The MLG Fall Invitational has concluded and two teams have emerged victorious. The first day, which consisted of Dota 2 action, saw Team Dignitas take home $10,000 and the chance to compete with the world's top Dota 2 teams at the MLG Columbus Championship in November. Team Dignitas had a hefty team shuffle following their poor performance at The International earlier this year and go into Columbus looking to prove they belong in the conversation with the top international teams.
Starting today Major League Gaming's Fall Invitational begins with Dota 2 action featuring Team Dignitas, Typical Mistakes, noM and The Joikernaught. These teams will be vying for a cut of $15,000 in prizes, while the first place team will be awarded $10,000 and an invitation to the MLG Columbus Championship where they will face teams such as Natus Vincere, [A]lliance, and Team DK with a $50,000 prize pool on the line.
Get ready for a ton of Dota 2 coverage, courtesy of Major League Gaming.
Earlier today, MLG announced that it has "extensive plans" for Dota 2; these plans consist of "running a robust, North American (NA) Dota 2 league, showcasing the game on the 2014 Pro Circuit, and highlighting Dota 2 competition via weekly programming."
The Dota 2: First Blood update is a big one, folks! Coming out in three days on September 23rd, Valve's update makes improvements across the board. Three changes are featured in First Blood:
On the same day that Blizzard announced Diablo III is being pushed back to early 2012, Valve revealed that they want to get Dota 2 into the hands of players as quickly as possible. Valve originally planned to spend a year or so in beta as they added new features and heroes, but they came up with a new plan following positive feedback from players.
"Welcome to the new plan: 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. While they do that, we’ll be shipping regular updates with more heroes, new features we’ve been working on, and improvements on the existing content as we get more and more feedback."
If you're interested in playing Dota 2, head over to Steam to sign up for the beta.
Mike B. aka Fony's latest BFF Report is all about Gamescom 2011! He talks about Dota 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, WildStar, Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, The Secret World, World of Warcraft and Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Fony's rendition of the Assassin's Creed trailer is... well, let's just say you need to see it for yourself.
So IceFrog has finally launched the official DotA 2 blog, and with it, he also included a nice FAQ of user-submitted questions. Some of his answers are actually quite thorough, and for anyone who still loves to play DotA, these additions promise to enliven the experience. Included in the FAQ are questions regarding problems that have always plagued DotA and prevented it from really growing as a globally dominant game. Things like having a rewind function in viewing replays, to reconnecting on dropped games, to playing intercontinentally without lag or server delay, all the way to training maps, spectator abilities and the direction of the new DotA 2 game, which was announced a few weeks ago.
The answers, by the way, pretty much confirm that DotA 2 will be an essential remake of DotA the original, but this time around with a lot more sustainability and a lot more technical support from the back end. There still remains the question of how IceFrog plans to implement certain engine-restricted concepts, like model delay (Warcraft III models were designed to play with around 250 ms, and this was included in their model animations), but the FAQ does cover some of the more technical questions that users had for DotA 2.
It's official: Valve's new game is Dota 2, which takes its name from the popular "Defense of the Ancients" Warcraft III mod. Gameinformer.com broke all the details, and it looks like the game will be coming to PC and Mac in 2011.
Dota 2 will be instantly familiar to any Dota player because Valve hired IceFrog, the developer behind DotA-Allstars, to act as the creative force behind the upcoming game. However, Valve's Source engine will instantly make Dota 2 stand out from its predecessors while retaining that cartoony feel.
