Images courtesy of the official ESL Twitter account.

'Timing' has been the watchword of this entire tournament. It was a concern this morning, when another late start threatened to force the entire show to run long, with the last quarterfinal match - Na'Vi vs. EG - not starting until 10.30am. It was a concern when the arena's internet connection went down and when Fnatic's voice comms broke for twenty minutes. It was a concern in-game, too, as the strengths and weaknesses of today's greedy, ult-centric metagame came down to who had power at the exact minute when it counted.

Timing problems caused a fair amount of heartache today, but I also got to see a terrific showcase of what the best Dota 2 teams can achieve when they're moving to their own rhythm. In addition, the event itself held together despite the technical problems to deliver one of the best large-scale e-sports experiences that Europe has seen since TI1. Great casting and analysis and a hugely engaged crowd made Frankfurt a great place to spend a weekend - and I'm not just saying that because I've been surviving on beer, sausages and energy drinks since Saturday morning. Well, mostly. The point is: it's gone midnight and I've got games to discuss, so let's get into it. As ever, spoilers below.

Na'Vi vs. EG

Everyone was waiting to see how Na'Vi would do against the team that beat them 3-0 earlier in the week. EG stuck to a familiar set of heroes for game one, picking up Storm Spirit for mobility and control and matching him with Enigma and Tidehunter, giving them the teamfight ultimates that have defined this tournament. Na'Vi's draft had echoes of Alliance in its focus on the pushing power of Funn1k's Nature's Prophet and got greedier from there, with a farming Faceless Void, mid Invoker, and support Doom. Puppey's support Disruptor was effective but not such a hindrance to EG's pushing and farming power that he could grant his team painless passage into the lategame.

All those tower kills gave EG a healthy advantage across the board, with zai's Enigma in particular benefiting from having all of his major items - and more - by the twenty minute mark. Na'Vi's draft was built for teamfights but EG gifted them no easy kills. The game felt close to a long time but chiefly due to Na'Vi's ability to fight from a disadvantage - eventually, slowly, EG ground them down.

Game two seemed like a return to form for Na'Vi when Puppey's Chen secured first blood with a jungle harpy (of all things). Plays like that - and virtuoso ganks in general - are why Na'Vi are so passionately loved, but they've been outdrafted an uncomfortable number of times lately and that's what happened here. Funn1k attempted a Bulldog-style Nature's Prophet again but struggled to be effective against a Storm Spirit and Tiny/Io combo that proved to be just as good at taking rax when nobody was looking. XBOCT played Anti-Mage but couldn't win the farm war against Tiny, a hero who is perfectly happy to go toe-to-toe with AM in the late game. Without a Black King Bar, Na'Vi's carry just couldn't sustain a presence against substantial lockdown.

An unusual Elder Titan pickup by EG made it even more difficult for Na'Vi to survive when the game ran long, his Natural Order aura making delicate heroes even more vulnerable to EG's fully operational Tiny/Io battlestation. After a long back-and-forth in the late game EG eventually claimed the advantage, taking the set 2-0 and sending Na'Vi home. I saw many slumped shoulders in yellow hoodies afterwards.

iG vs. Alliance

In the first match of the semis iG gave the world a demonstration of how you go about dismantling Alliance. Banning Io and Nature's Prophet is part of it, but iG's strategy went deeper than that. They solved the problem of Alliance's current playstyle by refusing to fall into the obvious trap, which is committing everything to shutting down one of the Swedish team's lanes. Alliance are as strong as they are because of their map control: force Bulldog to play at 20% efficiency and S4 and Loda will get 150% out of the rest of the map. Force all of Alliance's lanes to operate at 70% efficiency, however, and they have a much harder time in the mid game.

iG did just that, with on point, persistently aggressive drafts that denied Alliance much needed map space. Ferrari_430's supreme Ember Spirit was a constant nuisance, and excellent Nyx Assassin rotations by YYF in the first game shut down not only Alliance's supports but S4's midlane Batrider too. The Swedes proved that they were capable of pulling out plays from the back foot, but the Chinese team kept up a degree of pressure that denied Alliance any hope of retaking the map.

Game two acted as more evidence against Brewmaster as a competitive pick. Teams love him, and his potential impact can't be denied, but that simple counter - press the attack when his ult is down - has caused problems for the teams that ran him throughout this tournament. I wouldn't be surprised if his place in the current meta was reconsidered after this weekend. He's great to watch, and dangerous in the right hands, but S4 looked like he was trapped in the hero in game two against iG. When Primal Split is on cooldown, he's just not the same hero.

This match demonstrated just how versatile iG are. Their early game plays discounted the notion that yesterday's steady push strats could be lazily categorised as 'Chinese Dota'. They knew how to unsettle Mouz, just as they knew how to topple Alliance this afternoon. It's a shame to see Alliance lose their recent momentum, but it has been very exciting to watch the return of a giant of the Asian scene.



EG vs. Fnatic

With iG's place in the final decisively secured, it remained to see which of the surviving western teams would face them. Game one made that question look simple: EG banned out Fnatic's all-important Io and seemed to bait out Excalibur's Meepo. He plays the hero better than anyone - and has single-handedly turned around games for Fnatic with him in the past - but here it was a disaster. He thoroughly lost the midlane against Arteezy, who killed him solo with Tinker. Focused rotations by EG assisted by good farm across the board made this a straightforward win for the Americans.

Fnatic made EG work for every inch of ground in game two. Augmenting a push-heavy draft with major teamfight ults - Chronosphere, Poison Nova, Black Hole - meant that they could get something out of every engagement despite an initially strong performance by Arteezy on a midlane Outworld Devourer. The game ran long, and it was a close-run thing all the way - particularly as Fnatic seemed keen to push their advantage too far in many cases. But eventually that teamfight power was enough to exhaust EG's supply of buybacks, and with their barracks gone there was only a limited amount of time left on EG's clock.

EG let the Excalibur Meepo through again in game three and it was only through a few impressive early jukes that Fnatic managed to survive the aggression designed to shut him down. Fnatic managed to claim a decent advantage in the early game, but couldn't control Universe's Tidehunter. As soon as that Blink Dagger came online, he was able to create space for Arteezy's Templar Assassin and mason's Doom to do substantial work. Fnatic held on thanks to Excalibur's Meepo topping the gold and experience charts, but it was all on him.

In an inverse mirror of the first game, EG were able to eventually grind down Fnatic's core heroes to the point where they could easily storm through several lanes of barracks at once. Hann1's Earthshaker was essential to slowing EG's pushes - a trick picked up from the Chinese teams - and great teamfight play kept them in the game, but one death from Excalibur without buyback cleared the way for EG to march into the final. Fnatic proved that they're one of the most dangerous teams in the world at the moment, but EG demonstrated how powerful multi-core lineups can be in these long games.

EG vs. iG

The final was a real test for EG. It began almost immediately after their semi-final match against Fnatic. Playing three best-of-threes in a single day is difficult enough without getting the kind of break that iG had enjoyed since their lunchtime victory over Alliance. But if there's ever been a player who could pull his team through anything, it's Universe. EG's offlaner did extraordinary work in the first game as Faceless Void, landing perfect Chronosphere after perfect Chronosphere while achieving respectable farm in a difficult position. iG drafted their familiar push lineup - Pugna, Enchantress, Shadow Shaman - but it wasn't enough.

Level-hungry core picks by EG - Void, Brewmaster, Razor - were bought space to farm by the incredible ganking combo of zai and PPD on Sand King and Mirana. iG regrouped and managed to push all the way through EG's mid barracks by the 20 minute mark, but a series of phenomenal teamfight performances around Universe's Chronosphere led to wipe after wipe for the Chinese team. Fifteen minutes after iG broke EG's base, EG returned the favour - and took a second lane of barracks a few minutes after that. Knowing that they were beaten, iG called it.

In game two EG opted for familiar strategies, drafting a farming hero for Arteezy - Phantom Assassin - and surrounding him with backup: Sand King, Batrider, Doom, Bane. In response, iG pulled out an aggressive lineup similar to the ones they beat Alliance with. Ferrari_430's Ember Spirit was the perfect setup for Sunstrikes from Luo's Invoker who was otherwise left to farm a lightning-fast Necronomicon 3 on the safelane. Credit goes to PPD for the hot jukes of the tournament, evading a three-man gank through the jungle before denying himself with Nightmare. But it was a small victory in a war that iG controlled decisively as soon as Luo joined the fray. It was obvious that EG didn't want to give up on the chance of a 2-0 victory, but it wasn't coming. The GG call came after 25 minutes.

Game three was as close to a perfect game of Dota as you're ever going to see. This isn't a game where perfection is really possible, but iG did everything they could to challenge that notion. EG picked up much of the same draft that they'd used to punish Na'Vi earlier in the day, combining Tiny/Io with Elder Titan, a farming Sand King, and a roaming Mirana.

It should have worked. It should have got them something, particularly in the late game when the Tiny/Natural Order combo came into its own. iG denied them a lategame. The problems started early, when it became clear that Ferrari_430's Queen of Pain could manhandle the Tiny/Io with impunity. Ganks came from every angle: YYF's farming Faceless Void. Perfect Sunstrikes from Luo on top of X Marks The Spot setups from ChuaN's unorthodox support Kunkka. Whenever EG looked like they might secure a kill, a Disruption from Faith's Shadow Demon took away their options. Precise, immaculate plays. iG executed flawlessly and gave nothing away: a single tower kill by Arteezy was enough to elicit a cheer from the crowd - and that was after twenty minutes.

Eventually, EG went all-in on Roshan in attempt to win themselves a way back into the game. iG punished it hard with a full five-on-five teamfight in which the Chinese team lost nobody at all. EG ceded victory - and the tournament - to iG after 29 minutes. The final score was 22 kills to zero. It was a tremendous statement to make in advance of TI4: EG are the best team in the western scene at the moment, and iG outplayed them in every conceivable way. The crowd was chanting "ChuaN! ChuaN! ChuaN!" as the Chinese veteran lifted the trophy, and with good reason.

If you missed our account of yesterday's games, you can read it here. Be sure to check out this interview with Mousesports' Pajkatt while you're at it, and check back in the next few days for an in-depth interview with Alliance's Loda.

Image via the official ESL Twitter account.

Per Anders 'Pajkatt' Olsson Lille has been playing competitive Dota since prior to the first International, which he attended with Online Kingdom. He played for LGD.int at TI2 and will return this year with Mousesports, formerly Team Dog, who earned their place in TI4 with a fantastic performance in the European qualifiers. Yesterday, they got knocked out of ESL One Frankfurt following a close-fought and very exciting series of matches against Invictius Gaming.

I spoke to Pajkatt an hour after the game to talk about that first blood, the reasons why they lost, the danger of Pugna and the plan between now and TI4.

It was fantastic watching you guys play, even if it didn't quite go the way you wanted. Nonetheless, that Axe double kill is going to be one of those things that people are going to be sharing for a long time. How did that feel?

It felt very nice. Axe against Lycan is something we've played a lot. Lycan can't really do anything against Axe, because of the spin. He's just got right clicks, and his wolves, and that's more right clicks more chances to spin. Then they come mid with two heroes that can't really do anything. They had no spell damage, and Axe is really tanky. So when they go in close and they have wolves and creeps there, you just start spinning. It was... really nice.

I stood up and tried to get the crowd going and ripped my earphone out. I had to pause because when I plugged it in it started to make some weird noises. But it was really nice.

The dangers of showmanship, right?

Yeah, that's what it is.

There was no RNG in that encounter, right? Were you confident that they didn't have the burst damage to take you down?

I knew that if they went in like that then they were going to die. Three people on me... yeah, they're going to die.

Given the way the rest of the game went, are you still happy with the Axe pick?

Definitely. We lost that game because of a mid fight that we took without the panda ult and we lost like four people, five people. Later they got Rosh. The easiest thing for us to do would have been to go safelane in that game and they would have had a offlane Pugna against three heroes and he'd have got nothing and we would have stomped the Lycan mid. We could have also gone offensive creep skipped with Axe and taken the tower fast.

But the Axe pick was not the problem. When enemy teams pick Lycan, Axe is almost a total counter. I question myself now about why we didn't pick it in the third game. You make mistakes in drafting... it's a shame that it's single elimination because you take things from these games, and maybe we could have come back tomorrow and played for the better.

We also could have learned something for this third game... they ended up with Lycan and Pugna twice in a row. We should have stopped that in the first ban phase. The Lycan wasn't really the problem, though he's just some guy with wolves, scouting us but the problem was always that Pugna with their supports. They could just take our towers without us being able to engage.

We were banking on high cooldown spells. When you do that against this Pugna hero... they die but then they're back, and you have no spells and they take your tower. Then they go to the next tower and they have more items and maybe you kill them again but then you're on cooldown, and so on. There's an issue there. You can't draft these high cooldown heroes against them.

It was a huge transformation from game one into game two night and day. What was the nature of the discussion between those two games? What turned it around so dramatically?

I think there's a large difference between first and second pick, which helped us we got the PotM . In the first game, I don't think they rate panda that high but we haven't played Chinese in forever. In these games, you don't know how the enemy rates different heroes. We rate panda high and they didn't. We could have taken Axe/PotM, denied them the PotM, but we didn't. Next game we got the PotM and it's one of our most played heroes.

We also decided that we were going to pick 'us' we're going to pick what we're comfortable with. Axe is comfortable but this was a complete lineup that we've played versions of so many times that we know exactly what to do.

Do you feel like Bane has a place in a lineup without PotM? You didn't pick him when you could have done in the third game.

Bane without PotM is not the same. He's good for setting stuff up Bane/PotM, Bane/Slark. He's a guy who sets up things, he's strong in lane, he's tanky. But you kinda need to make use of him early on. He needs to get a lot done because he only has single-target spells. He doesn't scale in some ways like a Rhasta or a Sand King. You need to use his laning phase, and the easiest way to use that is if you have a PotM, obviously.

Plus the combination you can set it up from anywhere because PotM can come in, like, five seconds late and still land that arrow. You can pick Bane otherwise, but it's situational.

You guys really favoured the panda why is that the case right now? What do you feel like it's giving you?

We're just comfortable with it. MSS plays a good panda. You can take these fights he just keeps fighting, and enemies are scared to fight so they don't go for some towers. The problem with panda is when they realise that they can just fight and die and fight again. We know that now that if you just keep fighting through panda ult then he has a problem. But we've had a lot of wins with that hero, and a lot of success.

It seemed like your solution for how to beat iG in every case was always going to be aggression. Is that something you might reconsider?

No.

Always aggressive?

Yes. For me, we lost the series only because of the draft. I think their play is nothing fancy, nothing we haven't already played against. It's only another team. We lost two games because they got some push strats and we couldn't really deal with it. The Pugna pick fucked us both games. The thing we can take from it is we can either ban the Pugna in first phase or take it ourselves. That's something we should do for sure.

Reckon you've got a place for it?

Definitely we need a plan to take it at least when they've got this Lycan, you know? He's not scary on his own. But combined with the right heroes, he's really scary. I would say that we lost the series because we didn't do 'us' all three games. We half-and-halfed it. I think we could have won game one, we had the draft, if we didn't fail those mid goals. But game three was lost three picks in. There was not much we could do.

To wrap up what's next for you guys?

We're going to bootcamp in Berlin for a couple of days and then we're going to go home. We have one day when everybody goes home to their houses and families and then we're going to fly to Seattle and play TI.

How are you feeling about it?

I think it's going to be good. Personally I just want to play more and more LANs. Besides MSS, all of us have played a lot of LANs but we haven't played LANs as a team and I haven't drafted in that long. It's something you need to get used to, because drafting at home and drafting at a LAN is really different because there's something on the line and you only get these three games. You're more scared, you're more intimidated, which limits you. It limits your mind so you don't think of these clever things that normally, sitting at home in your boxers, both feet in the air, you'd think of.

You're held back by your trousers.

Yeah, gotta do an iceiceice and play in your boxers but when you got to LAN you have to be more confident. It's hard because there's a big crowd and you only get a couple of games. There's a lot of people watching and these things go to your head, even if they shouldn't.

With that in mind, though, the crowd here fucking loved you.

I love them too. I love playing with the crowd. I think Dota's supposed to be played with a crowd this is what makes me happy, playing Dota. Going to events like this... there were some hiccups but when you get to play on this stage with this crowd it's worth it a hundred times over. This is the way Dota is supposed to be played. It's strange, but it makes it so much more of a fun sport. It feels like it matters.

Thank you for your time. Any shoutouts?

I want to shout out to EpicGear, BenQ, Mousesports, and to my family and friends back home in Sweden.

Images courtesy of the ESL Twitter account.

What an incredible day for DIGITAL SPORTS. You get used to the idea that these events are always going to get bigger; that the next step up is always going to mean a larger stadium and more impressive production values. But there's something pretty startling about seeing games played at the highest level in an environment like the Commerzbank Arena. It's more than you get from attending other kinds of large gaming convention: it's not just about having something in common with thousands of other people. It's about the catalysing impact of sport, the way a hobby can grow and grow and grow until it becomes a spectacle.

Today I became freshly aware of the effect that sport has on a crowd. Even as a handful of people crept away from the games to watch the World Cup, the energy in the arena was astonishing. I figured I'd seen the biggest crowd response I was going to see when S4 landed that million-dollar coil at the end of The International 2013, but ESL One came close to topping that with its first kill. It's the best soundtrack you could hope for, like watching Dota in the company of a thunderstorm. A thunderstorm that really likes it when wizards die.

If you missed any of the matches, VODs are available here. Otherwise, lets talk about the games. Needless to say, I'm going to spoil the results.

Mousesports vs. Invictus Gaming

The home crowd was on Mousesports' side before they drafted Brewmaster and Axe in their first picks in game one, which is saying something. The new Mouz, formerly Team Dog, are slicker and more aggressive than the previous lineup to carry that name. Aggression is more or less their identity, and that first game draft, which also included Bounty Hunter, Leshrac and Shadow Demon was designed to win the game fast and hard. It almost worked.

The tournament got off to the most exciting possible start when Pajkatt's midlane Axe, who had been handily outlaning Ferrari_430's Lycan, got jumped by IG's support pair of Earthshaker and Shadow Shaman. What should have been a routine gank mid turned into a disaster for the Chinese team when it turned out they couldn't actually bring the Axe down before his Counter-Helix spins wrecked them; three spins and two dunks later and that three man gank had become a first blood double kill for Mouz.

But momentum easily won is easily lost, and over time it became clear that IG had drafted specifically to control the tempo of the game. ChuaN's Earthshaker was the bouncer at the entrance of every engagement Mouz wanted to take in the midgame, slamming the door shut with on-point Fissures every time Mouz tried to press the attack. IG efficiently secured farm, towers and Rosh kills while Mouz's gank lineup fished for kills, taking advantage of the long cooldown on Primal Split to minimise the impact of the Brewmaster. With Pugna and Shadow Shaman ensuring that IG could take towers whenever they liked, Mouz desperately needed counter-initiation that they just couldn't reliably get from a Bounty Hunter or Leshrac.

It was a very different story in game two. Mouz picked up the Bane-Mirana combo, securing themselves a dominant start and lumbering IG with the most unhappy Razor and Faceless Void you're likely to see. MiSeRy was the clear MVP for his Bane play, creating space everywhere with max-range Nightmares, Fiends' Grips from nowhere, each setting up a Sacred Arrow or Ancient Apparition ult. IG doubled down on protecting Luo's Razor, which bought them some time, but all the while FATA built up a Viper that the Chinese team just couldn't deal with. It was a phenomenal performance from Mouz, ending after 36 minutes with 40 kills to 7.

Then, after picking up a head of steam, Mouz returned to their game one plan for game three. Denied the Mirana, they went for Brewmaster with Tidehunter, Lich, Ember Spirit, and Ancient Apparition. IG played what they knew, picking up Earthshaker, Lycan, Storm Spirit, Pugna and Rubick. Despite being close on kills and towers for the bulk of the game, Mouz struggled to unseat their opponents in teamfights and couldn't ultimately overcome the fact that they'd been outdrafted. IG's relentless pushing power forced Mouz into a reactive rather than active posture: as much a the western teams love Brewmaster at the moment, he acts as a fairly good barometer for when things are going badly wrong. If Primal Split is being used to clear out a Pugna ward, you've probably already lost. The crowd didn't want to see Mouz go, but go they did. They proved that IG are beatable, but IG proved that clutch plays mean nothing if you don't have a plan to end the game.



Fnatic vs. Vici Gaming

For all the drama that currently surrounds Fnatic's ability to play at TI4, their first game against Vici felt like a powerful statement of intent. The original four members of the team - Hann1, N0tail (alright, BigDaddy, whatever), Trixi and Fly - totally controlled the pace of the game while their standin Excalibur farmed happily away in the corner of the map. Vici respect-banned Excalibur's Tinker and Meepo in every game, leaving BigDaddy (uh) free to pick up Io. He and Hann1 are the Riggs and Murtagh of professional Dota: their Io/Tiny midlane combo held Vici to the fire relentlessly at every stage of the game. Despite a few familiar pace-controlling supports coming out for Vici - Shadow Shaman, Earthshaker - it was BigDaddy's Relocate timer that set the rhythm of play. If they couldn't get kills, Fnatic would take towers, and despite a few dodgy trades late in the game the win came to them comfortably.

Vici let almost the same Fnatic draft through again in game two but countered with Lycan, Ember Spirit, Shadow Demon and Tidehunter while taking the Mirana for themselves. Excalibur adopted a more active role on Slark as a consequence, which effectively removed Fnatic's safety net: there was no comforting bed of money to fall back on when things went south. A fair few misplays in the first half of the game - errant Pounces, Sacred Arrows coming in slightly too early - suggested at nerves all round, but overall Vici were much more effective at slowing Fnatic down long enough for Lycan to farm. Hann1's Tiny was a concern throughout the game, again, but on-point Disruptions from Fenrir helped Vici turn teamfights in their favour. Like Mouz before them Fnatic struggled to control Roshan, and eventually there was no choice but to relent before Vici's relentless Lycan push.

Fnatic stuck with Tiny/Io in game three but swapped out the rest of the lineup for Brewmaster, Venomancer, and Lich. Vici took the now-standard Pugna, Shadow Shaman, Earthshaker trio again alongside Doom and Bristleback. The strength of Fnatic's draft was its flexibility: even when Vici seemed to have the upper hand, there'd be a Poison Nova or Chain Frost to ensure that Fnatic got a decent trade out of any encounter. This created a stalemate in the midgame but Fnatic were ultimately in the lead: they got better at securing objectives and took advantages wherever they could find it. Fly's kill-securing Lich broke the record for the most kills in 25 minutes on that hero, ending the game with 14 kills to a single death. Despite an intelligent and coordinated defence effort, Vici's defences eventually gave way to Fnatic's endless siege.

Alliance vs. Cloud 9

This was the most extraordinary match of the day, and the one you should go and watch right now if you've got two hours to spare. Despite a relatively unusual Skywrath Mage pick, Alliance drafted a very comfortable lineup in game one: Chaos Knight/Io with Storm Spirit mid and Clockwerk on the offlane. Cloud 9 drafted Tinker with Brewmaster, Jakiro, Lion and Nyx Assassin, but the supreme mobility of Alliance's draft made it very difficult for them to find the space they needed to play effectively.

EternalEnvy's Tinker struggled to find any farm in the early game as Loda's Chaos Knight picked up a killing spree as part of Alliance's now-standard aggressive trilane. Later, if Relocate ganks couldn't pick him off then Storm Spirit or Clockwerk would - AdmiralBulldog in particular deserves credit for a Clockwerk performance that demonstrates that all that work expanding his hero pool has been worth it. The tipping point came when Bulldog began a great teamfight behind Cloud 9's tier two towers with a max-range hook, creating space that Alliance used to immediately secure Roshan. Ending after 33 minutes, the match felt like one of Alliance's more confident victories over Cloud 9 in the DreamLeague finals.

Game two was the opposite. Cloud 9 built a lineup with phenomenal built-in redundancy, playing to each of their talents to ensure that they always had a way to shut Alliance down. Enigma's Black Hole; Bane's Fiends' Grip, Faceless Void's Chronosphere; Ember Spirit's mobility, lockdown, and AoE damage; Mirana's Moonlight Shadow and Sacred Arrows. Despite Alliance getting off to a good start with heroes they excel at - Bulldog's Nature's Prophet, S4's Puck, EGM's Io - they just couldn't secure the advantage over Cloud 9's superlative play. Loda's Wraith King gave them some space to lose a battle but win the counter-attack, but Cloud 9 always had a way to back off or secure an additional kill. Pieliedie deserves a lot of credit for his Bane performance, which - like MiSeRy's earlier in the day - makes a strong case banning the hero outright. He enabled kills on Bulldog and S4 that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

Eventually, however, despite a 20,000XP deficit, Alliance started to pull it back. They played the very specific kind of Dota that Alliance excel at: western-style clutch plays with eastern efficiency. They picked up an Orchid on Bulldog followed by Scythes of Vyse on Bulldog and S4, which gave them the disables they needed to survive Cloud 9's ults. Then came the Necronomicon, the Refresher Puck, and what followed was the longest and most exciting game of Dota I may have ever seen. It ran to eighty minutes and ended on two of the most extraordinary exchanges. The first was a long teamfight that ran from the river on bottom lane up through the Dire's secret shop to mid, with Chronosphere and Black Hole both being used to slow Alliance's assault. Incredible plays from both sides trading back and forth until the camera panned north to reveal Cloud 9's middle barracks gone, and AdmiralBulldog making off like a bandit. The second encounter began as Cloud 9 went all-in on Alliance's tier 4 towers, leading to a heart-in-mouth teamfight around the Swedes' exposed ancient and ending with a turnaround that we'll be talking about for the rest of the year.

The final quarterfinal match between EG and Na'Vi will be played tomorrow morning due to a late start today. Check back tomorrow night for a full report from the final day.

And, thus, the Dota 2 community did buy many internet sticker books. And yea, they did fill those books with non-corporeal points. And so, Valve did set aside 25% of each purchase creating an International prize pool of $10 million, and much wealth and happiness for their own accountants.

Essentially, the community has spent over $33 million on these virtual souvenirs. It's comfortably the biggest prize pool in e-sports history, and all with Valve contributing 'just' $1.6 million to the initial prize pool. It's a huge achievement, and one that should result in fierce competition for the top prize.

What we don't yet know is how much that top prize will be worth. The distribution of the pool is yet to be announced, although Chris is a strong believer that, this year, Valve need to make changes.

As part of the money raised, the community have unlocked all stretch goals currently set. You can see the full list of what Compendium owners (and the entire Dota 2 playerbase) have unlocked by visiting the Compendium mini-site.

Later this afternoon I'll be heading to Germany to begin a weekend of coverage of ESL One Frankfurt, the last major Dota 2 tournament before The International. It's shaping up to be really exciting. The scene is in good shape, with varied and exciting play coming from a broad range of teams. Eight of those teams Alliance, Na'Vi, mousesports, Fnatic, Cloud 9, Evil Geniuses, Vici Gaming and Invictus Gaming will be competing in Frankfurt for a crowd-boosted prize pool of over $200,000. I sat down with fellow Dota nerd Janusz Urbanski to go over our predictions for the event.

Chris: ESL have made a lot of noise about having all three prior International champions at the tournament Na'Vi and Alliance, who received automatic invitations, and IG who arrived through the Chinese qualifier. I think the story of ESL One will, at least in part, be about which teams go all-out for that prizepool and which hold on to something in advance of TI4.

Alliance are bringing in WinteR as their coach for this tournament, which suggests that their summer campaign is properly under way. They made a confident return to form at DreamLeague and if they can maintain that pace here then I think they have a shot at taking the whole thing they're my pick out of the returning champions. The great thing about competitive Dota at the moment, however, is that it isn't dominated by one or two teams.

Janusz: Alliance had a rough patch earlier in the year, but recently they have started to look like the team that won TI3 so convincingly, a worrying prospect for the other teams. As ever, however, Na Vi can never be counted out. They have played well throughout the year, both online and on LAN, and I m sure we can expect the Frankfurt crowd to get behind them.

Na Vi are up against EG in the first round, though, and this talented EG lineup have proven they can beat any team in ESL. I wouldn t be surprised if they treat this as a dry run for TI4.

Chris: It'll be really interesting to see how EG do. If they keep to the form they've been on recently then the tournament is theirs to lose, as far as I'm concerned their 3-0 victory over Na'Vi in the D2L Western Challenge attests to their dominance, and arguably they've had a greater impact on the metagame than any other team in the last year. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure this is mason's first LAN of this scale he's hardly seemed to be the type to get dragged down by nerves in the past, but it's hardly trivial to find yourself in front of a stadium full of people a few months into your pro career.

What do you make of Cloud 9's chances? Their run of second-place finishes in the last couple of months suggests that they're unlikely to win the whole thing, but they've proven that they can beat anybody on a good day. I wouldn't be surprised to see them finish high.

Janusz: Cloud 9 don t lack for talent, but can t seem to clinch the win when it really matters. Their farming style may have become a bit predictable and could be punished by the top teams. Going up against Alliance so early will be a tough challenge, but if they can win that match they have a solid shot at taking the tournament. I think they want a big win at this point, and getting one will boost their confidence no end.

Mouz are my 'dark horse' pick, as they ve started to look really dangerous in the last few months, but have yet to prove that they ve got what it takes to win at the highest level. It will be a tough first round matchup against a resurgent IG. Do you think they ll get past the Chinese TI2 champions?

Chris: You can't count Mouz out, but I agree that it's a tough matchup. That said if Mouz do beat the Chinese team then they could do well overall they're fully capable of unseating the best western teams, and playing in front of a home crowd should ensure good performances from FATA and paS. Facing Alliance or C9 in the semis is never going to be easy, mind.

What are your thoughts on Fnatic versus Vici Gaming in the quarterfinals? Fnatic are continuing their run with Excalibur standing in for Era, which has been going fantastically for them. They've got incredible versatility and control and I'd expect them to do well in front of a home crowd. Last night's news about them being potentially unable to compete in TI4 could mean they double down on their efforts here.

Janusz: Fnatic are renowned for their stable roster so I was worried how they would do without Era, but it seems to be going well so far. They re are a great team and deserve a win, but they will need luck on their side if the other big teams play their best. Fnatic will be playing Vici Gaming first though, which is a game they can win. VG are a strong team, but like Cloud 9 they just can t seem to win tournaments.

VG do have Sylar, however, an intimidating carry that has had a few stand out performances recently and could make a big impact. Are there any players you are particularly looking forward to seeing play?

Chris: I like watching Hann1 and I'd like to see Fnatic run him on the offlane again. Otherwise, it's all about the support pairings Zai and PPD for EG, Akke and EGM for Alliance, Puppey and Kuroky for Na'Vi. I love me some rotations.

How do you think Na'Vi will do? EG beat them handily a few days ago despite Na'Vi getting a comfortable set of heroes in the first game Dendi Puck, Puppey Enchantress, XBOCT Lycan and that doesn't bode brilliantly for them in the quarterfinals at ESL. We could see them knocked out very early. On the other hand, they're Na'Vi. Coming back from a disadvantage is what they do. If Puppey's sitting on an EG-beating strat, this is when we'll see it.

Janusz: I m not too worried about Na Vi to be honest. They re one of the best LAN teams and have so much experience playing in high pressure matches. It s true that they haven t looked their best in the last few tournaments, and EG will go into the matchup with a lot of confidence, but Na Vi are bound to put up a good fight. As you say, Na Vi are known for coming back from behind and somehow finding a way to win, which should make for a thrilling match. It s a wide open tournament and Na Vi can beat all the teams playing, so I look forward to seeing them take to the stage.

Check back tomorrow for more coverage from ESL One.

Three Lane Highway is Chris' sometimes serious, sometimes silly column about Dota 2.

Last week I wrote off the concept of MMR as part of a not-entirely-serious list of 'meaningless' numbers in Dota. My thinking at the time was that discussing the problems raised by ranked matchmaking at all was going to attract a particular attitude in the comments, so I'd be better off treating it as a punchline. That was an error. I tried to use irony to mask something that I think and care about rather a lot, falling into the same trap that I'd accused certain competitive players of falling into only a week earlier. Sly winks don't carry well on the internet, and when you're discussing the relative worth of somebody's internet wizard skill rating it's fair to assume that most readers are going to take it pretty seriously.

This week I want to unpack that original point in a more detail without the protective cladding of irony. For the record, though, 'meaningless' is a self-consciously overblown descriptor to attach to any number or value. Of course a player's matchmaking rating has meaning. What's worth discussing is how that meaning influences the community and the types of discussions that take place; how it alters people's playstyles and their relationship with the game; how much value it really has.

My view was that Dota 2's MMR system has a disproportionate impact relative to its usefulness. That it is both important and a little hollow, which is tricky territory to navigate in any context. It's something that people invest a tremendous amount in when I'd argue that their efforts would be better directed elsewhere. It has the capacity to upset and divide people beyond the extent that Dota 2 is already capable of dividing and upsetting people. I believed then and still believe now that there's a subset of players that regard MMR with a dogged gravity that distracts from what's interesting about the game.

What I failed to take note of is how it is possible to process your MMR into something workable and useful. I still believe that, taken at face value, MMR has promoted a lot of bad behaviour. But I've come around to the idea that it's possible to grapple with the data in a way that is ultimately good for your experience of the game. Getting there, however, means accepting that Dota 2 isn't a single game with a single progression path: it's a hobby with dozens of legitimate approaches. Custom game modes will eventually make that fact obvious. For now it's something that players have to work towards themselves, even as a substantial portion of the community sets out to tell them that the way they play is wrong.

I don't believe in the 'trench' or 'forced fifty'. Enough studies have been done to prove that the MMR system is fairly good at placing players where they belong. In particular, kyuronite's experiment shows that a good player will eventually climb or fall to the place they need to be in. MMR becomes interesting and problematic at the point when a player decides that they're not happy with where the game has placed them. The default response of many is to blame the game or the people they're placed with. More level-headed players are likely to follow the advice given here by SirActionSlacks, assuming a support role that gives them maximal control over the outcome of the game. You might be able to achieve the same thing while playing independent heroes like Nature's Prophet and Tinker, but the principle is the same: that your random teammates must be assumed to be a liability, and that you have to treat Dota like a singleplayer strategy game where you have no direct control over four of your most important units.

My negative view of this system was grounded in the mistaken notion that I outlined above: that there is a single 'correct' kind of Dota, the type where two teams of five people fight to control the map by working together, and that chasing MMR by any means would ultimately distance you from the kinds of skills you should be learning. That this one-protect-four mentality is good for raising your MMR but only partially effective as practice for whatever comes next.

But that's okay, actually. I've come around to MMR a lot more by thinking of Dota as three different games divided up by the buttons on the menu. Unranked is where you go to experiment on the understanding that everybody else is likely to be experimenting too (or playing Pudge). Solo Ranked is where you go to play mother hen to four angry strangers, and Party Ranked is where you actually play Defence of the Ancients. Advanced players have access to a few more levels of play competitive matches, scrims, in-houses, and so on but those primary three are the ones that concern most of us.

Thinking about MMR usefully means being always aware of the context in which you're playing. Your solo MMR gives you a good sense of how well you're able to secure victory despite other people, while party MMR assesses your ability to play with them. Ultimately you'd want to be so good at both that the distinction fades, but chances are that's not where you are at right now.

Don't beat yourself up if your solo MMR isn't what you want: instead, figure out if the skills you'll need to 'fix' it are the ones that are the most important to you. If they are, lock Omniknight or Dazzle or Treant Protector or whoever and mother the hell out of your team. If they're not, feel free to ignore the next person that speaks down to you because of your rating. Listen to detailed advice when you can get it, ignore rage, and try to keep a clear head. Learning not to lose your shit when you drop 25 points is as big a victory as not losing those 25 points at all.

If a bad attitude and a lack of self awareness causes some players to wield MMR like a weapon, then the right attitude has the opposite effect. Your MMR is only as useful as you allow it to be.

To read more Three Lane Highway, click here. Chris will be covering this weekend's ESL One Frankfurt Dota 2 tournament from the event, so check back on Saturday and Sunday for a first-hand account of the action.

Two teams appear to have been denied US visas for next month s Dota 2 International tournament. China-based CIS-Game and Southeast Asian team Arrow Gaming are both facing the possibility that they ll lose their place in the tournament, which takes place July 18-21 and offers a prize pool of nearly $10 million dollars.
According to posts on the LiquidDota forums, using Chinese social media platform Weibo as a source, CIS-Game was offered no reason for the denial except an apology. Translated by a member of the LiquidDota forums, a spokesperson from CIS-Game reportedly said the team will reapply for the visa. The 4 Chinese players as well as manager of CIS have been denied American visas, they're currently preparing for their second try.
While at least five members of CIS-Game have been denied visas, other veteran representatives from the team have had success. In addition to applying a second time, the team will also appeal to Valve for support.
Meanwhile, Southeast Asian team Arrow Gaming has also had problems securing visas, prompting them to apply a second time. A spokesperson for the team provided the following statement to OnGamers.

"With the help from the Minister our chances to receive the visa is higher. Me and Johnny received our visas. However, the other 4 were not so lucky. Valve will also provide us with a stronger letter of invitation to the embassy. So yes, we are hopeful about the second interview. We haven't talked about what will happen if our applications were denied a second time. Valve pretty much guaranteed to help us the best they can to bring our team to Seattle."

eSports competitors have had a hard time being recognised by the US government. League of Legends was last year deemed a professional sport by the US government, meaning international competitors can now travel to the US as professional athletes.

The Dota 2 International championships commence July 18 at KeyArena in Seattle, Washington.

(via PCGamesN)

A few days ago, members of the Steam community schemed to rig the Steam Summer Adventure competition, a metagame running in parallel with Valve s 12-day Summer Sale. Surprisingly, it wasn t the sort of malicious plan you might expect, but a kind of cease-fire alliance meant to bring equal victory to everyone on Steam. As intended, Team Pink won Sunday. Blue won Monday. Purple will win next, if things go smoothly. On Wednesday, a Red victory is scheduled, then Green.

Is a small collective actually having this big of an influence on a Steam-wide, public competition? Valve has already amended the contest to encourage more competition. I took a look at the evidence and spoke to a few of the people caught up in the dark business of virtual trading card market-manipulation.
How Valve makes money from the metagame
First, a run-down of how the Steam Summer Adventure works if you ve been blissfully unaware over the past week, buying and playing discounted PC games rather than being concerned with your gamified game client. Most of Steam s seasonal sales have included a unique trading card set. Craft a full set of these seasonal cards, and you get something like a unique wallpaper or Steam chat emoticon or in-game reward for a few participating games. The 2014 Steam Summer Sale has its own special set of cards you can badge-ify, but with a twist: participating Steam users are randomly assigned to one of five teams during the sale: Red, Pink, Purple, Blue, or Green. Crafting a badge earns points for your team, and 30 members of the winning team get three free Steam games off their wishlists. Oh, and a few extra cards that they can use to keep crafting.

In review: buying games earns virtual cards which can be crafted into virtual badges which increase the rate at which you earn booster packs which contain cards which you can use to upgrade your badges. It s a circular system designed to keep you inside the Steam client, either nickel and diming you to complete your incomplete set of cards or by selling the cards you ve been given to encourage you to spend that money on a game.

A competition to see who can craft the most badges, of course, makes money directly for Valve and developers by creating more activity on the Steam Market. Valve takes a 5% cut of all transactions, and the developer of the corresponding game takes 10% (a minimum of $0.01 in both cases).

If I sold one of my Steam Summer Adventure cards for its current value, $0.25, Valve would take three pennies and I d get $0.22. The Steam Market tells me that 91,650 copies of that card have been sold in the past 24 hours, meaning Valve s profit of a single Summer Adventure card in a single day could be about $2,800. There are 10 of these cards, and another 10 foil variants, which run about $2 each.


The community s plan
Bottom line: we celebrate Steam s price cuts, but in the middle of the Summer Sale Valve has integrated a system that stimulates the Steam economy and nets them thousands of dollars a day from virtual, non-existent goods. Many cards and booster packs have risen in price throughout the sale; Dota 2 booster packs, for example, went from trading consistently at about $0.25 for the past month to hovering near $0.40 over the past six days.

The more trading volume and competition, the more the house wins. But a segment of the Steam community is wise to this. They know that a 12-day period when a five-dollar bill can get you our favorite PC game of all time isn t the best time to be engaged in what s essentially a spending war. So to discourage, or at least mitigate, frivolous trading card spending, some Redditors and Steam forum members have organized a coalition to take competition out of the equation. They ve called themselves Team White, and they ve proposed that each Steam team should win twice, on designated days, through June 28.

I spoke to one of the initial organizers behind the plan, Reddit user DayZ_slayer. It's not really a fun competition when the only real way to win is to spend a lot of cash, the European 20-year-old told me. If they did some kind of event that involved playing games it would be a lot more fun to compete, but they didn't, so I figured we all may as well work as a group and give everyone a fair chance at winning some games.

This seemed to arise naturally, according to DayZ_slayer: many of the teams who had organized individually were planning to compete harder on specific days, he told me, so suggesting that the colored teams take turns simply formalized that process. I checked the Steam groups/subreddits for the teams and saw which days they were planning on winning, the first five days or so didn't really clash. I made the list showing who should craft on what day and then posted it on all of the team's subreddits under the name Operation EWT. A little later I made the thread on /r/gaming and some other guy posted it to /r/steam.

I also spoke to Phil Lendon, a 16-year-old living in England who s bought into the concept of Team White. I first noticed the schedule on Reddit on /r/SteamTeamRed which then spread to /r/Steam and I thought it was a really good idea because here on Team Red we're all about teamwork and communication. When I asked Lendon how much he s spent toward the contest, he told me that he s traded hundreds of pounds to support Red on Wednesday. Too much that it's unhealthy, he says.


Valve's response
Up until today, the plan had gone smoothly. Each team won on its designated day. But today the plan is showing signs of falling apart. Valve, apparently unhappy with the lack of competition between teams, changed the contest to award second- and third-place prizes to the runners-up each day. Purple may still come away with first place, but at the outset of today it s already a tight race between the colors. The game has changed, a post on the Purple team subreddit reads. We need to let purple win but go for second, a member of team Red comments. "What the heck guys? It's purple's day!" a Pink thread exclaims. Lendon, the Red team member I spoke to, wrote back to me this morning after he noticed Valve's change to the competition. "It's turned into a free-for-all, once I had heard of the news I knew it was going to go to hell. However, I believe, as many other Redditors do too, that the new rules for the competition were to prevent the rigging of the competition, as we saw yesterday when Pink one with over a million points above everyone else, Valve had to take action. However, I personally don't believe the changes to the rules are even worth it, as people's chances are even more reduces to win, as-if it wasn't hard enough already to get a winning three games, it'll be even harder for the 2nd place and 3rd place and not even worth the effort."

It s unclear whether this change will encourage competition enough to disrupt Reddit s plan. On the surface, it seemed wild to me that a small percentage of people could be driving the massive point swings we saw in the initial four days. After all, there s only a few hundred people each in these colored Steam groups, and just 140,000 on the Steam subreddit, most of whom probably aren t aggressively participating.



But the Steam Market tells us that just a small number of tokens that steal 1,000 points from another team the most valuable item for influencing the Adventure competition are trading hands. In the past 24 hours, just 88 have been bought off the Steam Market at between $8 and $5 each, and about the same amount of 500-point tokens were sold in that period. Even if a single team were buying those tokens, it isn t that much of a swing relative to the 1.2 million that the Blue team earned yesterday.

More likely, the organized non-competition pact by Reddit and the color-specific Steam communities created single, dominant leader, which not only discouraged the other big spenders who are engaged in this competition but probably discouraged some amount of casual crafters from chipping in too.

With the adjustment made by Valve, today will be an interesting test of the internet s ability to dictate the outcome. Purple, who s meant to win today, has a modest lead as I m publishing this, but we ll have to see if the Steam Trading Card Illuminati s grand plan survives through the week.

Three Lane Highway is Chris' sometimes silly, sometimes serious column about Dota 2.

Dota 2 is a numbers game, but then again they all are, really, aren't they. Counter-Strike is about shooting numberbullets into the other guys' numberfaces until all of their numberbrains fall out. Football (see also: soccer) is about how many goals you score and how many shirts you sell and how much it costs to ship vast premanufactured chunks of stadium up the Amazon.

It's all numbers, and Dota 2 has no greater or fewer than any other game. But it does host some truly, spectacularly, galvanizingly pointless numbers. Digits that communicate nothing and convey no worth. They exist outside of any formula or algorithm, and to treat them as if they mean anything is to slip into the kind of superstition usually reserved for numerologists. We're dealing with the unknowable, here, with un-knowledge: you might want to sit down. Some people can't handle it.

Let's not be those people.

USELESS NUMBER #1: The level of your Dota 2 Steam badge.

I have a level five Steam badge for Dota 2. I have no earthly idea why this is something that I acquired on purpose. At some point last year shortly after TI3, according to my Steam profile I decided that it was important that I collect five full sets of Dota 2 trading cards. I believe I received a discount on capable puzzle platformer Toki Tori for doing so, but that's not why I did it.

If the decision involved any thought at all, it went something like this: I like to play Dota 2, and I like to perform tasks related to Dota 2. It followed that I'd enjoy scanning the Steam market in order to purchase pictures of characters for pennies and then binding these pictures to my profile so that somebody might look at my profile and think "this person considers Dota 2 to be an entertaining way to spend time". As if they couldn't pick that up from the many other numbers at the top of my Recent Game Activity: 42.3 hours past 2 weeks. 1,477 hrs on record.

Whatever the reason, I have a level five Steam badge for Dota 2. Many of my friends have them as well. All I can take from this is that Valve are very good at providing people with opportunities to lose money in ways that seem like total nonsense when considered with the front part of your brain. Impish little money-siphons that vanish when you look right at them, like fairies at the bottom of the garden. Fairies that turn out to be real and force you to remortgage your house every time there's a Steam Sale.

USELESS NUMBER #2: The number of your friends who play Dota 2.

So here's a fun observation: I have 136 friends who play Dota 2 according to Steam. I have 137 friends who play Team Fortress 2. All these numbers indicate is that a fairly substantial chunk of Steam's user base will at some point boot up either of Valve's free to play games. In Dota's case, the number is most useful for giving you some sense of how many people start playing the game and immediately run the other way like Han Solo in A New Hope if he'd burst into a room full of wizards and internet dickheads instead of Stormtroopers.

I'm fascinated by the difference between the two values, though. Who were you, one person who never loaded Dota 2? What was it that put you off? Was it the dickheads? I bet it was the dickheads.

USELESS NUMBER #3: The current count on any of your 'Wards Placed' gems.

A personal milestone: my 'Enemies Culled' gem hit triple figures today. I've only had it for a few months, but that gem means something to me. I love Axe very much, and believe strongly that Culling Blade is the best ability in the game. One hundred dunks is significant: each dunk a happy memory, and each a reminder of the many thousand more dunks that I've been unjustly denied by kill-hungry allies. I die a little bit inside every time some quote-unquote "core" hero decides that their need to buy game-winning items supersedes my need to welcome our enemies to the jam. Those hundred dunks are the few, the brave, the just. Reaching this milestone is a sign that there is still some good left in the world.

I don't feel nearly as strongly about the three hundred or so wards I've placed as Rubick and Crystal Maiden, and I'm not sure anybody else does either. In fact, I think the majority of the strangers I've played with would argue that those wards were never placed at all. My 'Wards Placed' gems are documentary proof of something that the majority of people won't believe anyway: that buying all of the support items didn't actually win us any games, and ultimately has nothing to do with our unfashionable MMR ratings. Better not to track wards placed at all, really.

USELESS NUMBER #4: Commendations.

I'd like a special report function for people who say "commend me" at the end of games. Nothing serious. I don't want Valve to actually act on it, or even pay attention to it. But I want to be able to press a button that says "this person is a dingdong" and have that information recorded somewhere. It would make me feel substantially better about Dota in general if I could quietly add people to the dingdong list, you know? For posterity.

To the point, though: if you've just won the game, you don't need another prize. Asking for a commendation at the end of a match is like turning to your parents at the end of your seventh birthday party and asking if there are any more presents. Of course there aren't. They've given you everything they can give. Now stop being a brat, get out of the fountain, and let us all get along with our days.

In reality, though, all those dingdongs are doing is reflecting something of the meaninglessness of the commendation system. They don't do anything, or particularly signify anything, so why not give them freely? It's a little number hidden at the bottom of your profile. You have to scroll down to see it, for god's sake. What difference does it make?

Commending somebody in Dota 2 is like leaving a Yelp review for your favourite restaurant in the aftermath of global nuclear war. I mean, the sentiment is nice. It's great that you can, you know, register your approval. But it's too late, friend. It's too late for both of us.

USELESS NUMBER #5: The prize pool for every tournament other than The International if you have ever won The International.

Here's what occurred to me while watching Alliance return to form during the DreamLeague finals last week: if I won The International, I wouldn't try for the rest of the year. My invitation to the next tournament would be guaranteed. I'd have enough money to live off the proceeds without winning any other titles. I'd spend that time expanding my hero pool, having a good time, and pointedly not giving anything away about the strategies or drafts that might help me top up my earnings at the end of the year.

The International prize pool is going to top ten million dollars. Is there a universe where this doesn't profoundly change the attitude of top teams towards the other tournaments? I don't think there is.

USELESS NUMBER #6: Your MMR.

I know, right?

Your MMR is probably the most important pointless number in Dota 2. It's the one you see the most of, anyway. If not your personal digits than their implications: your skill level rendered with a specificity which is specifically attractive to a certain kind of player. Since Valve decided to make player ratings public these numbers have taken on totemic significance. It's not enough to have a high MMR: you have to be seen to be utterly dismissive of whatever your number means. "I'm just 5K trash" says everybody. "Don't mind me." A kind of Catholic guilt affected to disguise ego and insecurity. Strife attributed to a four-digit value that nobody is particularly sure how to parse anyway.

Introducing a visible MMR was as close to a balls-to-the-wall mistake as Valve have ever made. Its influence has been almost entirely negative. It armed the community against itself, chucking pointy sticks into a mob already prone to aggressive brinkmanship. I'm still not sure who benefits.

Yet there it is. It's your score, your rating, your place, and you're expected to know it. I say ditch the whole thing. Play like you want to get better and don't worry about whether your MMR goes up or down. Play the same way over and over if that's how you want to spend your time, not because you think it'll buy you access to some higher level of play. You can find that anywhere. Let your MMR become the reason you play Dota and you give up on all that discovery, friendship, meaning that the game turns up when it's firing on all cylinders. Fight the urge to hinge the whole thing on a number. It's poison, friend. Then again I'm 3K trash and I would say that.

Click here to read more Three Lane Highway.

Paul 'ReDeYe' Chaloner has been involved in e-sports for fifteen years as a shoutcaster, host, and presenter. He's seen every part of the business, from amateur bedroom casting to addressing thousands of people on stage. Next week, he'll be hosting his first Dota 2 tournament ESL One Frankfurt. Earlier in the week I spoke to Paul about his expectations for the tournament, how he goes about preparing for an event this big, and how the business of presenting e-sports has changed over the years.

In the run up to presenting something like ESL One, what do you do?

As a host, as I am at ESL One, it starts weeks before, sometimes months before. ESL One for me started back in March. The reason is because I've never done Dota 2 before. It starts with playing the game, understanding the mechanics, the heroes. Generally getting a good feel for the game. I guess I've probably put in about eighty hours of gameplay since March, which is enough to give me a reasonable base of understanding. Alongside that is drenching myself in the community. Understanding the funny stuff, understanding the memes that they use.

Every community is very different. Starcraft is quite intellectual, while the Dota community is much more fun. You really need to be in tune with that. With Dota, it's really important to me that I'm connected to the crowd and the people back at home and I understand what they want from the show. I've found that to be part of a winning formula for hosting well at shows. ESL One's no different.

What stories are you looking forward to see play out at ESL One, given that this is the last big tournament before TI4?

Well we've got all three previous International winners and that's a storyline in its own right. iG are looking pretty strong right now but Na'Vi and Alliance they're the big names but they've not been playing much and when they have been playing they've not been playing that well. For me it's intruiging whether the five that have not got an International title to their name, can they step up a few weeks before TI4 and give these guys something to think about? What does that do to them, going into TI? If Alliance win this at a canter, what signal does that send to everyone else? If they don't win it, and they crash out in the quarters, what signal does that send to them about how much harder they're going to have to work?

If Dendi reaches the semi-final this a smaller, personal story he'll become the highest-earning player in the world. He's currently third, but he's only a few thousand short. He'll become the most successful e-sports player of all time, two weeks before TI4 which will then change all that. It's ironic, really.

Providing that he gets to second place in the International again, he'll probably be fine.

He might well be the first guy to go over a million, as well. We look for stories like that we've got a ton of them, but those are the key ones for me. The big ones.

E-sports presenting requires increasingly more professionalism and craft, but people still come into it through the hobby from their bedrooms. Do you think that will change?

I think so. If you look at the early days of football on TV and radio, they struggled they'd often grab someone who had a good voice or who just loved the game. Murray Walker for instance started in motorbike racing and went to Brands Hatch every weekend to do some commentary from the track. I see some parallels in e-sports. In the last 10-12 years we've got some people who have come from where I was, bedroom shoutcasting, but now we've also got Twitch which more like bedroom TV. That helps them an awful lot, but the entry level is still very low. Not every tournament has the means to pay people and because of that you end up with a potentially lower level of professionalism.

A lot of the guys that come in now get thrown in at the deep end. I was very lucky I had a few years of doing bedroom shoutcasting and a few years of doing video to, er, not many people. These guys get thrown in on a giant tournament and it's their first time and they go out to 150,000 people and mistakes are very big in that environment. I think it's nice that the entry level is low but it does mean that we're still growing.

If you look at sports on TV right now there are a lot more presenters that have come from professional TV backgrounds. We're on that road, and I suppose my fear as an e-sports person is that we either step up or make way for the pros. We either need to help everyone get up to a good level or eventually when events have enough money they're just going to replace us with professional talent. I don't mind that so much you get the professionalism but I'd much rather have the people that are passionate about their game.

What's your feeling about the vast amount of money in Dota 2 this year? What are the ramifications not just for Dota, but for e-sports in general?

I think we have to wait another year before we figure out what it does to the landscape, but overall its a good thing. It's a sea change in how tournaments can fund themselves, because the majority of the money has come from us. It'd be interesting to see how that falls.

If somebody is trying to break into casting doing the squirrel-league stuff is there anything that people regularly get wrong that they could fix to move up a bracket?

This will sound really harsh, but the biggest problem is that most people see the low entry level and think "yeah, I could do that". In their head, it's like singing in the shower. I like singing in the shower and in my head I sound quite good but if I was to sing publicly people would be crying and asking me to leave the area. Shoutcasting is like that. In your head, you think "I would have said this, or what was this guy talking about, he's talking rubbish." After a while you feel compelled to try it you're probably quite good at it!

The problem is that 90% of the people who go onto Twitch or start up an audio channel have the passion they absolutely have the passion and love their game, but don't have the voice or personality to be able to project properly and entertain someone. What they do is maybe too in-depth.

As a play-by-play commentator, your number one job is to grab someone by the balls, hurl them in and make them love what they're watching. That would be my number one thing. Sometimes, people unfortunately aren't born with the right voice or the right personality to be able to do that. They're very good at knowledge, they're very passionate, but they're unable to project that via a microphone. It's the harshest feedback I can give someone, but I'm always very blunt and honest with people.

I think you can work on other aspects you can be phenomenally good at nine or ten of the other skills that you need that may make up for it, but it's very rare.



E-sports' growth is extraordinary but is that the pattern for the future? Is there a ceiling for how big it can get?

I can talk about what I've seen over the last couple of years. It's always been rises and falls. We went through the years of CPL in the early 2000s and they looked like noone could touch them. Then it fell apart, they lost a lot of contracts, their money didn't come in and they didn't pay people. Suddenly ESWC and WCG are the big things, and then they change their models and go more mobile and they fall off in e-sports terms. Then CGS comes along with $50m and it's all on live TV all over the world Eurosport and Sky Sports and we think okay, maybe we've arrived.

Then that falls apart and we're picking up the pieces again. For me it's always been peaks and troughs until the last three years. 2012, 2013 and 2014 have been always upward in almost every area. But specifically, more than anything else, the biggest change for me over the last fifteen years is the advent of Twitch. If we hadn't got Twitch when we did I'm absolutely certain that we would not be where we are today with the size and scope of e-sports.

To answer your question, it can get bigger but I'm not sure that it can sustain quite the sharp rise that it's had in the last eighteen months. But we're getting the kind of viewership that NHL would be proud of in North America. We're way exceeding things like BMX biking at its peak. That's kind of how I look at e-sports as we've got bigger how do we compare to other niche sports?

It also comes back to what we've been talking about for the last couple of years, which is the change in how we consume media. Most people watching Twitch don't even own a television, and if they do they link it up to the internet and watch Twitch on it. We just don't watch TV in the traditional way any more.

We always talk about the future of e-sports as a transition into other form of media "maybe we'll see this on the TV some day!" Do we still want that?

No! CGS was that moment, it was 2007, we were doing live shows from the Playboy mansion. SXSW. We we're on Eurosport, ESPN, Sky Sports. "Hurrah, we've arrived!" But actually, we missed the point. We didn't need mainstream. The mainstream is now coming to us they're looking at what Twitch is doing, what ESL have done. They're studying us, now. They're starting to understand that we're the forerunners. Gamers were the first ones to pick up social media. The first ones to do livestreaming. The first ones to do shoutcasting. The first ones to do internet radio. We're always the first to adopt new technology and do well with it. I guess we're starting to see our reward, now.

In that case, do we need to stop seeing television success as more 'legitimate' than online success?

In my mind, seeing e-sports clips on Sky Sports is still amazing. It would definitely add legitimacy to what we're doing. Do we need it to succeed, though? No. We don't. Five or six years ago we did, and that's what's changed.

Do you have any thoughts on why MOBAs particularly have picked up this head of steam? Pun not intended.

I think it's a coincidence that it's MOBAs in particular that have risen to the top. It's more the model that they're using the free to play model. They were the first games to use it. There wasn't a FPS until Team Fortress 2, which wasn't a massive e-sports game in the first place. CS:GO will hopefully go free to play I wonder how big that could get if it did. I wonder if we'd be seeing multi-million dollar prize pools for that game and I think we would. We've not had a free to play RTS game either, really.

But team games in particular have always gripped e-sports fans more. The success of Counter-Strike is proof of that. There's room for one-on-one games too, not just in RTS but in FPS. We've been waiting a long time for that Quake Live tried but it didn't really work. Epic have just announced that they're going to bring Unreal Tournament back and that's going to be free-to-play. I'm interested to see what they'll do over the next twelve months.

But it's still the payment model more than the game that leads to this kind of success, which doesn't take away from the fact that MOBAs are terrifically fun to play!

Thanks for your time.

ESL One Frankfurt will run from Saturday the 28th of June to Sunday the 29th at the Commerzbank Arena. If you'd like to attend in person, tickets are available online.