OMEGA League rebrands as EPIC League for Season 2

Tournament organiser Epic Esports Events announced on Twitter that the second season of OMEGA League, now known as EPIC League, will begin this Thursday with a round of open qualifiers. The full event will be beginning in earnest on November 3^rd.

The tournament will feature talent from Europe and the CIS region. The matches will be divided between the two regions, open qualifiers will be held from Oct. 29 – 30 on FACEIT and the closed qualifiers will take place Nov. 3 – 11. After the initial qualifiers, the first division games are being held on Nov. 12 – Dec. 5, and the playoff stage will be held from Dec. 8 – 13. The total prize pool for the event is $500,000 for the Immortal division.

Finally, the second division teams will take part from Nov. 11 – Dec. 1, their playoff stage will also be held from Dec. 8 – 13. The total prize pool for the Divine division will be $50,000.

Eight teams have been invited to take part in the first division and they are as follows,

1. Virtus Pro
2. Alliance
3. Team Liquid
4. Team Secret
5. OG
6. Vikin.gg
7. Team Nigma
8. Natus Vincere

This season will feature less teams, 10 rather than 12 will compete, but more matches, with an increase from 15 to a total of 45.

This will be a welcome piece of news for the Dota 2 community, despite the announcement of the huge prize pool for The International 10, professional events have been few and far between. The Dota 2 esports scene is still dealing with the complications of the ongoing pandemic and the issues of competing in online only tournaments.

Epic League will replace the previously announced second season of OMEGA League. The first season was a major success and fans of the game, and the tournament organizers are justifiably excited about what they have in store this time. It is only the second non-DPC tournament to break 400,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch and the production quality has been on pair with official Valve hosted events.

The tournament will be an interesting one, especially for those looking to bet on the events. The online nature of the tournament will definitely throw a spanner in the works as teams will have to plan for lag and latency issues. Team Secret are the heavy favorites heading into the tournament. On the other hand, the uncertain nature of the Virtus Pro team will make it hard to decide their odds at the title. Virtus Pro’s main squad became inactive last month while their second team, Prodigy, have been performing relatively well.

Despite the uncertainty, this tournament is shaping up to be a bright spot in the relatively uneventful year for the Dota 2 competitive scene.