If the Dota 2 community was looking for a rapid and simple final game to finish the starting day of The International 11 2022 main stage, neither Entity nor Royal Never Give Up were going to attend those desires. As both teams played a best-of-one “lose means elimination” game that took the TI record for the longest game on the main stage in the tournament’s history.
Even after almost winning multiple times, an hour of incredibly well-positioned team fights, and a flying headset that somehow pushed a pause button during the final moments of the game, Royal Never Give Up ultimately lost against Entity and were officially eliminated from TI11.
Right from the beginning, the setup for this match was very strange to viewers since only 1 player from Royal Never Give Up (xNova) appeared on stage to battle against a full Entity roster. This is thanks to his 4 teammates being positive for COVID and thus forced to play from the isolation room.
Instead of his allies, xNova was beside 4 huge teddy bears to fill the empty gaming chairs. And while this was wholesome enough to make the stream chat create a copypasta theory about him controlling everything like a sorcerer, it also led to an incredible image for xNova since he eventually saluted and walked away alone to the crowd chanting his name after his team’s defeat.
This loss not only meant Royal Never Give Up was eliminated from the TI11 but also the ninth conductive loss after the start of their health complications, which saw the squad struggle to play at their peak level due to coughs, fevers, and other symptoms of the illness.
Meanwhile, Entity had a huge pop-off to a first-round victory as the players embraced each other and were nearly taking down their teammates in excitement after a pause that had the fans thinking if some BM taunting was going on, however as mentioned above it was an Entity player that threw his headset into the pause button due to excitement.
The game itself officially lasted 1 hour and 47 minutes, making it the longest game ever on the main stage of any TI competition. The only game longer than this at a TI event was a group stage match between iG Vitality and Team Empire back in TI7 that went for 2 hours and 8 minutes. It also punched its way to be the 16th longest game in the history of competitive Dota 2 and the longest one since Gambit Esports and Team Spirit’s 119-minute smackdown at the Kuala Lumpur Major qualifiers back in September 2018.
With RNG officially eliminated, Entity will move on to battle the loser between Team Aster and Team Liquid in the next round of TI11.
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