[noobinater]

http://dota2.com/

Dota 2 Championships: First Public Showing at Gamescom
Valve today announced The International. This tournament will be the first time Dota 2 is shown in public, and will take place August 17th -21st at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany.
The International features the 16 best Dota teams in the world competing in the Dota 2 Championships through a group stage, double elimination playoff format over the course of Cologne’s five-day trade show.
The tournament will be broadcast in four languages (Chinese, German, Russian, and English) free of charge. The winning team will receive $1 million.
“The International is the first public Dota 2 event and will give the tens of millions of gamers playing Dota around the world their first look at the new game,” said Gabe Newell, president and founder of Valve. “I have had the good fortune to watch the competitors as they prepare for the tournament, and the level of play is extraordinary.”
In addition to the cash prizes awarded by Valve, NVidia is providing all the hardware for the event.
Dota 2 will be available for the PC and Mac later this year.

still a shitty "genre" though

I am however, infinitely jealous of how Valve is treating the dota communitycompared to what Blizz is doing with SC2 (in built spectator feature, multiplayer replay watching, in game commentary, movable camera, LAN SUPPORT, etc)

E: Updating OP with trailer

You Tube

You Tube

+ [Pictures] +

EE:

(Is there a tag to re-size massive images?)

[nirvAnA]

omg 1 million dollars!!!? for a game not even released to the public?

things just got real holy shit sounds like valve will be investing some serious money into making this work

Quick Comments

Fourby:

lol although im not surprised with 1m for dota, 1m for unrealeased game is just WTF

[TAhackdZ]

*Blinks eye's*

$1mill moneys...?

Holy snapping duck feathers Batman!

Edit: Nice, MYM playing in this. Hope they win!

[lxuzyl]

Omg! One million USD, biggest prize pool in e-sport history so far?

[AxSGRiM]

Not really, Activision announced one before they did. Kind of wish Blizzard did something more for us with the shit ton of money they have though...

[ke_ivan]

lulz let's all switch to dota! our micro is better anyway!

[Daboo]

"This esports thing is pretty cool" - game companies, more games are making their way towards esports lol,hon.

But this insane, blizzard who claims to be leader of esports wants a 50% of the revenue for any tourney that has more than 5k dollars as prize money.

I think blizzard sponsor the money for all the gsls though..(could be wrong).

[Fourby]

Originally Posted by Daboo

"This esports thing is pretty cool" - game companies, more games are making their way towards esports lol,hon.

But this insane, blizzard who claims to be leader of esports wants a 50% of the revenue for any tourney that has more than 5k dollars as prize money.

I think blizzard sponsor the money for all the gsls though..(could be wrong).

I'm pretty sure this is wrong, IIRC GSL is sponsored by G.Skill and Pepsi atm. (prior was LG etc)

And yeh activision announced their 1 mil thing for Black Ops already... such a bad game lol.

As for dota being a bad genre... that's a lie rofl

[noobinater]

Wait, a 1M prize for Black Ops??

That's ******* hilarious xD

Quick Comments

Fourby:

ikr

[DtorR]

Wish I was a pro dota player on one of those 16 teams.

[Primex]

Wow, I want to be in one of them teams.

[Xeen]

Makes sense. You want to build as much hype about your game before release as possible, and a huge prize pool is good for drawing a one-off burst of attention.

[Doctor]

The prize money is really inviting :Q_____

[Next_rim]

$1m for game that requires no skill? Funny.

I know very few Dota players who are actually good at melee, but I don't know a single melee player who is bad at Dota, myself included. Not to mention Dota has always been imbalanced, with core mechanical problems (stun vs blink) affecting competitive play.

[Dox]

The $1M is an advertising expense. HoN/LoL are very well established and you need a big entrance to draw players away from those titles. This is such an entrance.

Also - for people comparing Blizzard and Valve and saying Blizzard doesn't care... c'mon. They're delivering everything people ask for with the exception of LAN for obvious, logical reasons.

I haven't looked into the DOTA2 LAN protocol, but I'm going to assume it requires (online) steam authentication prior to launch, therefore the benefits of low ping and stability are present, without the ongoing issue of piracy. If this is what they've done, it's a clever move, and requires an established platform like Steam to execute. It's a good idea, and if it proves to be effective (for both parties), then it's one that all major developers would be inheriting in future.

[zendex]

Hoping for a SEA vs SEA finals!

GL to MiTH, Scythe, MUFC, StarsBoba and especially to our very own Mineski!

[AlphaWhale]

Originally Posted by Next_rim

$1m for game that requires no skill? Funny.

I know very few Dota players who are actually good at melee, but I don't know a single melee player who is bad at Dota, myself included. Not to mention Dota has always been imbalanced, with core mechanical problems (stun vs blink) affecting competitive play.

This could be attributed to the fact that DotA is in fact not melee.

--

2011 is the year of an e-sports explosion. I just hope there are plenty of fires left behind.

[Next_rim]

This could be attributed to the fact that DotA is in fact not melee.

Dota is a melee with one unit. Or, in some cases, several units. The range of things player has to do is narrowed down to positioning one unit, watching 5 enemy units, and using *achem* 4 abilities + attacking. Dota is very tactical, true, but so is a melee game. Dota economy is inferior to any melee, as your income is a direct result of your micro. Two complicated elements combined into one = less skill required.

The only difference is the teamplay element, which turned dota into what we know today. But what it really does, imho, is taking away single player skill and diminishing its significance in favor of teamplay. In a fairly equal game, strong team can carry a noob, but strong player can't carry a team of noobs.

Required teamplay is the biggest reason I quit WoW actually, I didn't want to rely on 24(39 pre-expansion) other people to play the game.

[Dox]

Originally Posted by Next_rim

Dota is a melee with one unit. Or, in some cases, several units. The range of things player has to do is narrowed down to positioning one unit, watching 5 enemy units, and using *achem* 4 abilities + attacking. Dota is very tactical, true, but so is a melee game. Dota economy is inferior to any melee, as your income is a direct result of your micro. Two complicated elements combined into one = less skill required.

The only difference is the teamplay element, which turned dota into what we know today. But what it really does, imho, is taking away single player skill and diminishing its significance in favor of teamplay. In a fairly equal game, strong team can carry a noob, but strong player can't carry a team of noobs.

Required teamplay is the biggest reason I quit WoW actually, I didn't want to rely on 24(39 pre-expansion) other people to play the game.

Just keep in mind that just because you don't find a particular game/dynamic enjoyable, that it doesn't require skill or cannot be enjoyed. I personally hated DotA for the same reasons back in War3. But I really do enjoy the SC2 version (SotIS) these days. The game/genre has come a long way.

Originally Posted by sHockeR

Not really, Activision announced one before they did. Kind of wish Blizzard did something more for us with the shit ton of money they have though...

I think you should contemplate how much money Blizzard loses on Blizzcon each year.

[Next_rim]

Dox,

I just think Dota is overrated, but I do understand why people play it. It's simple, it has social element, smooth and easy learning curve, and you can always blame teammates. Same reason I play Footmen and Desert Strike. Except for Footmen community doesn't scream at every corner that the map is complicated, game is hard, and you just don't know what you are talking about.