Dota 2 has been updated with its first new hero in six weeks. Rigwarl the Bristleback is the phlegm chucking pig-hedgehog thing in question. He's kind of what I imagine a dark, gritty reboot of Sonic the Hedgehog would look like. Except yellow. An initiator, Bristleback can slow enemies with a stacked attack, has a 360 degree spike attack, and location-based damage resistance.

Here's what Bristleback's hiding under his spiny sleeves.

Viscous Nasal Goo: A mucal discharge attack that lowers armour and reduces movement speed. Gross.
Quill Spray: 360 degree projectile attack which gets a damage bonus if you repeat within 10 seconds. Ignores damage blocking items and abilities.
Bristeback: This eponymous ability reduces damage from the side and back, and auto Quill Sprays for every 250 damage he takes from the back.
Warpath: A passive buff to movement speed and damage that stacks with every spell cast.

And you can see him in action, courtesy of this DotaCinema video:



Also! Vengeful Spirit gets a new model, Wisp gets renamed Io, and Beastmaster has some voice work done. Full patch notes here.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

We love games like Dota 2, League of Legends, and Smite, but the huge number of skills needed to master their complex gameplay can scare new players away. That’s why, twice a month, we pick a key skill and teach you how to master it, using a character that particularly excels at or relies on it.

This week, we're taking a look at how to effectively control a pet and use it to its full potential in Dota 2. It's not just fanboy rage fueling Dota 2 players who insist their game be labeled as an ARTS instead of a MOBA—there are some very distinct RTS elements that have evolved with the game since it's early days as an RTS mod, including how pet handling functions. Let's break down the mechanics and see how we can use them to our advantage.

The skill — Control A Pet
 
There are plenty of creatures on the Dota 2 map that you can't control (without using Chen, Enchantress, or Helm of the Dominator), but occasionally the game entrusts your hero with the life of another creature/totem/ghoul that you must protect and use to decapitate your enemies. Pets are a bit wild by nature, and it'll take some fast thinking and deft keyboard work to keep both your hero and its pets performing at their full potential.

The other, more intense level of pet control is controlling multiple heroes at the same time. If someone leaves a match you're in (which can happen quite a bit against AI bots), Dota 2 summons its RTS roots to let you overcome teammate treachery by taking control of the abandoned hero in addition to your own.

Organized teams can also choose to allow allies to control their hero or pet units while they're still online and playing too. You won't see this often, but it's a good way to get help controlling pets like Nature's Prophets' Treants or a Meepo if they're sent to a different lane.

Controlling more than one hero unit is extremely challenging, fairly crazy, and only mildly effective. But with the right moves, you can turn a guaranteed loss into a hard-fought win. And the bragging rights earned from a win where you controlled multiple heroes is legendary.

The hero — Lone Druid
 
Lone Druid relies on his pet more than any other hero in Dota 2. It's not uncommon for his giant bear companion to be more useful to the team than the druid, Sylla. And let me be clear: this is a bear who is dangerously close to achieving a mohawk, so he absolutely deserves your respect.

Lone Druid is an Agility hero that can be played as melee or ranged, and can excel at pushing, jungling, and carrying. His Spirit Bear is meant to be active at all times, which can easily be achieved if you don't casually send it to its death. It's useful to think of Sylla and his bear as two separate heroes you're in charge of. A common strategy is to outfit the Spirit Bear as melee DPS (with some light tank for jungling) and aura buffer/debuffer, while Sylla hangs back in ranged form to support and DPS.

This is the template we'll follow while we learn to manage pets, but don't be afraid to experiment with Sylla's melee bear form as well. Learning when to use each form is key to mastering Lone Druid, but will not be covered in this guide, which is focused on controlling pets.

Objective
 
Our goals this week are to master the mechanics of controlling your pet, look at some best habits at a big-picture level, and try to come up with clever ways to use pets to our advantage that might not be readily apparent to new players. All these skills should help you make the best of a bad situation when forced to control heroes abandoned by teammates. And of course the clarity of mind and concentration that we'll refine while mastering pet control in the heat of battle will come in handy even when you're on your own out there.

Builds and items
 
Lone Druid's fancy Spirit Bear likes to wear fancy clothes, and you're going to buy them for him. It's the only pet in Dota 2 that can equip items just like a hero can (Meepo's clones are technically naked above the feet...creepy). This gives Lone Druid massive scaling potential late-game with a total of 16 available item slots, but it also means that you're going to have to balance your item purchases between Sylla and Spirit Bear early on. And can we talk about something for a second? Frankly, I think it's a bit hypocritical to call yourself the Lone Druid and then constantly hang out with the most powerful pet in the game.

Secret evolution upgrade unlocked: Bipedal bears!

Start off the game with a Stout Shield for your Spirit Bear to help it last out in the jungle longer. Its ideal outfit will usually include Phase Boots, Orb of Venom, Vladmir's Offering, Radiance/Mjollnir/Assault Cuiriass, and Skull Basher. Hand of Midas is another good early item, just make sure you swap it to Lone Druid if you're going to use the active ability so that he can earn the XP from it.

That old guy following your ursa around will need some loot as well. At the start, Grab Sylla three Iron Branches, a Healing Salve, and some Tangos. The Healing Salves and Tangos can be used on him or Spirit Bear, whichever one needs them most. Over time, aim to pick up Tranquil Boots and build towards Cloak, Pipe of Insight, and situational items as the match warrants, like Ghost Scepter or Gem of True Sight. You can also trade in those boots for Boots of Travel late game, if you want more mobility (don't forget that you can teleport to Spirit Bear!). There are other ways to build Lone Druid, but for this guide, build Spirit Bear to catch and hurt enemies while Sylla stays alive and supports from range.

For abilities, max out your Summon Spirit Bear (Q) first, True Form (R) whenever it's available, then Synergy (E), and Rabid (W) last.

The basics
 
My very first Dota 2 match didn't go so well. I started with the mode least likely to incur rage: fighting bots with four strangers, which quickly became three strangers when our carry left the match before the first wave of creeps. Ten minutes later, another one bailed; and by the twenty minute marker, I found myself completely alone on the battlefield facing an entire army.

It wasn't the greatest welcoming committee for the community, but it did allow me to suddenly feel like a Dota god when I realized that I could control all of the heroes my allies had abandoned. I grabbed 'em all in one big mouse drag and tried to push mid-lane while shifting between five heroes I'd never seen before and spamming their abilities. I'll spare you the gory details, and just tell you that it didn't end well.

Gaining control

But that 25-abilities-at-my-fingertips adrenaline rush got me looking for pets in Dota 2. Many heroes have objects that do little more than follow you around, like Juggernaut's Healing Ward, which will get killed in one hit if you let it venture into danger, and some have pets that you have no real control of, like Undying's Tombstone zombies. Lone Druid's Spirit Bear requires more hands-on attention. The lazy bum is perfect content to sit back at your spawn point for the entire match if you don't actively tell it to move out with you.

Let's take a quick look at how the pet targeting AI works in Dota 2, so you know what you're getting into. Pets will auto-attack the nearest enemy that gets within a reasonable range of them. When that target dies, it will automatically swap to a new one if something's in range (if you leave auto-attack turned on in the settings). Outside of those rules, they're pretty darn dumb. If you start attacking a hero with Lone Druid, Spirit Bear's gonna keep doing his thing to creeps in the lane unless you specifically tell Spirit Bear that you want it to join in the assault.

Except for when the Spirit Bear detects its most delicious prey: Robots. Then it charges in blindly.

And, by default, you tell it the old-fashioned way: select it and order it like an RTS unit. Dota 2's default settings don't use modifier keys to let you issue pet commands while controlling your hero. Like a true RTS, you need to select any unit you want to control. But you can turn it on in the settings ("Unified Unit Orders"), and use Ctrl as the modifier key to issue pet commands. The usual RTS tools are also here to help you manage: you can drag-select units on screen and assign them a hotkey number on your keyboard to quick-select them later. You can also tap Tab while either your hero or its pet is selected to cycle between them.

Everyone will have their preferred method, but I like to assign Sylla to hotkey 1, my Spirit Bear to hotkey 3 and both selected on hotkey 2. Use whatever numbering order is most comfortable for you, though, because you'll be constantly swapping during battle.

As a sidenote for players dabbling in similar games, you can hold Alt while right-clicking to issue movement commands to your pet in League of Legends. There's no need to directly select your pet in LoL because none of the pets have activated abilities like Spirit Bear. Smite keeps it totally minimalistic by simply not having any pets you can control—if they spawn, they handle themselves.

Bear distracts 'em while you slash em!

Start simple

Fighting for last hits can get hectic, so let's start your first attempt at bear-wrangling in a nice, controlled environment. Go to the jungle, where following a few simple rules can keep you alive. Send in Spirit Bear first so it gets aggro and keep Sylla at range so he doesn't get hit. After the first few camps, Spirit Bear is going to be pretty low health. Don't let it die; the bear's death triggers a heavy damage hit onto Sylla. Instead, re-summon it with Sylla's Summon Spirit Bear to restore it to full health. Of course, only do this when the alternative is Spirit Bear dying—you're putting Summon Spirit Bear back on cooldown, which makes you vulnerable.

Jungling with Sylla in bear form, courtesy of his True Form ability, can be a little trickier as he's more likely to pull aggro from Spirit Bear in melee range, but you can easily manage it with a little positioning. Go ahead and practice with it to learn how melee hero targeting works with pets. Once you're comfortable, dive into the more advanced tactics on the next page.

Next page: Jumping into the lane, and taking advantage of the sometimes complex perks of pet ownership.



Advanced Tactics
 
Once you feel comfortable with the basic mechanics of swapping between multiple units, give it a try in lane. Having a pet with you lets you overcome the age-old problem of "two creeps are dying at the exact same moment, which one do I hit?" by simply hitting them both with your two separate auto-attacks. It's addictive, but the real trick is being able to recognize when it's too dangerous to have both Sylla and Spirit Bear up front racking up denies and busting open gold piñatas.

Spirit Bear doesn't care about your silly crystal walls—he'll maul you wherever you please.

Sometimes you have to use your pet to safely last-hit creeps while Sylla hangs as far back as possible. Spirit Bear will auto-attack enemy creeps (if you leave auto-attack enabled in the settings), but it won't deny unless you directly order it to do so, just like heroes.

Trying to rack up the absolute maximum amount of gold and XP in the lane is good, but keeping both Sylla and Spirit Bear alive is even better. You're vulnerable without Spirit Bear, and its summon cooldown is several minutes, so play it safe if you accidentally let it die. And don't feel bad when you try to frantically tell Sylla to retreat and realize you had your Spirit Bear selected instead, sending the poor Lone Druid into the time out box for a spell. It's happened to all of us.

If Spirit Bear does get in trouble, use its Return ability to teleport it back to Sylla (keep in mind that the ability can only be activated if you haven't taken damage from an enemy hero or hero-controlled unit in the last three seconds). The timing on this is something you'll want to master. Among many things, it allows you to tower dive onto an enemy hero, using Spirit Bear to root them in place with it's passive ability that gives every hit a chance to snare his target. It's perfect for setting up an ally alley-oop without having to suffer the consequences of overextending.

When you're too slow on that escape and the bear gets hit too hard, you can send it back to base to heal up on its own. Sylla can stay in lane and soak up XP and gold during the bear's trek.

And killing the enemy hero with a pet adds insult to the fatal injury.

This is the second phase of your advanced training: learning to use Spirit Bear away from Sylla. Spirit Bear can't attack when it's more than a moderate distance away from his partner in tree-hugging. If you want to see the exact distance, open up your console (~ key) and type in dota_range_display 1100. This will put a green circle around your character that shows the maximum range Spirit Bear can be from Lone Druid and still attack. To remove the circle later, just type in dota_range_display 0.

But there's still plenty of uses for sending Spirit Bear out on its own. First, it can function as a courier, buying and bringing items to Sylla on the front lines.

When it's not buying, rooting, or fighting, Spirit Bear is best sent spying. After you clear a jungle camp, send Sylla towards the next one and Spirit Bear towards the most likely route an invading enemy would take towards that next camp. You'll either see them early and be able to retreat safely, or have peace of mind when clearing the camp safely. Teleport Spirit Bear back to Sylla with its Return ability when you're ready to fight. This same scouting strategy can be used to check nearby jungle areas while in a lane, as well.

These are just some of the main uses of a combatless bear, but there are plenty more out there. Start looking for opportunities where having someone soak up damage would be helpful. Creep wave headed towards an undefended tower? Send Spirit Bear to absorb the hits instead of the building, or, even better, lead them into jungle creeps who will fight them for you.

Advanced training complete. You're now authorized to utilize the fabled Double Bear Full Mohawk strategy.

Master tweaks
 
If you can lane effectively with a pet, that's great, but remember that laning is pretty much square one for most heroes and there are a lot of tricks we've yet to master with Lone Druid.

For example, you can use Spirit Bear to block single-target skill-shot abilities from enemy heroes, like Pudge's Meat Hook. Doing so will require knowledge of your opponents' abilities, crazy quick reflexes to move your hero and your pet into the perfect positions, and getting a feel for your individual opponents' playstyle and timing. But when you pull it off, it feels great. Of course, most of Dota 2's skill shots affect areas rather than the first target it hits, so you're mostly just hoping to bait the ability casts by pressuring them with Spirit Bear. Every ability cast at him instead of an actual hero on your team (I hope Spirit Bear doesn't maul me for saying that), is a small victory.

And, of course, it works both ways. You can also use Spirit Bear to leap-frog friendly abilities forward, like Dazzle's Shadow Wave to deal extra damage to the enemy heroes from distance or Lich's Ice Armor to slow enemy attackers if they try to hit Spirit Bear.

When you hit a tough spot, just look back at this awesome art and be inspired to push on.

Start to experiment with Sylla's Bear Form in lane as well, and learn when its extra defenses and melee boost outweigh the cons of losing ranged attacks and moving slower. It's impossible to give blanket rules for when to shift forms, but you'll get the feel of it as you play and size up your opponents in each match.

Some general guidelines to get you started: True Form (Bear Form) is usually the best choice outside of laning. It makes Lone Druid more tanky and increases his damage output, if he can afford to get into melee range.

No matter what Sylla's doing, Spirit Bear can set up some easy kills for your team. But learning when to push him onto enemy heroes is more art more than science. You need to be willing to send it into danger, but don't want to offer it up as a free sacrifice. Its passive abilities give it a chance to root its target (and the Orb of Venom you hopefully bought for it adds a slowing effect), and it can sprint in crazy fast with the right items.

Learn to recognize when a teamfight is about to engage, and send the Spirit Bear in after a squishy that your team is ready to pounce on, or to block a path that they might try to use as an escape. Outside of team fights, use Spirit Bear to check treelines or trap enemy heroes trying to pester your team from the jungle.

And of course, your magnum opus will be when you find yourself in an abandoned co-op game vs. bots and you take control of all five heroes and manage to micromanage them to victory singe-handedly. Once you've done that, you will be declared an official pet master. Fair warning: that's going to be at least 10-15 different abilities to manage, so if you get overwhelmed easily you might want to just focus on making two of them efficient, and just let the others auto-attack between ults.

Technically, this is still a solo Roshan kill.

Your homework
 
Happy pet taming this week, Dota 2 all-stars. As always, you can download Dota 2 on Steam. You'll need a beta invite if you aren’t already in, but Valve has been giving them out like stale Halloween candy, so it shouldn't be hard to find one. If you need one, ask in the comments below and a PCG reader will likely help you out. Once you’re in the beta, all of the heroes, including Lone Druid, are 100% free, so you can practice with him right away.

Five goals to aim for as you learn to control pets with Lone Druid:

1. Root an enemy hero with your Spirit Bear when it matters most, and your team gets the kill.
2. Let Spirit Bear revel in the victory of getting a last-hit on an enemy hero.
3. Teleport your Spirit Bear out of battle with Return when it has less than 20 health left.
4. Clear the entire jungle without dying.
5. Fill all 16 available item slots in a single game.

This week in eSports: MLG Winter is finally here! Heart of the Swarm has launched, and now is as good a time as ever to start eSportsing. Plus, competitive gaming has earned itself a spot at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference. Have a look at all of this and more inside. gl hf!

eSports featured at MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference



Here's some further ammo to fire at anyone who doubts the legitimacy of eSports: MIT's big sports conference this year featured a panel with Sundance DiGiovanni (MLG), Mike Morhaime (Blizzard), Kevin Lin (Twitch), and Daryl Morey (GM of the Houston Rockets, representing "regular sports"). The panel was moderated by Rod "Slasher" Breslau—who asked to "DM" me on Twitter the other day, forcing me to look up what that meant and realize how out of touch I am with Internet acronyms. Luckily, it wasn't some kind of hardcore eSports knowledge roast, as my worst fears suggested at the time.

StarCraft II



The biggest tournament of 2013 so far is kicking off tonight in Dallas, Texas. MLG's Winter Championships will pit 32 of the world's best Heart of the Swarm players against each other in a classic, single-elimination playoff for $75,000 in prizes. Players to watch include Flash, "The God of Brood War;" PartinG, winner of 2012's Battle.net World Championship; MC, a GSL and IEM champion widely considered one of the best Protoss players of all time; Polt, winner of Day's King of the Beta tournament; Life, an MLG and GSL Code S champion; Life, a previous IPL and MLG champion; Stephano, the French zerg player who is arguably the most successful non-Korean in the game's history; and HuK, a Canadian, 2-time MLG champion.

All matches will be broadcast for free, with HD stream upgrades available for $10. The action begins at 3 p.m. PDT.

If you're looking to watch the finals at a venue, and you live in the Bay Area, I'm planning to make an appearance at the Berkeley BarCraft on Sunday. If you're not sure who to look for, check out the interviews I did at the Heart of the Swarm launch event, featuring an interview with Robert Clotworthy (the voice of Jim Raynor.)

Watch it: Major League Gaming

The 2013 GSL Season 1, and the last GSL to take place in Wings of Liberty, has wrapped, with dark horse RorO claiming his spot among the Code S champions. Season 2, which will be running Heart of the Swarm, officially started last week, and will run until May 11. The Code S champion this season will claim over $45,000 in prizes. After the Up/Down matches, FanTaSy, Crazy, Shine, Flying, Maru, and Soo have advanced from Code A to Code S. Sniper, Ryung, Keen, and, most notably, NesTea have dropped into Code A.

Watch it: GomTV

League of Legends



All eight teams in the North American LCS are primed to begin Week 5 (after a nice, long break) at MLG in Dallas tonight. Can Dignitas hang onto their lead? Can compLexity catch a freaking break? Who will come out ahead in the 3rd place deadlock between TSM Snapdragon and CLG? There's one way to find out...

Watch it: Major League Gaming

The EU LCS is headed to France next weekend, where Fnatic will be looking to regain the lead they lost to Gambit BenQ. Copenhagen Wolves, currently ranked last, may be making a comeback, however, with the return of Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, who was absent for a number of the matches they lost.

Still no word on whether "Dragonborns" have chosen to correct their name on my suggestion. (The plural of "Dragonborn" is "Dragonborn". Source: I'm one of those weird guys who memorizes video game lore.)

Watch it: League Championship Series EU

Other Stuff
Riot shoutcaster Leigh "Deman" Smith did an AMA on Reddit this week. Check it out to hear his take on which teams are the most fun to cover, and whether pants and/or breathing are optional for eSports casters.

Dota 2



In The Defense 3, Team Liquid has fallen. Two matches remain before an overall winner is decided: Dignitas will face Fnatic on the 20th in the Lower Bracket Final, and the winner will go on to the Overall Final against the dominant Virtus.pro on the 30th. There's not a lot left to say about The Defense, which has been a staple of this column since its inception, except that we'll be sad to see it go.

Watch it: The Defense

The online DreamHack invitational has begun! the group stage play kicked off yesterday, and will run up until the end of the month. The top spot of the eight participating teams will claim $2,500 and, more importantly, a spot at the in-person DreamHack Winter.

Watch it: DreamHack TV

The long-standing Chinese G-League tournament was woefully omitted from last week's column. Both my all-seeing flaming eye set atop a dark tower and my two immortal ravens failed me utterly, and have been punished in accordance with their crimes. On the bright side, the final match of the tournament is available for posterity on joinDOTA, with Invictus Gaming triumphing over LGD International for the insane, $32,000 top prize.

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments what you think of this week's stories, if there's anything we missed, and what eSports events you're most looking forward to in the coming weeks. gg!

When Valve invited Dota 2 caster Kevin 'Purge' Godec to their studio last week, they made a crucial rookie mistake: feeding him. That gave him all the power he needed to surge past their defence towers and snap pics of some upcoming hero concept art. Or possibly they gave him their blessing to share their plans with the community at large. There's just no way of knowing.

Purge says only Bristlebog (not pictured) and Skywrath Mage were playable on Valve's servers at the time, with Skywrath Mage in the process of being tweaked before being included in the game proper.

Abaddon

Abyssal Underlord

Elder Titan

Legion Commander

Magnataur

Skywrath Mage

Techies

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Valve boss Gabe Newell stepped up to the stage during last week's BAFTA awards to receive the prestigious Academy Fellowship for his contributions to gaming. Presumably momentarily distracted by accepting a trophy modeled after a smirking face, a bewhiskered Newell fielded some interview questions over the normally airtight subject of Valve's business performance that hinted at the monumental scale of the studio's prosperity.

Newell chalked up Valve's successes largely to user-generated content on open platforms such as Steam Workshop before sharing some jaw-dropping numbers. "There's sort of an insatiable demand for gaming right now," Newell said. "I think our business has grown by about 50 percent on the back of opportunities created by having these open platforms.

"And just so people understand how big this sort of scale is getting, we were generating 3.5 terabits per second during the last Dota 2 update," he added. "That's about 2 percent of all the mobile- and land-based Internet activity."

Wait, what? We're not exactly sure what Newell meant when he dropped that bombshell of data info, apart from maybe claiming responsibility for all those times my connection speeds chugged while browsing these past few months. Still, it seems entirely plausible—Dota 2 has a lot of players, and the MOBA recently took the crown for the highest concurrent user amount of any Steam game ever. If any Steam game can feasibly take a bite out of the entire Internet, Dota 2 holds the best chance.

Twitch.TV, much like YouTube, now occupies a space in my internet life where I can sort of remember it not existing, but can't really conceive of it not being around. That it was launched less than two years seems like scary time-distorting magic. And given the record breaking growth that Twitch has now announced, it seems I'm not alone in obsessive digestion of gaming streams, competitions and oddities. In fact, last month, 600,000 broadcasters attracted over 28 million unique viewers.

"Twitch launched in June of 2011 and our growth ever since has exceeded even my expectations, which were not small," says Twitch CEO Emmett Shear. "A year and a half later, the community of broadcasters and viewers has multiplied hundreds of percent. Brands like Electronic Arts, Activision and Sony Online Entertainment have begun integrating Twitch directly into their products, charities have collectively raised more than three million dollars using Twitch as a platform, and conventions are now turning to Twitch as their exclusive streaming partner."

Impressively, those 28 million viewers watched an average of over 1.5 hours of video per day. Presumably the majority of that is directed at the big eSports trinity of Starcraft 2, League of Legends and Dota2. But Twitch also hosts everything from Arma squads, to indie discoveries, developer livestreams and speed-runners doing strange things to gaming's past.

Of course, Twitch isn't entirely responsible for its latest success. The recent closure of competitor Own3D surely had a hand in their record breaking month, as viewers switched over for their passive gaming fix.

Thanks, Gamespot.

This week in eSports: the Swarm approaches, and vengeance is upon us all! By this time next week, we'll have a champion for the GSL and IEM, Heart of the Swarm will be burrowed on our hard drives... and that's just StarCraft. Get off one last inject on your hatch, then 1-A your way down into this week's eSports news. gl hf!

DreamHack is back!



The premier European eSports event (and one of my personal favorites) has announced its 2013 competition: the Dreamhack Eizo Open 2013 will commence in Stockholm on April 26, with the Summer Championships to follow in June. StarCraft II players will compete for a total of over $190,000 in prizes.

Check out the official DreamHack site for more.

Heart of the Swarm launch gets its own heading in T.J.'s eSports Column



How stoked are you for HotS? How loud did you groan when I actually just used the word "stoked"? The answers don't really matter, because StarCraft II's first expansion will be here in just a few short days, bringing with it a (swarm) host of new units and features, and some massive shifts in the competitive meta. I'll be on the ground at the midnight launch party outside Blizzard HQ in Irvine to snag some interviews with devs, pros, and casters about the expansion. Watch this space for more.

As if that wasn't exciting enough, we're about 10 hours away (from the writing of this post) to the GSL 2013 Season 1 Code S finals. To put that into layman's terms: The Super Bowl of StarCraft. Korean All-Stars Symbol and RorO, both making their first apperances in a Code S final, are set to compete for the honor of being the 12th player in the game's history to be crowned Code S champion. My fellow North American eSports fans, stock up on caffeine now. It's going to be a ZvZ to remember.

Watch it: GomTV

Oh yeah, there's also a little thing called the Intel Extreme Masters VII World Championships well underway in Hanover, Germany. The Semifinals are primed for tomorrow, with a number of high-profile players having already been eliminated. You should have just enough time to catch your breath and head out for a stimpack run after the GSL finals. It's going to be a long weekend...

Watch it: Intel Extreme Masters (Currently rebroadcasting the Round of 16)

Things are not going to slow down next weekend. MLG's Winter Championships are ready to drag you away from the HotS ladder to watch players who will make your greatest successes in the opening days seem childish and half-hearted. The Winter Showdowns have concluded, with Goswser, Minigun, State, ViBE, Suppy, KiLLeR, and HuK qualifying for the main event. DIMAGA has expressed that he is unable to attend, and was replaced by Feast in a consolation bracket made up of some of the other losing players from the Winter Showdowns series.

Watch it: Major League Gaming

Other Stuff:

Day has revived the King of the Beta tournament from the pre-Wings of Liberty launch days, and only two players remain. Get caught up, and see who will claim a title that can only be awarded once an expansion.

Watch it: DayTV

League of Legends



Dignitas has held onto the lead in the North American LCS, having not dropped a match since the GGU upset on the 27th. Curse still trails one win behind, with TSM Snapdragon and CLG tied for third. The North American teams are on a two-week break at the moment, but will resume on the 15th with TSM vs GGU at MLG Winter.

Watch it: LCS North America

Across the Atlantic, Gambit BenQ has overtaken Fnatic with a 9-2 record, over the latter's 8-3. SK Gaming hangs onto third at 7-4. The European season will continue on the 16th, with EG vs Dragonborns. (Note to whoever named that team: I'm pretty sure the plural of "Dragonborn" is just "Dragonborn.")

Watch it: LCS Europe

League also has a presence at the Intel Extreme Masters VII World Championships, with only three teams remaining: CJ Entus (formerly Azubu) has seen both their teams—Frost and Blaze—mow through the bracket. Only SK Telecom T1 remains to challenge the Entus Hegemony.

Watch it: Intel Extreme Masters

The MLG Winter Championships will play host to three League events: an international exhibition featuring Dignitas, Curse, Gambit, and KT Rolster B; the Summer Promotion Qualifier, and 12 (count 'em!) North American LCS matches. The action starts with TSM vs GGU in an LCS match on March 15th at 2:30 PST.

Watch it: Major League Gaming

Dota 2



The Defense 3 has left only four survivors: Virtus.pro has knocked Dignitas into the lower bracket, where they will face the winner of Team Liquid vs Fnatic.EU for one last chance to dethrone the Russian powerhouse in the Grand Final. The winners will walk away with 10 grand, and the first major tournament victory of 2013.

Watch it: The Defense

In just six days, DreamHack will begin the online DreamHack Dota 2 Invitational, with a $6000 prize pool and an invite to Dreamhack Summer (in Sweden this June) on the line. The eight invited teams are Dignitas, Empire, Evil Geniuses, Fnatic, Mousesports, No Tidehunter, QPAD Red Pandas, and Team Liquid.

Watch it: DreamHack

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments what you think of this week's stories, if there's anything we missed, and what eSports events you're most looking forward to in the coming weeks.

Valve are currently beta testing a selection of additions and changes to Steam's Community pages. Not only have they separated out general community activity from your own contributions, and created a Community Home as an all-game version of the Game Hubs, but you can also upload artwork for any Valve game. It's not all charmingly crude MS Paint scribbles, though, as Valve's artists have created an installation for this digital gallery, featuring concept, prototypes and posters for everything from Portal to Dota 2.

Artwork can only be uploaded for Valve games right now, with the rest of Steam's extensive library set to follow in the future. To use the new features, you'll need to opt-in to the latest Steam Beta Update from Steam's settings menu. You can also view them in-browser by joining the New Steam Community Beta group.

Steam has also updated Workshop entries to provide more detailed stats to creators, as well as new tabs for each Workshop item, letting Subscribers create discussions and view a full update history. More details of that update here.

Last night, the (still technically unreleased) Dota 2 beta registered a peak of 297,000 players. This broke the previous record, set by Skyrim, by almost 10,000, making it the most-played game on Steam by concurrent users in history. With the rate they're sending out free keys, this doesn't really surprise me.

Dota 2 is still a long way from scratching its archrival, League of Legends, who reports active players in the millions at this point. Still, considering the popularity of the Steam platform, it's nothing to shake an Iron Branch at. It's been about a year and a half since the game's soft launch at The International in 2011. League, for comparison, has been around for almost four years, counting from the start of open beta.

Hopefully, this rising popularity will lead to more of an in-person tournament scene for Dota as an eSport, which somewhat disappointingly exists mostly in the realm of online competitions.

via PCGamesN

This week in eSports: the death knell sounds for IPL6, but an announcement from QuakeCon gives us something different to look forward to. Things have come right down to the wire in The Defense 3 and the GSL, and the next MLG is right around the corner. There may be no better time this year to 6 pool or gank your friends into giving eSports a look. gl hf!

IPL 6 officially canceled
Last week, we reported on how the restructuring at IGN had led to the parent company searching for a buyer for the IGN ProLeague. No further announcements have been made in terms of where it might end up, but we can now confirm that this month's IPL6 event has been canceled. Teams from StarCraft II and ShootMania Storm are having to cancel their plans, and GameSpot reports that the League of Legends Korean Qualifiers have been axed. We haven't heard from Riot or the teams themselves when the Koreans will get another shot, but we'll keep you posted.

QuakeCon 2013 announced
In significantly better news, we have dates for this year's QuakeCon in Dallas: August 1-4. This will be the 18th iteration of one of the world's biggest LAN parties, and an epicenter of competitive gaming since before "eSports" was even a word. The announcement page teases more details to come. We'll update you with the eSports-specific announcements as soon as we get them.

StarCraft II


Symbol. RorO. They may not be the most well-known names in Wings of Liberty outside of Korea, but that doesn't matter anymore. They are the only two players left standing in the GSL Code S. Playing for Azubu and Samsung Khan, respectively, the Zerg Ultra-Grandmasters will throw down in a best of seven a week from tomorrow, for possibly the most prestigious crown a single player can earn in eSports.

Watch it: GomTV

As if next week needed even more StarCraft (What am I saying? You can never have too much StarCraft), the Intel Extreme Masters Season VII World Championships go live on Tuesday in Hanover, Germany. 24 of the best players from South Korean and Europe will compete over four days for $100,000 in prizes, leaving off just in time for you to make a run to the store for a case of energy drinks and catch the GSL finals.

Watch it: Intel Extreme Masters

Make sure you're rested up for the week after, though. We've got the Heart of the Swarm Midnight Launch and the MLG 2013 Winter Championship coming up on the 14th and 15th, respectively. New qualifiers for the Winter Championship through the Winter Showdowns series since last week include Mvp, Seed, MarineKing, MC, TaeJa, Polt, Sen, Feast, and, in an upset over DongRaeGu, the relatively unknown jjakji. IdrA vs Minigun is set for this Sunday, one of the more anticpated matches of the series. Suppy, ViBE, Illusion, and HuK also still have their spots on the line.

Watch it online: Major League Gaming
Watch it in person: Passes are still available for the Winter Championships, but it probably won't stay that way for long. You can grab one for $35.

Other Stuff
 
The Heart of the Swarm midnight launch events are going to feature some high-profile show matches, and a who's who of the pro caster community. Blizzard has officially-sanctioned events going on in nine countries, and outlets like Team Liquid are organizing even more. If you're going to be in the Irvine, CA area on the 14th, you can join Day, Husky, Polt, MC... and myself, as well as several of the senior devs, for the U.S. event.

League of Legends


Dignitas has overtaken Curse in the North American LCS, with a 9-2 record over Curse's 8-2. Dignitas has an opportunity to tie that up tonight at 5 PST if they can topple TSM Snapdragon. A loss would tie them up with TSM (Currently 7-3) for the second place spot. CLG is hanging on in fourth with 6-4. compLexity and GGU still can't seem to catch a break, each with only one win so far.

Watch it: League Championship Series North America

Over on the European side of things, Fnatic holds the lead at 7-1, with Gambit BenQ close behind at 6-2. They face off tomorrow at 19:00 CET (Noon PST), in a match that could close the gap to almost nothing if Gambit pulls out a win (depending on what happens in Fnatic vs Copenhagen Wolves).

Watch it: League Championship Series Europe

Other Stuff
 
The League of Legends Mac client has gone into open beta, heralding the potential for even more explosive growth for Riot's rising star. You can download the beta and give it a shot for yourself right now.



Patch 3.03 is bringing some changes for Amumu (which is almost as hard to spell as banana), Taric, and Kale. You can check out all the details in the video above.

Dota 2


From the brutal fray, four teams are left standing in The Defense 3. North America's Dignitas and Russia's Virtus.Pro are set to reignite the Cold War in the upper bracket. Both dominated their Round 3 opponents 2-0, and have lost only one game each in the playoffs so far. In the lower bracket, the winner of Evil Geniuses vs Team Liquid (both of North America) will have a chance to face the loser of the upper bracket final for a spot in the championship match. Dignitas vs VP is scheduled for 11 a.m. PST tomorrow, with EG vs Liquid to immediately follow.

Watch it: The Defense

Other Stuff
 
The Dota 2 client has been updated to include the first part of the new player experience, unlocking a set of single-player tutorials with a loose story that are reminiscent of the old WarCraft 3 scenarios. According to the official blog post, "Dota’s a deep game, and there’s a lot of things to learn, but we felt it was important that the learning was entertaining in itself, so we’ve tried to avoid building a dry tutorial."

A lot of things can be said about Dota, but few would dispute the reality of its reputation for being punishing on newbies. If you're relatively fresh to the game and have had a minute to try the new tutorials out, we're curious to hear your thoughts.

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments what you think of this week's stories, if there's anything we missed, and what eSports events you're most looking forward to in the coming weeks.

gg!