The Weekly CourierValve & MDL invite EHOME directly to Macau, First Ranked Season Underway
Happy Weekend!
MDL Macau to feature 9 teams, VP, LGD & EHOME directly invited
We have instructed Mars to invite EHOME to their upcoming minor. EHOME was incorrectly excluded from the qualifiers on the basis of an arrangement they had with another third party for this season. That type of consideration is in conflict with the agreement we have with Mars.
— DOTA 2 (@DOTA2) November 23, 2017
MDL Macau finished its qualifiers just last week and organizers MarsMedia announced their direct invites shortly after, namely 
Virtus.pro and 
LGD Gaming. Just yesterday though, Valve addressed a glaring issue with the event's qualifier: EHOME was banned from it. The Chinese league DPL served as a qualifier for MDL Macau, but as DPL is an ACE sanctioned event, EHOME & Keen Gaming were excluded from the event following a ban earlier this year when EHOME took in two former Wings players. MDL Macau will now be a 9 team event, the format has yet to be announced.
First Ranked Season Underway
The first ever season of ranked matchmaking has begun. On November 22nd, Valve introduced a revamped matchmaking system, which forces every player to go through a calibration phase every 6 months. Every profile will now have the player's Seasonal Rank Medal displayed. That medal will never decrease in rank once it has been achieved. There are seven tiers of medals (Herald, Guardian, Crusader, Archon, Legend, Ancient, Divine) and within each tier, there are 5 stars. Similar to CS:GO's matchmaking, party and solo games both contribute to the Medal Rank (until Ancient & Divine, for which only Solo games count). Regardless of rank, solo games will always hold a bigger weight to the evaluation.
The original announcement can be found here. Your Dotabuff profile will also feature your Seasonal Rank Medal once it's been achieved!
Perfect World Masters down to top4
The first Chinese Minor of the season is down to its top 4. 
compLexity Gaming, 
LGD.Forever Young, 
Vici Gaming and 
Newbee have all secured additional QP for this Pro Circuit season, with Newbee and VG guaranteed at least 45 QP per player. Several notable teams have already been eliminated and LGD stands out with their early exit from the group stage. European representative Kinguin took everyone by surprise with a top finish in their group,
but the Polish squad could not go past compLexity. The remaining matches will be played out over the course of this weekend.
An overview for the tournament and match results can be found here
Tournament Overview:
- The DreamLeague Major is set as Fnatic claim the last spot. The Major will begin at the end of next week, in Jönköping, Sweden. You can check out the exact schedule in our Pro Circuit hub.
Also Noteworthy
- The Clip of the week goes to Fnatic's Abed who not only steals Mineski's Roshan, but also the Aegis, Cheese & Refresher Shard!
Thanks for catching up with us. We hope you enjoy your weekend.
66.7% winrate on DP wtf ?
Abed also killed three of Mineski enabling the Roshan steal to transition to the game ending push
Why did Valve instruct MDL to invite EHOME but not Keen Gaming? If they were also banned from qualifying because they took in ex-Wings players? That means they were also unfairly excluded from having a chance to qualify.
^i wish I knew, I find that extremely unfair as well
My best guess for this is that EHOME should have automatically been in DPL because they won last year whereas keen maybe would not have made it into DPL regardless of a ban. But yeah it does seem a little strange.
Keen Gaming didn't take ex-Wings players; shadow formed Eclipse, faith_bian and y` went to EHOME, bLink and iceice took a rest and later joined Sun Gaming. (source: Liquipedia)
Seems like this EHOME team has to move regions in order to compete in minors and majors. Doesn't the ACE host all qualification events in the Chinese region?
Seems like this ban is useless anyways, since Wings Gamings hasn't picked up a DOTA team since the departure of the TI winning lineup. Even though the players are banned from ACE, it seems like Wings and an organization is not what it used to be in that region. Or any region for that matter, the way they allegedly treated their players in terms of payments etc. is preposterous.
so is wings-prob still a thing rn?
Ah, so Keen Gaming's ban wasn't for taking in ACE banned players?
I think Keen Gaming was banned because they used to be EHOME.Keen before separating
ACE banned all teams belonging to EHOME; EHOME and KG belongs to the same esports group, similar like LGD and LFY