Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The open-ish beta for Valve’s action-RTS remake Dota 2 is apparently impending, with a clutch of far’n'wide folk last night mailed a link to a survey intended to assess your level of experience with the multiplayer-only title. I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t complete it myself, such is my inexperience with these things – I put a fair bit of time into Demigod, but only really in singleplayer, and my one experience with a Dota game was a shower of incompetence. Keep meaning to check out League of Legends and see what the fuss is about, though.

If, unlike me, you are not entirely ignorant in such matters and thus can easily answer questions such as “Please estimate your average total gold earned in a DOTA match”, then set Steam running then click on this link. If that doesn’t work, hit Run from your Windows Start menu, paste the link in, hit enter and you should be presented with the questionnaire.

Any day where I have an excuse to make a large number of people watch a Sisters of Mercy video is a good day. You’ll find Andrew Eldritch waiting for you below. While the cane-wielding 80s poison-king has an apparent fondness for text adventures, what we’re nominally here to talk about is the new mode for free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena stalwart League of Legends.

Yesterday saw the much-ballyhooed launch of Dominion, a capture and hold mode which offers a new map and supaquick rounds of about 20 minutes. It’s all described in detail for you by Captain Explanation below.
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Valve’s DOTA 2 blog has word that their plans for a year-long beta “was dumb”. Here’s the brief from IceFrog:

We’re going to take the current version of Dota 2, which has The International set of heroes, and get it out there as fast as we can. We’ve still got some work to do in a couple of areas, so we’ll be keeping it invite-only for a (hopefully short) period of time. But there’ll be no restrictions on what players can do with it – they can release screenshots, make movies, shoutcast matches, write guides, publicly make fun of our HUD, or anything else their hearts desire.

Interesting! Looks like we could be in for a dose of DOTA 2 much sooner than anticipated. But will it overcome my general MOBA-reticence? Hmm. Sceptical.

In the Great Battle Of The DOTAs, Eurogamer reports that Blizzard’s own version, made as a mod for Starcraft 2, won’t be with us until 2012 now. Because they scrapped the version now assumed to release near Heart of the Swarm, and started over. The version shown at last year’s BlizzCon is no more. The reboot will apparently aim to make the game more accessible to newcomers, which it’s hard to believe isn’t a reaction to Valve’s DOTA 2. There are lots more details in the EG story. So, two DOTAs due to arrive next year, from two of the most powerful developers in the world. Now, if only I liked DOTA games.

From the looks of things, it appears as if one sneaky entrant in the Gamescom DOTA 2 tournament has been recording their screen! Here’s a quick video that shows quite a lot of doing nothing at a menu, but then from 1:28 onwards, it’s all in game action. The environment looks nice and lush, and the characters are quite bright and colourful. Definitely cut a line that plunges right into the middle of the MOBA-maelstrom of LoL, HoN and others. Also the commentators sound VERY EXCITED. Check out the footage below:
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With Valve’s DOTA 2 Championships about to happen tomorrow, the developer has also announced that it is taking sign-ups to the beta. Registration is open now. You need only head here, sign in with your Steam account details, and then click “Get on the list”. That’s it. Whenever the beta happens, they then promise they’ll get in touch. Meanwhile the championship will be streamed live from tomorrow morning, the first starting at 9am tomorrow morning (UK time), and then pretty much going on non-stop until Sunday, at which point anyone left awake/hydrated will be declared the winner. And that’s all the weather. Cheers to Chris.

As if from out of nowhere, Valve have released a trailer for DOTA 2 ahead of Gamescom. Essentially a class trailer, if you’re hoping for in-game footage that’s not happening yet. That’ll be happening during the live-streamed tournament taking place during the big German convention. But if you’re hoping for Valve’s world-class in-house animation, then bingo. An astonishingly gorgeous cartoon short explains the different ways to play the game, which you can see below.

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A number for you: $5 million.

A context for that number: the total prize pool for the tournaments dubbed ‘Season Two’ of League of Legends.
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I note there was a lot of surprise that Valve would offer a $1m prize for their Dota 2 tournament at Gamescom: maybe this goes a little way to explaining why that sum is perhaps not so extraordinary (y’know, other than the fact that Valve live in houses made of platinum).

Chinese DotA 1/StarCraft 2/Warcraft 3 team Catostrophic Cruel Memories, aka CCM, was earlier this week bought out by businessman Sicong Wang, director of Wanda Enterprises, for the sum of 40,000,000 Chinese yuan – that’s about $6.2 million. Whaaaaat.

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On the one hand this isn’t too much of a surprise, after how earnestly the rumour mill has been grinding lately. On the other – well, given how good Valve are at fooling folk, official confirmation that their competitive strategy game Dota 2 will indeed be on public display at Gamescom later this month is a pretty big deal. Oh yeah, and they reckon the game itself will be released “later this year.” Woo!
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