Team Norway will enter the Shanghai Qualifiers as one of the favorites to make it to the playoffs, along with France, China, and Denmark. There is one striking difference between Norway and the other favorites of Shanghai: Norway's team is scattered across the west.
As you would expect, all of the players are Norwegian nationals and will all be playing on location in Shanghai. However, the Norwegians come from a smattering of teams spread across North America and Europe rather than from one team. While France is the only country in the group bring a full club roster, the bulk of Denmark's squad comes from Team Singularity while the majority of China's team comes from LGD Gaming.
Alas, Norway does not have the luxury of a pre-existing roster to use as the foundation for their team. ONIGOD comes from Toronto Esports while iPN was last seen playing support for Ninjas with Attitude during Contenders Season Zero. Trob and Iko also competed in Contenders, where they played (and subsequently signed) for YaLLa eSports. Invision and Decod came the closest to qualifying for Contenders Season 1 playing for Team expert.
Invision and Decod ended up with the roster that would become Team expert not too long after the dissolution of their previous team, the Oslo Lions. In fact, a few of their Norwegian teammates can be found on that same roster, iPN and Iko. While Norway is spread across a variety of rosters now, the core of their roster all shared the same club, much like their counterparts in France, Denmark, and China. In order to make it to Blizzcon, Team Norway will be hoping to rekindle the old flames of teamwork their core roster once had with Oslo Lions, with a little extra spark from the additions of ONIGOD and Trob.
The Team Norway World Cup roster is:
- Christer "Iko" Ringelien (DPS)
- Greger "Invision" Herland (DPS)
- Stefan "ONIGOD" Fiskerstrand (Flex)
- Jørgen "Decod" Myrlund (Tank)
- Kha "iPN" Nguyen (Support)
- Iver "Trob" Andreas Straume (Support)