Legends reunite under Xtreme Gaming’s banner!
The Chinese Dota 2 scene was shaken up after Dec. 11 when Xtreme Gaming announced the unexpected return of Wang "Ame" Chunyu. Joining him was another legend in a weird situation: Ding "Dy" Cong, who had already retired from playing competitively after failing to qualify for The International (TI) 12.
Xtreme Gaming roster leak
However, this was only the starting point. As we said, Dy had no intentions to compete and was already building a successful career as a streamer. He felt he could leave his spot on Xtreme Gaming to a younger and hungrier player. But the team owner wanted no one else. Consequently, he came back from retirement to join Ame in this new project.
The leaks that compromise Azure Ray's roster
After the TI12 shuffle, new Chinese teams formed to compete in the ESL One Kuala Lumpur, the first tournament of the 2024 EPT season. That's how the new Azure Ray was born, introducing Zhao "XinQ" Zixing, Lin "Xxs" Jing and Guo "Xm" Hongcheng to join Lou "Lou" Zhen and Jiang "tiān mìng" An. The task wasn't going to be easy since the previous team had accomplished a really impressive fourth place in the past TI. However, they did more than deliver. Azure Ray won the whole thing.
One would believe the now top ranked EPT team would be stable and ready to own the new season. But one post from Benjamin "Bkop" Kopilow took Chinese Dota 2 fans by surprise. Alexey "STORM" Tumanov also confirmed this on his Telegram channel.
Why did Azure Ray disband their roster?
The account dedicated to translating the Chinese Dota 2 scene's Weibo posts and players' declarations on stream called "CN Dota In A Nutshell" shed some light on what XinQ had to say about this leak. The player surprisingly said he wants this new team over the ESL Pro Tour (EPT) points.
While this looks like a resolved issue, the transfer of XinQ, Xxs and Xm to Xtreme Gaming is still not official. This means Azure Ray can, and most likely will, try to keep their now proven successful team.
If you want to be the first to know about the next Chinese Dota 2 roster announcement, be sure to check esport.gg for more news like this!