posted by Sun_Tzu,
Nexon has released further details regarding their much awaited Starter League, the first foray of competitive Dota 2 into Korea. The Starter League will be an Open League which encourages new teams to form and compete within Korea, and lays the groundwork for Nexon as they try to slowly increase the level of competition within Korea. The Starter League will kick off on June 30th, with complete English coverage.


Competition format and schedule



The Starter League will be an open league which will allow all existing organized teams as well as new teams vying for the attention of sponsors to compete on the brand new Korean Dota 2 servers.

Details on the qualifier and main event are available as follows. Only eight teams will go through to the main event from the qualifier. Exact format of the qualifier and main event have not been decided as of writing.

Qualifier details



Date: 30th June
Venue: Intel Sindorim e-Stadium (Link)

Main Tournament details


Date: Starting 6th of July, Grand Final to be announced.

Prize Pool



1st - 10 Million Won (~$8,700) + Paid trip to The International 2013
2nd - 5 Million Won (~$4,350)
3rd-4th - 2 Million Won (~$1,750)
5th-8th - 1 Million Won (~$870)

Korean Dota 2 Teams



While joinDOTA has been informed by insiders that some teams such as kr MVP and kr StarTale may hold off on selecting their Dota 2 squads in order to recruit promising teams based on their Starter League performance, there are two teams which we can already introduce you to:



Statement by au Daniel 'Unstable' Siddel, CEO of FXOpen e-sports:

FXOpen has been working closely with Nexon and ESF over the past few months and are happy to see the hard work put in come to fruition with the start of these tournaments.

With it being the very first event of its nature we will be doing everything we can to solidify our position as the best team in Korea.


FXOpen Roster



kr Park 'March' Taewon - Offlane - Well known Wc3 DotA player
kr Gim 'Febby' Yongmin - Hard carry
kr Kim 'QO' Seonyeop - Mid
kr Lee 'Sagun' Kyongmin - Support
kr Jae 'Anarchy' Hwang Bo - Support

The team has told us that they currently favour running safe trilanes, aiming to get an early farm advantage and transition into controlling the map through aggression, keeping the enemy on the back foot.



kr Team EoT has provided us with a bit more information about their new squad.

Statement from the team:

Team EoT is a korean proffesional team which isn't associated with Kespa nor any korean gaming unions (alliance). We are interested in investing and having players who are skilled and have potentional to become great DotA2 E-sport players through providing coaching and spectacular managing system to unlock their inner potentional.

We are also planning on buidling a gaming house that is unlike anything that has ever been built by a Korean team.

Furthermore at our great success, we would like to have players from all over the Asia and form a most motivated and superb quality team to have good standing as an eSport team.

Dota2 has infinite potentional as well as being in good position even compared to the games that have already been released.

Team EoT's current goal is to be in a good position in the tournament being held by Nexon called NSL in July.


The team characterises their play as being early push orientated, relying on heroes such as Chen, Nature's Prophet and Enigma. They also highlight Io, Dark Seer and Jakiro as some of their favourite heroes.

Team EoT Roster



kr David 'February' Dae (Captain) - Support - a.k.a. Day from Mski.Kr
kr Lee 'Reisen' June Yeong - Carry - Formerly of Mski.Kr
kr Kim 'Mafia' Byeong Huwn - Support - Formerly of BBJ
kr Eun 'Banhwa' Duk Soo - Support/Carry
kr Tae 'Gardia' Yeong - Mid

Broadcasting



In addition to the games being available through DotaTV, Nexon has reached out to joinDOTA as well as BeyondTheSummit in order to provide English language coverage for the Nexon Starter League, to which we at joinDOTA have gladly accepted. Other foreign language streams will be considered as well, although the details have not been worked out yet.

The main tournament stream for the NSL will be provided by GomTV. Alternate streams will also be available through other streaming services such as DaumTVPod, AfreecaTV, pooq and so on.

Statement by Nexon:

GomTV will handle the production of NSL. We’re also in contact with western studios — joinDOTA and BTS for offsite English broadcast. We’re excited to be able to bring NSL to the global community.


Korean coverage will be handled by GomTV, however for the Starter League the offline games will be played out in the Intel Sindorim e-Stadium which is already set up to handle this format of competitions, allowing GomTV some time to get their Gangnam studio in shape to host future live events.

Interviews with Nexon



For those who missed it, we recently published an interview with Nexon's Dota 2 Manager kr Injun Kim. us Rod 'Slasher' Breslau from GameSpot also sat down with Mr. Kim. Both interviews touch on a lot of the same points, but also cover some different ground and held give insight into the motivations and vision of Nexon as they venture into Dota 2.



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