottom half, Europe’s top squads Team Liquid and Virtus.pro will challenge Korea’s best, MVP Black, and Singaporean underdog myRevenge.VS.