But we’re still going to cover the tournament
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the bitter end of Mineski.net’s dreams to qualify for the grandest Dota 2 world championship this August in Vancouver, Canada, after we got prematurely eliminated in the second phase of The International 2018 Southeast Asia Open Qualifiers.
It was on the first day of April when we published the f̶a̶k̶e̶ news about the formation of Mineski.net’s professional Dota 2 team as (a) our traditional April Fool’s Day joke, and (b) a part of our ongoing campaign against fans who insist that we are the actual Mineski-Dota (the guys that won the Dota 2 Asia Championships 2018).
In the last part of our announcement, we promised to “postpone our reign and meteoric debut until The International 2018 Open Qualifiers.” It was a harmless joke back then, until the details of The International 2018 qualifiers were released shortly after the conclusion of the China Dota 2 Supermajor, the last Major tournament of the Dota Pro Circuit.
After one “Ano, sali tayo open qualis?” (Are we gonna join the open qualis?”), two nights in a bootcamp (after work hours, in the MET office), and three random pub games, that were, of course, played after our respective shifts, I was finally able to assemble the official Mineski.net roster.
Mineski.net
- Francis “HIPPO CHRIST” See, our carry who also happens to be the Riki guy I told you guys about in the ‘Mineski.net Is Now A Dota 2 Pro Team’ article.
- Deric “Dgen” San Andres, MET’s social media manager, our resident Fornite aficionado, and 5K MMR superstar
- Izo “The Izo” Lopez, who only picks random heroes
- Jazz “Domo” Garme, who can only play heroes he has skins for; and
- Maouie “M-King” Reyes
Those countless hours of Dota 2 tournament coverages were finally put to good use as we registered in The International 2018 Open Qualifier #2 – SEA via FACEIT. Upon seeing our team name listed along with MPGL Asian Championship contenders, we can’t help but have our hopes up. I mean, we already saw how the pros did it, right? All we needed to do is replicate what they’re doing. How hard can it be?
We had a draft prepared, as well as a finalized list of roles. We knew what we wanted and we knew what we needed to do in order to get it. But as we wait for FACEIT’s countdown timer to drop to zero last Saturday afternoon, we can’t help but have sweaty palms, palpitating hearts, and cracking voices. The open qualifier game was obviously not the first Dota 2 match of our lives, but somehow, we felt like we were just about to play the first Dota 2 game of our lives.
The enemy team got themselves settled, the draft screen came up, and I asked my teammates to huddle up behind me for the picks and bans. Our excitement and nervousness were so evident that some of our officemates also started to get excited and nervous for us. Our bans were filled with heroes that we thought are too annoying to play against like Morphling, Tinker, and Io. Meanwhile, our picks were composed of each member’s comfort picks, except for me who opted for a tryhard Naga Siren support.
The intense atmosphere never subsided. Aside from our heartbeats, the only thing we can hear were each other’s shotcalls, “Ingat sa smoke gank,” (Take care of the smoke gank), “Wala dito,” (The hero is missing), “Eagle, eagle” (Runes, runes). After throwing back-and-forth punches against each other, the tide of the game suddenly shifted in our favor after I scored first blood against their offlaner, “feeling ko TI na ‘to, eh.” (I feel like we’re going to TI).
Unfortunately, that was the only high moment of the game for us. After the laning phase, particularly when we can no longer kill anybody unless they were literally overextending, we begun to lose badly. At 38-minute mark of the game, when the enemy team had the game-high 24,000 gold lead, we decided to call the game and wished them good luck for the next round.
The room was silent, and nobody can talk for a couple of minutes. We were all heartbroken even though we knew, deep down, that we were better off as the guys covering The International instead of the guys playing in it.
Even though we were still down, we still decided to download the replay of our game and analyze our mistakes. “What went wrong?” were the first questions we had to ask ourselves, and “Hindi natin na-utilize nang maayos yung mga ulti natin eh,” (We never utilized our ultimates well), “Mali yung items natin, dapat pang team fight,” (We chose the wrong items to build), “Dapat binan natin yung Bloodseeker”, (We should have banned out the Bloodseeker), “Bad trip kasi ‘yung Elder Titan eh,” (That Elder Titan was annoying), were the answers we came up with.
None of the answers were wrong, but they were not entirely true, either. We lost because I refused to play a hero I’m more comfortable with. We lost because The Izo was forced to play Tidehunter and not a random hero during the fourth pick. We lost because our Riki guy played Juggernaut. We lost because Domo forgot to buy Jakiro’s Immortal before playing the qualifiers. Ultimately, we lost because we didn’t play Dota like the way we knew how to.
On the bright side though, we finally got our own Dotabuff team profile, with an “esports profile” on our personal accounts. We also fulfilled our promise of making the news, rather than just writing about it.
Rest assured, the journey of Mineski.net’s professional Dota 2 pro team does not end with our failure in The International 2018 open qualifiers. Just like how Mineski-Dota used to say it back in the days, “we’ll come back stronger.”
