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 all about her exploits with the All-Hero Challenge:>

Currently I am staring at the cliff face which is the All Hero Challenge in Dota 2.

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This past weekend was the first time a game on Steam has had over 1 million concurrent players, according to SteamDB. It was Dota 2 [official site] in case you hadn’t worked that out.

SteamDB isn’t an official Valve site but it tracks player numbers and other information based on data which Steam makes publicly available. According to their tracking Dota 2 was the first Steam game to tip over the 1 million mark and that happened on Valentine’s Day.

Looking at the peak concurrent user graph for the last 12 months, Dota’s been nudging towards the million mark each weekend since the end of last year (965,572 on November 22, 2014, for example) but what I suspect might have pushed it over this particular weekend is the Year Beast 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.>

I talk a lot about different MOBAs in this column and a lot of that necessitates a bit of insider vocabulary. I often have to assume a basic familiarity with the genre otherwise every article would use half the word count on explanations of niche terms.

This week I’m going to go into those terms with a glossary of sorts. It will focus on Dota but I’m considering doing the same thing for LoL and Smite. If there’s any terminology not covered here that you’ve heard and been confused by just add it in the comments and I’ll do my best to explain or to add it in to the list below!

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Dota 2’s upcoming New Bloom event is in the process of being teased-and-revealed over on the official site. We already had a Year Beast-themed trailer (you can find that after the jump), then there was a comic book starring Crystal Maiden to take into consideration, and then more details on the whole shebang AND A PUPPY.

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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.>

For about as long as I’ve been playing MOBAs I’ve been aware of how monsters are portrayed in their game art. I love a good monster, just as I really like playing characters which fit different moods so when games seem to be holding back or skewing one particular direction I try to work out why and how I would change that. Here’s one of my ideas, plus some context.

Idea:

A Discworld MOBA would be a great idea, especially in terms of introducing more varied body types under the pronoun “she”. The point is not about losing busty ladies, but adding more diversity.

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Last year’s annual Dota 2 tournament, known as The International, had a prize pool of over $10 million and was funded in small part by Valve but mostly by the sale of a kind of magic, digital sticker book. What will The International deliver in 2015, I wonder. Funding by way of enchanted breeks, or perhaps a Dota-themed Pog revival?

I would believe anything, but confirmation will come in August because The International 2015 will happen August 3rd-8th in Seattle.

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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.>

Having spoken so much about Dota in this column (as you would expect) and having made it the subject of a Have You Played ? it occurs to me that I’ve never really done a post aimed at newcomers thinking of trying out the game. Until now!

There are plenty of beginners’ guides out there but Dota 2 itself now contains a bunch of tutorial missions and quests. With that in mind I’ve spent the last Dote Night of 2014 having a good old poke about in the tutorial missions and seeing how well I think they explain the game.

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Dota 2’s Shifting Snows patch notes have just been released offering a number of hero tweaks, game balance changes and – if you’re feeling grumpy about the lack of Frostivus this year – the snowy winter map makeover.

Having a skim through what Shifting Snows (or 6.83 to give it its less poetic title) has to offer a few things stood out on first pass, particularly with regard to Pudge, Lifestealer and Sniper.

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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.>

Last week YouPorn finally announced the name of the Dota 2 team they’re sponsoring. It’s Team YP now but was formerly known as Play2Win. I had never heard of them.

YouPorn have been snuffling about the Dota 2 scene for a while now and there has been a whole bunch of speculation as to who might add the YP logo to their branded jerseys. I want to run through why I think this is a bad move for pro-gaming, regardless of who ended up with the deal.

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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.>

Yesterday Valve announced the beta for its Steam broadcasting service. It predictably prompted a slew of headlines which instantly put the service in competition with Twitch, another game-focused streaming service.

It might well become a competitor to Twitch at some point but at the moment they’re very different prospects. I thought I’d spend this week’s Dote Night digging into the current situation a little more, not because it’s Dota specific but because Twitch is how I consume the majority of my Dota 2 pro matches so the potential impact is worth keeping an eye on. Should be back to game-focused shenanigans next week!

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