David Tan · @MoonMeanderated
4th Aug 2021 from TwitLonger
Team Undying, the longest journey
Journey - An act of traveling from one place to another.
Today my friends, I am writing to you the story of a Dota pro player's journey with his team.
Team Undying, started this DPC season with Timado, Bryle, Dubu, Saberlight and me. I knew we were going to face uphill challenges with this roster as I've played with hFn and Khezu, who are from SA and EU. With an SA player, his ping/lag status is mostly luck based, sometimes good, sometimes bad, not much you can do about it. With an EU player, he's always going to be on delay, playing from 130~150 ping, ontop of having to stay up consistently to the late nights, sometimes till 6am, especially during bo5 grand finals. Knowing this, I still went ahead and got them as I saw something in them, fire. However, I still kept the team with at least 3 NA players. Even though all 3 of us are asian immigrants, NA has always been built from immigrants, we're proud of where we came from and where we are arrived.
Unlike other teams, we don't have a sponsor, so we can't just fly our high ping players in to NA to bootcamp for major qualifiers. We had to work with what we got, the highest luxury we had was that our discord server was nitroboosted, which mean we could stream our Dota in HD, to go through replays as a team. I had to tell our manager, before he worked for us, that I couldn't get him paid until we got an organization, he was fine with it. After months of not having an organization, the boys chipped in and we all sent him some money, on top of him having a prizepool cut, just so he would get paid. Despite all the disadvantages, we went ahead and tried our best for the majors.
Our first major qualifier, we forced a 3 way tiebreaker from groups, with EG, Quincy, UND all going 6-1. If you went 6-1 in any other region you're either 1st seed or directly qualified, but not in NA. After grueling bo1s, we failed to qualify, all we needed was to win 1 more game, just a bo1, was the difference maker in us being a major attendee. Sucks. Fast forward to the next major, we're once again facing Quincy Crew, the score is 1-1, we're 1 game away from forcing another tiebreaker, we lose, heartbreaking. No major again.
All this failure and sadness reminded me of the times where I had to play with NA stacks for open qualifiers, where teammates left 1 day before opens to join forward gaming, the price you have to pay for playing with a stack, there are no contracts so people can leave ANYTIME, weeks/months of practice down the drain because 1 guy saw the grass was greener on the other side. This become the narrative for NA teams for times to come, and I do believe the biggest reason is that if you aren't attending a major or aren't sponsored, you make $0, there is no incentive unless you're on top, so shuffle away. NA too toxic? I tried my hand in SEA, twice, with tigers, and then WG unity with nikobaby. Found some success by winning a minor with the boys theeban + indopride. Went back to NA stacks, same shit again, people backstabbing, this time the organization that poached was C9. After some stincts and COVID, Team Undying was born.
"It's ok guys we still have TI10 to play for" Says Dubu, after we failed to qualify for the Animajor. We carried this, alongside watching countless hours of discord streams, ping issues, no bootcamp, no org, no sponsor, we qualified to TI10. 5 years since my last TI, after playing in 3 regions, multiple kicks, multiple backstabs, definitely the roughest patch of my life, made it to TI. Nice. So now what you ask? Bootcamp. We have tried multiple times with sponsors/organizations, some even got poached, some want to wait till after TI10, some think NA is too unstable. All I want is to give my boys, some first time TI attendees, the best chance they can get to prove themselves. I want them to be unshackled by ping, to be able to finally see each other in person, scrim together, eat together, have fun together. These boys have stuck with me, through thick and thin, to get here, loyal to the end, and it would break my heart if they don't get the same chance as premium organizations do, to compete at TI10. We don't need a chef, we don't need a masseuse, we don't need first class tickets, we just need a bootcamp.
We are Team Undying and our motto is "SHINZO SASAGEYO", and our longest journey is still being written, at TI10 we'll see you all.
For sponsorship inquires please contact our manager petercanders@gmail.com