Everything you need to know about the Frankfurt Fall Major 2015
The Frankfurt Major is the first Dota 2 Major. Earlier this year, Valve announced that they would introduce this Major system, a system which already exists in the CS:GO scene. Four Valve supported events per year, three outside of The International. Unlike The International however, the prizepool for this Major, and possibly all future ones, is at a fixed $3,000,000, all of which is provided by Valve. Compendium purchases do not increase the prizepool whatsoever. The split for the prizepool can be found here.
While it is a Major and supported by Valve, ESL is in charge of organizing and producing the event. it takes place in Frankfurt, Germany at the Festhalle Frankfurt.
Who's playing?
So who's actually playing?
Eight teams were directly invited, while eight more slots were determined via qualifiers across the world. Four regions (Europe, Americas, China and South-East Asia/Korea) were given two qualifier slots each and after a week of almost non-stop Dota 2 action, the teams were determined.
Unfortunately however, some of the teams ran into visa related issues. TI2 champion Invictus Gaming will not be able to attend the event, despite having won the China qualifier. They will be replaced by NewBee.Young. LGD-Gaming, CDEC-Gaming and Vega Squadron have also all been plagued by visa issues, but fortunately, they were resolved and they will be able to attend and compete at the event. They will be at a disadvantage though, especially the two Chinese representatives, as they did not have the time to settle in yet. Jetlag certainly will be a factor for both LGD and CDEC.
If you are not sure how each of these teams fare, how they've played recently and what players and heroes to look out for, check out our overviews for the teams and their regions:
Format & Schedule
Note that the schedule has been changed for the groupstage. See here.
The tournament is divided into two stages. All 16 teams will be split into four groups of four. Within those groups, they'll play out a double-elimination bracket, or a so-called "GSL-Style" group. All matches are best-of-three (bo3), no team gets eliminated in the groupstage. The bottom two of each group will be placed into the lower bracket of the playoffs, meaning the top two teams of each group will be placed into the upper bracket.
Groups A and B will play out on Friday 13th, followed by groups C and D on Saturday, November 14th. Sunday will act as a day off and the playoffs will begin on Monday 16th.
The second stage, the playoffs, will mostly be bo3 as well. Only the first round of lower bracket matches will be bo1 and the grand finals will be a bo5.
Each day, the first game is scheduled to kick-off at 10.30am CET / 01.30am PST / 05.30pm SGT. This is the starting time for the pre-show, so if you're purely interested in the games, expect those to kick-off around 11.00am CET. The groups can be found here.
Casters/Talent
A total of 22 personalities from multiple studios have been hired to present the Major - and this is just for the English coverage. Four of the casters however will be working remotely during the groupstage, which will have games going on at the same time.
Some of the personalities may be listed in just one category, but are assured to be rotating between analysis on both panel and the cast.
Just an FYI, for Frankfurt Major even though some are listed as caster, they will also be on panel quite a bit (like @MerliniDota)
— Hot_Bid (@Hot_Bid) November 5, 2015How to follow the event [outside of streams]?
Trackdota.com will have you covered wherever you may be, to follow the progress of the games and any updates you may need. It'll also match streams to their respective games. So especially for the groupstage, where multiple games take place at once, you may want to consider tuning in here to see where your favorite match is being streamed on. You can check results, standings and of course any matches and their statistics on our very own tournament page.
For a more detailed list of all the official streams available, here's a list of streams to watch that ESL just released. These are just the official channels however. Especially when it comes to other languages, such as Spanish, German or Swedish, there will be other casters to provide coverage. The Frankfurt Major is free to spectate in-game, so you can follow the action there, or even attempt to cast on your own.
The beauty of every LAN however event are the coverages outside of just the stream. The tid-bits that you don't get to see by just sticking to the stream. Some personalities post vlogs, some are really engaging on either Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and lately even Periscope.
Here are two special Social Media channels that you should pay attention to, especially during the playoffs:
Ben 'Merlini' Wu on YouTube - the BTS caster posts regular vlogs of his experiences live on site, two of which have already been uploaded with more to be expected. It's a nice look behind the scene, and in some occasions even a scoop.
Jorien 'Sheever' van der Heijden on Instagram, Facebook - The Dutch host may not be at the event as part of the production, but will attend the event and always has content for her fans to enjoy from home.
Outside of that, you should of course consider following the Twitter accounts of various casters and players attending the event.
You should however pay very close attention to our very own Twitter! Dotabuff will have people on site and we'll make sure to send you some cool pictures from the venue. And who knows, maybe a video or two?
Images by TheFrankfurtMajor.com and ESL
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thanks for the information, since valve kinda left a lot out!