In <1 hours, Gameade Top vs Danawa Joker will be happening at OGN, casted by Wolf & mOOnGlaDe. OGNglobal Twitch @ 13:00 KST (04:00 UTC).
Also expect a Korean livestream on OGN Plus Youtube Channel
This is the Group A Loser's Match. (see bracket) The winner of this match will advance to face Team Snake for a spot at the Playoffs.
GameAde TOP and Danawa Joker are both young Tier 2/3 teams in Korea so expect a fairly close match although they are no where near the level of Tier 1 Korean teams. They're low-key teams and my usual source of KR HotS news, Inven, has blocked foreign IP addresses, so I don't have much to say :P
Instead, I'll give you a rundown of what I know about how the Korean HotS pro-scene developed. (I can't guarantee it to be 100% accurate though!)
The very first Korea Heroes pro-team was founded on August 13th, 2014 under the name Team No Limit. The team was composed of ex-Starcraft players: AcE, CrazyMoving, kong, Nobless, and sCsC. This is the team that later becomes Team DK. At the time, the Korean scene was pretty much non-existent, as not only there were lack of teams, but also lack of big tournaments to play in.
The first online tournament, Zotac Heroes Arena, was held in November, and TNL was able to win the tournament, defeating a team composed largely of ex-LoL players. Despite the lack of tournaments, there were still a fair number of Korean progamers that believed in Heroes' potential as esports, and TNL's brother team, Team No Mercy was also formed, composed of players such as duckdeok. Second Zotac Heroes Arena was held on December, but there doesn't seem to have been any more beyond that.
Meanwhile, TNL and TNM played in online tournaments held in China and had some level of success, although it was hard to compete in the more established Chinese scene, handicapped by the high ping problems.
The first major tournament in Korea was Heroes Big League, held by afreecaTV (Youtube VODs of Tastosis casts). It was more of a fan event similar to the Twitch tournament that was held in US, where 32 streamers of afreecaTV formed teams to compete in the tournament. While one might have expected existing pro-teams luck TNL and TNM to dominate, the level of amateur heroes players in Korea was much higher than expect. In particular, Team IkBear, composed of players such as oreoman (Snake), Buck (MRR) and Jeongha(MRR), was able to defeat TNL in the round of 16 in 3-0 and cruise through to victory. After the tournament, TNL and TNM went through some roster changes, with players such as JaeHyun and Sniper joining TNL to form the current Team DK roster. One of TNL's founding member, kong, moved out to join Team Asia Star Dust (ASD), composed of players such as Ttsst, Kong and oreoman. This team later proceeds to become Team Snake.
The next big tournament was Heroes Team League held by Inven in April to celebrate the start of Team League. This was the first real professional Heroes tournament in Korea and resulted in birth of many pro-teams such as MVP Black. Unfortunately, one of the most anticipated teams of the tournament and considered the #1 team at the time, Team AsD ended up getting banned from the tournament due to the drama that went over oreoman's toxicity. With the absence of their biggest rival, Team No Limit was able to completely dominate the tournament, with map score of 17-1, only dropping a single map to MVP Black during the opening match. The grand finals between TNL and MVP Black was somewhat of a humiliating experience for MVP Black, with some Abathur backdoor cheese by Noblesse. At the end of the tournament, realizing the difficulty of finding a good Korean sponsor despite being one of the best teams, TNL announced their move to China to participate in the Chinese tournaments and find more success there.
With the coming of Kael'thas patch, the current top two teams of Korea, TNL and AsD announced their plans to move to China. The Asia scene began with the start of China's Nexus Cup - Kael'thas season, with a qualifier being held in Korea to pick two teams to compete with Chinese teams at the finals. Team AsD came through without trouble in the upper bracket, but an upset occurred in the lower bracket with MVP Black pulling close victory over TNL. In the main tournament against top Chinese teams, Team AsD was able to do what was then unthinkable: defeat eStar Gaming and take the trophy. With their early success, it didn't take long for them to find a sponsor and become what is now Team Snake.
Despite their set backs in Nexus Cup, it didn't take long for TNL to prove their strength in the China scene too, as they too proceeded to defeat top Chinese teams such as EDG, YL, and eStar. Finally, TNL's long efforts were finally awarded with them becoming Team DK. The invasion of the two Korean team stirred up the Chinese scene big time, with Team DK and Team Snake crushing the domestic teams left and right in both Gold Heroes League and Storm League. The only competition for these two teams seemed to be each other. Team eStar also became less dominant than before, as teams such as EDG, YL and even Brave Heart managed to start scoring a win against eStar.
After the end of Nexus Cup, things were looking a bit grim in the Korean heroes scene. With the departure of the top two teams at the time, it seemed like there wasn't much life left in Korea, especially with many of the teams that were formed during Heroes Team League disbanding or losing sponsors such as PSE and FF. TNM also disbands with the members going to form new teams (duckdeok forms MRR) or becoming a caster (AcE is the main Korean commentator for Super League) However, with the announcement of Road to Blizzcon gave birth to new teams. With TNL and ASD gone, it seemed like MVP Black would gain the top spot without competition, but in Heroes Community Open, a new found team, MRR, showed very strong performance against MVP Black in the quarter finals.
With victories in Gold League and Storm League under their belt, Team DK and Team Snake came back to Korea to participate in the Heroes Super League to fight for a spot at Blizzcon. While MVP Black showed exceptional performance during the two team's absence, many still expected Team DK and Snake to be slightly ahead considering their past dominance and success in China (including MVP Black players themselves). However, the result of Team Snake vs MVP Black last week reset everyone's expectation. Showing that the teams that stayed in Korea are now on equal footings with the teams that came back from China, it's hard to decide which team is No.1 without letting them fight in the Playoffs.