SENNHEISER Prime Defending 9: Conclusion

MYM SENNHEISER Prime Defending 9 concludes it's stage early this morning with the Grand Final Match between 2 times finalist MeetYourMakers (MYM) and an underdog Wolker-Gaming (WG).

To summarise what's happening during the course of this tournament, one can say that part of this tournament is tarnished by the lack of sportsmanship by some teams, lagging issue betwen Asian and American/Europe team, and some unprofessional management decision, but overall this tournament is a success to bring DotA to another new level.

The playoff preliminary stage starts off with the huge disappointment for a newly formed, fan favorite PluG team which consist of the former member of coL (Fear, ezy, stripez etc), whom lost in their first matches against an underdog team SGC-_-iR. Nevertheless they are placed in one of the hardest bracket, should they win, they still need to face the powerhouse MYM in the next round.
Another big issue rise in this stage in the match between Zenith and ViP. At some point, Zenith is almost certain to take this match, however they suddenly had serious bad lagging (pretty apparent in the replay) up to the point that they are unable to move, thus they ask for a save and rehost but was neglected. They end up losing, but this marked a very bad reputation for ViP. Zenith would definitely win this match if they somehow are able to rehost.
Then the biggest issue in this round - the maphack accusation on team Kingsurf in their match against 1P. In the end it was all due to the bug in replay and KS was released from their charged. Details can be read here. This incident clearly shows how unprofessional the administrator manage this kind of issue, making a hasty decision to spread the news without 120% confirming the validity of the accusation.
And finally the backdoor issue in Mineski vs Domain of Pain match. Mineski won the match by means of backdooring, not noticing that backdoor is forbidden in the rule (since most Asian tournament does not forbid backdoor). Noticing this backdoor issue, the admin makes a decision to give a win for DoP. Both team has agreed for a rematch, but due to time constraint, the admin does not give the gren light for the rematch and DoP continue to proceed to the playoff stage. Interestingly, Mineski backdoored 3 times in that game, yet none of DoP player realise that their tower was bd'd until the backdoor on their base tower. Not even the observer/referee notice it and give a shout to stop the match and reload. Hm....

Then to the playoff stage. Since the format has been changed and the group stage is removed, this kind of playoff provides a more exciting matches in every round. This is when every match is dearly awaited by the fan, especially if it's related to the big name like MYM, VP, KS and SK match. The summary can be found on the given link, but one thing to be noted - the defending champion, 3 times winner Virtus.Pro forfeited their match against WolkeR-Gaming in the loser bracket, thus providing a new Grand Final of MYM vs WG. VP starts their PriDe campaign convincingly, beating their opponent at ease, only losing once in the 2nd game of semi final to team Q. However, they bounced back and easily beat Q in the 3rd game, thus setting the overall inner bracket against MYM yet once again. Everyone expect an epic match, like the previous edition grand final game 1. However, VP doesn't looks like they're playing at their best, they were beaten in both game and sent to the lower bracket. Even more surprising is that vigoss isn't playing in both games, thus resurfacing some rumor about VP having some internal problem. Around the same time, VP participate in ASUS Winter 2008 and lost in their very first match against unknown team ItsOurTime (who manage to reach the final, but lost to Begrip.Gaming, the reformed sP[Palit]). Soon after that, VP announce that they forfeit their PriDe match...
Moving to the Grand Final, players reaction can be found here, and the match summary/analysis can be found here. From my point of view, this match isn't that epic compared to previous edition. Yes it'd be a good upset if WG manage to win against MYM in the first game and move to the decisive 2nd game, but I simply can't see that coming. MYM was totally in good shape, they never lost a single game in this tournament right from the start, and in the semi final, they show how terrifying their force can be, tearing TeG apart easily.

Overall, GG WP to MYM and WG, and congratulation to MYM, finally they were able to win their own tournament, although part of it is contributed with the withdrawal of defending champion VP from the LoserBracket match against WG. I'm looking forward to the next edition to Prime Defending, and hoping that new heroes won't be banned this time.