Good evening, dear friends! It's been a while since I wrote anything in his blog, and I am sorry that new article has sad theme. However, I believe that it is right to tell you the latest news personally.
The main theme of this blog is D2L tournament in Las Vegas. As you know, Team Empire has won the qualifier few days ago... We knew that getting there is not easy, and not even because of the financial costs of the trip, but due to visa issues.
Before the D2L playoffs we knew that the cost of the trip will be equal or even higher than prize pool for any place except the first one. Despite that fact, we were ready to send our team to the tournament and players knew that.
So, about the problem: only three from five players have a valid US visa (due to participating in TI4): Silent, Resolut1on and ALWAYSWANNAFLY. So, we started to study an issue with other players beforehand.
Our fears were confirmed on obtaining a US visa for our standin from Kharkov - Aloha. Earliest date of issuance of visas - 5th January, which is not acceptable for us, and there was no way to accelerate the process, as it's impossible to apply for a visa in advance, due to the lack of passport.
Nevertheless, we still saw the way to participate in D2L using a standin.
The situation became finally clear today, when yoky - our offlaner got a reject at the US Embassy in Moscow. After examining the circumstances, we conclude that the resubmission has a very high chance of another failure and can lead to potential problems with future visa for more valuable tournaments in the United States.
Playing with two substitutions makes no sense, so, today, we officially announce that Team Empire won't make it to the tournament in Las Vegas, despite all our desire. We apologize to the administration of the tournament and all the fans who supported us during this difficult period of formation of a new composition.
Talking about future plans of Team Empire Dota 2, our main goal is to win a slot to Starladder lan finals and Dota 2 Asia Championship, which will take place from 8th to 11th of January 2015. By the way, a trip to Vegas would most certainly deprive us from the opportunity to play this league because of the intersection of dates of the tournaments.
I promise that next year we will visit the maximum of possible lan tournaments and show the level of play you will be proud of! Thank you very much for being with us, thanks for your support!
In conclusion, greetings to our Dota2 managers: AnahRoniX and Ash and our proven sponsors - Seagate, twitch, 4frag and newcomer on the list, but not the last in importance - SwapGaming. I hope that in the future we will swap only rares and our composition will remain stable and successful. :)
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