World Cyber Arena tournament suffers issues within opening hours, again

The Chinese multi-eSport event World Cyber Arena has suffered massive production delays within the opening hours in a repeat of last year’s fiasco.

The tournament, organised by a division of the Yinchuan municipal government, began the group stages of 11 different games shortly before 6am GMT.

However, after five hours only two of the Dota 2 Best-Of-Two matches have been played, and there are four remaining.

This comes after the door to one of the soundproof booths players are situated in fell off its hinges as the venue at the Ningxia International Hall was essentially still under construction.

Despite being one of the largest games in China, none of the Dota 2 matches are scheduled to take place on a stage as organisers attempt to fit 10 other games into four days of competition, including Hearthstone and World of Tanks.

According to Team Secret’s manager, Matt "Cyborgmatt" Bailey, teams have been in the venue for 11 hours already, many under the effects of jetlag having arrived from a US West Coast tournament hours beforehand. Tournament caster Tobi "Tobiwan" Dawson also believes there is ‘no way the tournament can be completed in its current format’.

This year’s issues are no surprise to the competitive Dota community, as last year’s inaugural event saw admin incompetence leading to cancelled matches and huge delays, prompting the English casting team Beyond The Summit to give up commentating during the event.

The organisers also failed to secure enough bandwidth for the 2014 event, causing streaming problems and lag for the competitors.