Teams come and go in eSports, that is one of the basic facts, but some line-ups are more important or storied than others and today we saw the end of possibly the most storied in DOTA2 history. Natus Vincere, stars of the hugely influential documentary The Invitational and champions at Valve’s inaugural 2011 version of that event, today announced the release of their DOTA2 squad effective immediately following their failure to qualify for the Frankfurt Fall Major 2015.

Led by charismatic star Danil "Dendi" Ishutin, the team known as Na’Vi captured the hearts and minds of the gaming public with their somewhat unlikely win at the first Invitational, and went on to pick up an all-female roster as well as a North American team to compliment their star Europeans. However, since 2011 they have not achieved the same level of success, and today’s announcement marks the end of a very special road for the team, made up of Dendi, Oleksandr ‘XBOCT’ Dashkevych, Gleb ‘Funn1k’ Lipatnikov, Akbar ‘SoNNeikO’ Butaev and Andrew ‘PSM’ Dunaev.

Na’Vi COO Igor ‘Caff’ Sydorenko had this to say on the official team page. "After the protracted series of failures of our team, we have to take measures and with hard feelings fully disband the squad. On behalf of all the fans and Na`Vi staff I express gratitude to the guy…however, sooner or later, the time of old heroes passes. The fate gives us new challenges, which we need to accept and prove that Na`Vi is a team of champions.”

It looks as though Na’Vi will continue in the area that made them so famous, with announcements due in the next few weeks on a new line-up. The somewhat cryptic line ‘and it is possible that you may get to see the re-emergence of some familiar faces in the scene’ has led to speculation that some of the dropped line-up may yet be re-signed, and it would be no surprise if the likes of Dendi and SoNNeikO were kept on, such is their value to the team and DOTA as a whole.

However, for now at least we must say goodbye to one of the most important teams in DOTA history, if not eSports history overall, and wait to see what the future holds for Dendi and co.. The move may or may not have freed up funds for Na’Vi to move into the world of LoL, but it will take many years and much hard work before their name means as much as it does, or maybe did to the millions of DOTA fans who fell in love with both their team, and the game they played so magically in 2011.