Cover-Credits:
Tundra Esports' support player, Jingjun "Sneyking" Wu, is a stalwart of the competitive Dota 2 scene, having attended numerous events over the course of his decade-long career. In a recent Q&A session with Tundra Esports, Sneyking was asked about the best Dota 2 event he's ever attended. According to him, The International 8 (TI8) was the best tournament. Sneyking along with his team, VGJ.Storm, entered the competition with grand expectation of winning the Aegis of Champions. In the end, however, Sneyking and his teammates' did not fare well and it resulted in quite the disappointment for the lot.
Tundra Esports' Sneyking discusses his experience with VGJ.Storm at TI8
Sneyking has played for more than 20 teams, with players from all over the world, over the course of his career. While he was playing for VGJ.Storm in 2017-18, Sneyking believed that his team had a realistic shot at claiming the Aegis of the Champions at TI8. However, the outcome did not turn out as they had hoped.
Sneyking said that not winning TI had really hit them hard. Reality dawned hard upon them leading to the realisation of issues in need of identification and acknowledgement.
“TI where OG won their first TI (best Dota 2 event ever attended). I believe that was TI8, right? Yeah, that was TI8. During that year, we were the top seed of the tournament and we were the favorite to win but then we kinda came down crashing. We only got 7th-8th at the event, we lost to Team Secret and it was a pretty big blow because we had high expectations going in, we were feeling really great but then it all came down to reality really quickly that there were some flaws and problems about myself and my team that we did not figure or had not acknowledged at the time.”
VGJ.Storm qualified for TI8 through the North American qualifier. Yawar "YawaR" Hassan, Roman "Resolut1on" Fomynok, Arif "MSS" Anwar, and Avery "SVG" Silverman were the other four players of the squad at the event. The team surprisingly placed first in Group B, ahead of Virtus.pro and Team Secret (two very formidable teams at the time).
Sneyking and his teammates, however, were unable to replicate their performance from the group stage in the playoffs, and went out in 7th-8th place, taking home a total of $638,304 USD.
Sneyking's current team, Tundra Esports, did not qualify for TI10 after losing 3-2 to OG in the Western Europe qualifier. Since then, the team has been on a dramatic growth curve, beating top teams from around the world in thirty-party events.
Additionally, Tundra Esports has managed to keep its roster intact whereas many other teams who failed to secure TI slots have altered theirs.
