The ESL Major Series included Defense of the Ancients as one of their featured games. Initially, there were 16 teams that participated who competed from various qualifiers to get their spot in the league. There are several popular teams in the league, such as Meet Your Makers' DotA and eMazing Gaming.

However, it appeared that several of the teams in the league dropped out or was disqualified. In Group A, OverGame and YamatO failed to play their matches. While there is no official statement or reason, an ESL admin explained that the main reason is attributed to logistics. YamatO for example, failed to show up in one match, then subsequently was not able to get enough players for their games.

OverGame simply were unreachable by opponent teams as well as by admins. SickedWick suffered the same fate as YamatO -- they were kicked from the league as they were unable to procure enough players for 2 of their scheduled matches.

Team Q and Chaos Gaming from Group B dropped out of the tournament as well.

These dropouts left Group A teams Meet Your Makers and Serious Gaming to play a best of three match to determine which of them takes the first seed. The same dilemma occurred for eMazing Gaming and Guardians.Bet in Group B.

The league employs a best-of-two format in the group stages, but due to the circumstances, the teams required to play a 3rd game that serves as a tie-breaker.

The only group with a complete list of teams is Group D, where Switchback won all their matches to take 1st place in the group. The rest of the teams however, are all tied for 2nd, each winning one match each with a 2-0 score. They played a round robin of matches in a best-of-one format, which ended in another three way tie. The teams will continue to play until a winner has emerged from the tie.

Stay tuned to Gotfrag for the announcement of the qualified team from Group D, as soon as their games have been completed.

Teams who are qualified for the playoffs are:

Group A: Meet Your Makers, Serious Gaming
Group B: eMazing Gaming, Guardians.Bet
Group C: SK Gaming, IGG
Group D: Switchback, (to be determined)

Link:
ESL Major Series Dota