Teams ExsequoR WeCookGrass (xqR) and Zenith were removed from The Frozen League’s DotA Division for “inactivity” without being issued any warnings. However, xqR claims to have withdrawn voluntarily.[/b]
In a forum posting on the DotA Allstars official forums, TFL admin “Metro” claimed that the reason xqR missed their match against xDT was that “their players were sleeping”. The match was scheduled at 2 PM Singapore time, or 2 AM for xDT.
Wilson “d4rkw1sH” Tang, team leader of xqR, disputes this claim. He spoke with GameSync, saying, “I wouldn’t deny the sleeping part, but that is also because we were already planning to forfeit the competition.” According to “d4rkw1sH”, xqR sent a representative at the scheduled match time to inform xDT that it was forfeiting the match, and that xqR would be withdrawing from TFL as well.
Meanwhile, Anthony “Ant”, from Zenith has explained that they had not been able to play the last two weeks’ TFL matches due to taking part in the Intel Gaming Cup 2007 LAN tournament.
Due to time zone differences between Asia and Europe and North America, and the fact that both sides were not free to play on weekdays, matches could only be played either late at night or early in the mornings on weekends.
To complicate matters, IGC competitions were held on two consecutive weekends. Both began at 9 AM in the morning, and ended at about 7 PM in the evening. “Ant” explained that this played a big factor in Zenith’s matches being delayed.
“Metro” was having none of this however, and simply wrote, “If they don’t care about TFL and they care more about their LAN tournament then have fun with the LAN tournament, we don’t like this kind of attitude at TFL.”
It should be noted that the top prize for IGC 2007 was S$2,000 in cash, whereas TFL offered some token product prizes sponsored by Steel Series.
“Metro” went on, “[Zenith] never contact[ed] any admin and they don’t schedule their matches.”
Zenith’s “Ant” responded to this by claiming responsibility for his error in not notifying the TFL admins that Zenith would be late with its matches. He wrote, “I assumed a lot of things I shouldn’t have assumed, and didn’t contact anyone about this.”
“Ant” has told GameSync that Zenith was still in the process of arranging matches with MYM and n! when they were booted, without any warning, from TFL. “Ant” also said that Zenith was petitioning to be reinstated into TFL, but have not heard any response from the TFL admins at the time of writing.
Teams xqR and Zenith’s ejection from TFL has already sparked off firestorm of debate on both the DotA-Allstars official forums and on Singapore DotA community, DotaSG.
- Team Update (tf-league.com)
- Forum thread: TFL DotA League: zEn and xqR Removed, April 29, 2007 (forums.dota-allstars.com)
- Forum thread: Zenith and xqR kicked out of TFL (dotasg.com)
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