FaZe Clan (ESL One New York 2017), G2 Esports (DreamHack Masters Malmö 2017), and Ninjas in Pyjamas (IEM Oakland 2017) each had one Grand Slam title coming into the tournament.
The semifinalist from last season and two time major champions looked to win its first premier tournament since ESL One: Cologne 2017 in July.
In addition, OpTic signed Chet "ImAPet" Singh from Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) as a coach.
In a semifinals game against Counter Logic Gaming, kNgV-, Henrique "HEN1" Teles, and Lucas "LUCAS1" Teles showed up late to their match; after CLG in-game leader Pujan "FNS" Mehta posted on Twitter on how the trio was late, kNgV- publicly threatened FNS.
[8][9] After Immortals signed the up-and-coming player horvy, acquired Lucas "destinyy" Bullo from Tempo Storm, and picked up the former in-game leader of Keyd Stars (now SK Gaming) Caio "zqk" Fonseca, this guaranteed that Immortals would not get a Legends spot back as Valve rules require teams to keep three of its players in order to keep a seed.
[12] Former Immortals member João "felps" Vasconcellos had a lack of motivation playing with SK Gaming, as FalleN cited that felps was playing in positions he was not used to and missed his family back home in Brazil, so Immortals loaned Ricardo "boltz" Prass for EPICENTER 2017, Intel Extreme Masters Season XII – Oakland, BLAST Pro Series, and the Season 6 Finals, so Immortals acquired Bruno "shz" Martinelli from Tempo Storm for its five-man roster.
Matthew "WARDELL" Yu joins the team as its AWPer and Shawn "witmer" Taylor stood in for Collin "wrath" McSweegan until the latter reaches the age of 16.
It also picked up former Echo Fox player Ronnie "ryx" Bylicki and former Keyd Stars captain Caio "zqk" Fonseca.
[22] ptr and Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker go on to join compLexity Gaming as Derek "desi" Branchen and Kia "Surreal" Man become free agents.
[23] Damian "daps" Steele later steps down from the active roster and moves into the vacant coaching role and NRG trialed Dylan "RIKO" Sabin-Arnce.
Astralis also clinched a spot after defeating Team EnVyUs in the second game to move on to the playoffs to play in front of its home crowd.
Ninjas in Pyjamas was always floating around in the middle of the pack, but all four matches in week seven helped out the once dominant Swedes to take the fifth spot.
HellRaisers would be the surprise team in the top six as it started out the season very poorly, but ended up defeating GODSENT in its last game.
Combined with a G2 Esports loss to Fnatic, HellRaisers just about edged its way to the playoffs and G2, the defending EPL champions, settled to seventh place in the season.
Fredrik "freddieb" Buö is then officially signed by GODSENT as its new in-game leader after transferring over from Epsilon eSports.
[39] Also, Vladyslav "bondik" Nechyporchuk is dropped from the HellRaisers lineup and went on loan to the Chinese team TyLoo and trial Özgür "w0xic" Eker from Turkey and Issa "ISSAA" Murad from Jordan.
Team Liquid would also be crippled as it could not use its newly acquired player steel and would be forced to play at the event with its coach zews.
Fnatic was unproven to be a threat on LAN after the departure of dennis and olofmeister, but still managed to take the number one seed in both EPL and ECS.
However, things started to settle down, but HellRaisers still managed to top the group by the end of the day, while FaZe Clan struggled in its two matches after losing in overtime to Fnatic and barely scraping past Team Liquid.
FaZe showed what it was really capable of in the second day, as it breezed through competition, only somewhat struggling against Luminosity while stomping Astralis and Liquid.
Luminosity exceeded expectations after garnering two wins and putting up close fights in its three losses, but Brazil's current second best team was out at fourth place.
However, in the few LAN appearances the team made, OpTic struggled as it failed to come out of the Boston Europe Minor, lost to Renegades in iBUYPOWER Masters, and were trounced by SK Gaming at IEM Oakland.
SK Gaming had much more success after acquiring boltz on loan; it made the semifinals at IEM Oakland, won EPICENTER 2017, and came back from a 0–9 deficit against Astralis to win BLAST Pro Series.
Meanwhile, NRG Esports surprised everyone by defeating Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP) and North after not winning a single game in its two previous EPL finals.
Finn "karrigan" Andersen from FaZe and Emil "Magisk" Reif from OpTic would be the only Danes to play in front of Odense's crowd.
OpTic managed to come back from a relatively weak first half to winning the last ten of twelve rounds to take game one.
In the third game, despite HS's performance, everyone on Fnatic helped out as the strong start to the second half proved to be just enough to eliminate OpTic from the tournament.
Misfits started its semifinals strong as it took a 3–0 lead, but SK never gave the Americans and French to breathe again as it dominated in almost every facet of the first game.
However, this would be SK's last tournament of the year as it failed to make the top four in North America of ECS, placing fifth.
karrigan had never defeated FalleN in any series more than a best of one, and he had a great opportunity to start strong on Inferno as the map had always been one of SK's weakest.