Written by Yim Kian Seng
The first ever major of the year and the first ever major hosted in Malaysia has just concluded, with mixed results. Let’s take a quick look at what went down at the KL Major and what we thought they did right and wrong during the course of the event.
Picture courtesy of Joindota
The Winner
Malaysia’s biggest DOTA 2 tournament concluded with Virtus Pro taking top honours. Their victory won themselves a whooping RM1.47 million while Malaysian fans favorite Yeik “MidOne” Nai Zheng’s from Team Secret came second place and took home RM 713,000, by no means a measly sum of money.
Yeik “MidOne” Nai Zheng. Picture courtesy of EGG Network
While it wasn’t a huge surprise that Virtus Pro won given their consistency in performance, Team Secret was playing the perfect game throughout the tournament and were the fans favorite to take away the first Major of the 2018/2019 season. The grand finals weren’t a breeze for both teams, as the best of 5 ended with 3-2 in favor of Virtus Pro.
What They Did Right
Across the 3 days of the event, we saw fans from all over the world attend the event, and it was packed to the brim with action, not just from the tournament. Activities and events were happening outside of the Arena, fans were able to meet and greet their favourite teams and activities for the fans to participate in like 1 vs 1 tournaments where they can win prizes. However, the biggest takeaway was the meet and greet, as hardcore fans were also able to take pictures and meet their favorite Dota 2 players from different countries, which I think was great as we Malaysians don’t get much opportunities to meet them due to the tournaments being held mostly in the West. Of all the gaming events that I’ve attended in Malaysia, I must say this one takes the cake.
What They Could Improve On
While the event was packed with action and the crowd was immense, there is definitely room for improvement. For instance, the food and drink options available for the audience was limited. Attendees are not allowed to bring food or drinks outside of the arena, and if they wanted to get a bottle of water, they would then have to queue at Subway/KFC/Ramly for at least 30 minutes.
Besides that, the scheduling of events could be improved. One issue that I’ve noticed on the first day of the event was most of the crowd was outside for the meet and greet during matches. Leaving the arena half empty as fans queue at the meet and greet station to meet their favorite Dota 2 players isn’t really a good sight to the international eye as seats were vacant during intense moments of the game.
Audio in the arena could also be improved. For instance, when they commentators are casting the matches, no one could hear anything as the overall audio was boomy and too echoey to make out anything audible.
One of the major hiccups they had was with one of their merchandise. One of the t-shirts that they were selling was unfortunately plagiarized and was caught out by one redditor. The redditor who’s username is CaptRegil took it to the infamous Dota 2 subreddit to raise this issue. This is however not the organizers fault as they commissioned a design agency to design the merchandises. The organizer then went on to Reddit to quickly apologize to clarify the issue and quickly pulled it off the shelves. You can read more about it here.
Conclusion
Despite all these problems, the event was still a great success. Not only was the final game an intense bout of skill, but the crowd too was responsive with every attack, defend and kill that was happening on the battlefield. There were also kiss cams which was funny but awkward and fans were flashing memes throughout the tournament. An enjoyable experience throughout, and a milestone for the Malaysian e-sports scene, with a competition of this scale never been done before on our home turf.
However, nothing is perfect, and there were a few creases that need to be ironed out, but those come with time, and all I can do is hope that they improve in the coming years.
