Valve’s Dota 2 [official site] championship The International isn’t until August (though it already has a community-funded prize pool of almost $9 million), but is about to settle the four positions earned through regional qualifiers. Eight days of non-stop professional Dota 2 matches are kicking off on Monday, meaning very little sleep. A large number of prominent Dota 2 players, casters, fans and analysts are taking this opportunity to have join together in Bucharest to cast the whole event.

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Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. THIS WEEK, however, she will be chatting to Dota 2 caster Capitalist about the upcoming ESLOne competition!>

I went to the inaugural ESLOne Frankfurt event last year. It featured one of the best games of pro Dota 2 I’ve ever watched (Alliance v Cloud9) and, as it took place shortly before Valve’s mega-tournament The International, it was an interesting opportunity to size up some of the competitors before Seattle. This year’s event will offer similar fare big-name teams and a chance to see how they perform on LAN in front of a massive audience but a lot has changed over the past year. Teams have undergone massive shakeups and enchanted mangoes, octarine cores and glimmer capes abound on the battlefield. In case you’ve lost track of competitive Dota 2, here’s caster Austin ‘Capitalist’ Walsh on the current meta, the teams to watch, and the relationship between casters and players.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun has one of the friendliest and most active games communities online, but it’s possible that you’ve never peeled back the mask of the frontpage to discover the forums, guilds and game groups that lie beyond.

If you’re intrigued and you’d like to join the forum, find people to play with, or chat with other RPS readers, read on for a guide to what’s happening and instructions on how to get involved.

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Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. THIS WEEK, however, she will be sharing some learnings dealing with chat abuse in Dota 2.>

MOBAs get a lot of flack for having “toxic” communities. I see a fair few commenters and have a number of friends who would approach starting to play a MOBA with the same trepidation as one would have when tasked with finding a mood ring in amongst a swarm of bees. But never fear, I now have a few helpful tips to share. (If anything has worked really well for you, just pop your own strategies in the comments.)

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Settle ye down, for ’tis time for some Dota 2 Compendium talk.

In case you’ve missed the now-yearly “You people spent *how much* on a digital sticker book?” articles, the Compendium is Valve’s way of sourcing a community contribution towards its annual International Dota tournament prize pool, increasing #engagement and, obv, making money. In return for contributing, players get treasure chests, loading screens, item effects, in-game pets and so on. More money in the pot unlocks stretch goals like a new type of terrain, emoticons etc etc. You can see the reawards and unlockables in full after the jump.

25% of the profits from the Compendium go towards the prize pool. Last year that same setup pushed an initial $1.6m to a ridiculous $10.9m – three times the size of the next largest prize pool in eSports.

Here are this year’s level rewards (you need 100 points per level):

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Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. THIS WEEK, however, she will be picking through the mango-infested lands of patch 6.84>

Tis patch time in Dota 2 land the patch notes for 6.84 hit yesterday and we’re at that point where the subreddit is now a forest of theorycrafting and the test client is merely a vessel for flinging out “lol icefrog pls fix” video material.

“But Pip,” you might say. “Surely it is to you we will turn to make sense of this world where Alchemist must provide Aghamin’s Scepters like some kind of mystical Pez dispenser, you who will guide us through the ramifications of the multiward stackathon and the difference between a walrus punch and a walrus kick.”

Well, sort of. But I think SRS ANALYSIS BSNS will only really bear fruit (mangoes obv) after the patch has settled in and had the broken bits tweaked or removed. Heck, some of the new items might not even make it through the process.

Instead I’m currently more interested in a smidge of “oooh, would you take a look at that” from my own point of view on the new items combined with “lol icefrog pls fix” video material.

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One of my habits is searching art and design forums for what their denizens are doing with Dota 2. There’s some excellent stuff out there – cute cartoons, painstaking pixel art, whimsical watercolours and [other alliterative thing here]. To that end I’ve been poking about on Behance. It’s a platform for artists seeking to showcase their work. It used to be that a site search for “Dota 2″ would yield little – maybe some pixel sketches or loading screen-style character art – but going back to it today I found far more.

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*deep-breaths-and-don’t-think-about-how-disastrously-this-could-go-Pip*>

Hello Dote Nighters. This post marks the beginning of Pip’s Cosplay Challenge. By that I mean I am going to do my best to create a cosplay – one which I could feasibly wear to an event and people would a) be able to recognise who I was supposed to be and b) not join this tragic lineup.

The whole thing was inspired by the various amazing cosplays I’ve seen around the world at eSports events and the skill and dedication which people put into creating those costumes. I’m not even going to try to pretend I’ll match up to their work but I wanted to give it a go – find out what’s involved, talk to people about how the various aspects work and get an idea for how difficult it is.

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Remember when Valve dropped a bunch of faux-concepts for a Faceless Void update along with the Dota 2 character’s actual factual model update? One was the glorious Faceless Rex, a dino time wizard with whom I (and a whole bunch of other people) instantly fell in love.

Lucky for us then that French animator, Maxime Lebled, and workshop artist, Yuri Shust, ended up turning the concept into a reality of sorts, fleshing it out as an animated courier model. Over on Twitter he was billing it as “something special for April Fools’ day” but his livestream of the work-in-progress was met with rather more enthusiasm from fans than he’d expected after a tweet from community stalwart Cyborgmatt.

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Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. THIS WEEK, however, she will be telling you why she’s preferring pro League to pro Dota and what any of that has to do with medical soap operas:>

I’ve been away from my own PC for big chunks of the last couple of weeks. It’s mainly been for work reasons so in addition to not being able to play any Dota or League I’ve also been able to watch very little. The semi-absence has been irritating, in that I’ve missed gaming but it’s allowed some nebulous inklings and ideas to form into actual thoughts and opinions.

The most interesting was that while I prefer playing Dota to League, I prefer watching League to Dota.

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