Heroes of the Storm is a bit like a game of Dota 2 where you don't get any items, your abilities don't carry much power, and you spend most of your time rushing from one end of the map to another trying to secure some kind of strategic advantage before your enemy does.

Heroes of the Storm, then, is either deeply unlike Dota or exactly like playing solo ranked as a support.

That's a joke, but I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between the two games over the last week. Reviewing Heroes meant playing a lot of it, but I haven't stopped playing simply because that process is now over. I enjoy it, both as a way to play with friends who would never otherwise touch a game like this and as a competitive challenge in its own right. It's less challenging than Dota 2, to be sure—and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that this was part of its appeal—but Heroes of the Storm is not without a few lessons to impart.

In particular, I think it does a very good job of emphasising the importance of strategic movement. In a lot of Dota 2 matches, the lanes are 'sticky'. Players really don't want to leave them behind to secure something else. Lanes are where gold and experience come from. It's where the enemies you've come to expect reside. Everything else can seem dangerous, unpredictable, inefficient. The attitude most common to Dota 2 pub players is 'let me get some farm and then I'll help'; this goes hand in hand with 'I'd love it if this laning phase lasted forty minutes, thanks.'

Heroes of the Storm matches begin at around the same point that the laning phase normally starts to break down. Power-wise, it feels like controlling a level 4 or 5 hero: you have all of your abilities, and but none of them are operating at the top level yet. There are also things you need to achieve beyond farming creeps and you should be making a plan to achieve them right away.

The sense that the lanes don't matter is sometimes misinterpreted as 'the game doesn't matter' and I suspect that this is related to a Dota player's tendency to over value their time in lane. Unless you're a hard carry, you should be moving. You should be the ones changing it up, not allowing your opponent to drag you around the map on their terms. Even if you are playing a hard carry, knowing where to be to maximise your gold-per-minute is your most important skill: and the answer isn't always 'tucked away on the safelane.'

Heroes of the Storm is a refreshing way to shake yourself out of that mindset. Not only does it feel guiltily liberating to be able to teamfight from the first minute of the game, it also encourages you to return to Dota 2 with a more open mind about where you can make plays and when. This is particularly true for support players, where the difference between 'competent' and 'good' is pretty much 'do they have an impact beyond the lane we put them in.'

Put it this way: there's no better way to boost morale in a solo ranked Dota 2 match as a support than by successfully smoke-ganking mid. The moment their mid is calling you a tryhard is the moment you have done your job. At its best, Heroes of the Storm is pretty much 'ganking mid, the game': a series of dramatic rotations enabled by smaller maps and an increased emphasis on securing map objectives.

This has got me thinking about the relationship that other post-Dota games have with the original. It says something about the genre, I think, that the quality of life for support players tends to be either a little or a lot higher in other games. This first occurred to me in Smite, where the supports I enjoy are beefy front-line initiators as well as the guys who stick down the wards—a vision of a parallel universe where Magnus was a viable position five. In Heroes, it struck me the moment I realised I didn't need to babysit anybody.

The support role is a good example of Dota's organic, community-driven growth. The role sits outside of most of the systems that are used to measure success in the game. Neither kills, items, gold or experience mark out a good support performance from a bad one (although they help.) Supports triumph or fail based on their ability to engineer an overall victory, often sacrificing their own personal gains so that somebody else can get ahead. The characters that can fill this role are the ones that need less gold, experience and so on. Therefore, they're the ones that engage less with the basic economics of a Dota match. The techniques that support players learn are often strange and unintuitive for exactly this reason: in a game that is basically about creating the most powerful character over time, they actively avoid doing so.

Other games bring the support role more in line with the themes and goals of the game as a whole. They're able to do this because of simpler and more proscriptive overall designs, and this in turn reduces the potential for the community to invent something truly new—to reinvent what support means on their own terms. It's this potential for creativity that enshrines Dota 2 at the top of the genre, for me, but I've come to appreciate the way that playing newer games can enhance your understanding when you return to the motherland. Rather than write off Heroes as a 'lesser Dota', then, see it as 'single-focus Dota': a way to quickly encounter specific strategic concepts that will benefit you in the long run.

That it's also a lot easier is a welcome bonus.

To read more Three Lane Highway, click here.

When the world is naught but ash billowing through the cosmos, one fact will stand immortal. Valve is very good at selling internet wizard books.

Thanks to the Compendium—the Dota 2 Electronic Annual—the prize pool for this year's The International stands at a staggering $11,513,349. Only it's not. That's the total right now as I write this. When you go to look, it'll be higher. See, it's already at $11,531,095.

Last year's International ended at a 'mere' $10,930,698. This year, Dota 2 players have bested that amount in only half the time.

There's still plenty of time to raise more, too. Right now, Valve has stretch goals stretching out to the $15 million mark. Now that the $11 million stretch goal has been smashed, Compendium owners will receive a desert terrain item that enables a new-look map.

Some quick money maths: Valve's initial stake in the prize pool was $1.6 million. That means, as of my last check, the community has pitched in $9.93 million of the prize pool total. Except only 25% of the Compendium money goes to the prize pool, meaning the total amount spent on internet wizard books this year is $39,724,380. And growing.

Photo: Kelly Kline/ESL

James Lampkin is the senior manager of pro gaming at ESL. I spoke to him about ESL One Frankfurt 2015, the implications of Valve's recently-announced Majors series, and why esports doesn't need to court a mainstream audience. Images courtesy of ESL's official Flickr account.

PCG: What were your main learnings from ESL One Frankfurt last year?

JL: When you're dealing with that many people there are security concerns. We had a snowball effect last year where there was a delay in how many people we could get through the door at the start of the day, so the show got delayed. This year we've changed our entire entry system, we're starting the show a little bit earlier, and we think that's going to keep us on schedule for a best-of-five final.

We also wanted to get more people engaged in activities outside of just sitting and watching and maybe having a beer. We've got a lot of side activities like bull riding and archery, and all these cool little things. Sort of Dota related, so that people can watch a game and maybe take a break after a couple of hours and go do something else.

PCG: Esports events are half sporting events, half fan conventions. Is there a split there for you? Do you consider this a sporting event with that other stuff along as a bonus? Or do you embrace the dual nature of the thing?

JL: It's a dual nature for sure. Our goal through the entire planning of Frankfurt has been to make it a 'festival experience'. We want to bring people there to really celebrate the game. Not just through the games themselves on stage, but everything else that is going on in the venue.

Something we've learned over the years is that when everybody tries to copy the sports model they forget that for a football match you might only be in the stadium for three, maybe four hours total. For an esports event you might be there for twelve to fourteen hours depending on how the day goes. When you're sitting there for that long people get bored, they want to do something else.

Some percentage of the audience is happy to sit there all day, but we think that when you start getting into these really large events you've got to think about everybody else that wants some variety in the day. They want to get some food, they want to try something cool, maybe they want to try a game that's coming out in the future. That's why you start to see these festival experiences cropping up as a collaboration between the sports side of esports and the celebration of the game itself.

PCG: What are your considerations when you decide which teams get an invite?

JL: The invite system is usually based on how teams are performing in other events. If you're watching a lot of Dota most people have their finger on the pulse of the top three or four teams right now. That makes it very easy for us as organisers to look at the landscape and say that these are the teams that deserve a spot on one of the biggest stages in Dota.

The most important part after that for us is the qualification process. At ESL, one of the core principles we have is that we want to give everybody a chance at all levels. We have open qualifiers that seed into deeper qualifiers and allow anybody to have a chance with their team to make it to an event like this. That's really important to us—having the best teams in the world at these events to create the best games possible.

Photo: Helena Kristiansson/ESL

PCG: With that in mind, the interesting case for ESL One this year is Alliance, who have gone through a roster change and a change of fortune since they qualified. What challenges does that present to you, as a showrunner?

JL: We have some rules about how much a team can change, and usually that rule is that up to two of your players can either be a stand-in or have changed since you qualified. Usually we have a discussion with the team through that process.

PCG: But in terms of the changing fortunes of a given team—is it the case that the qualifiers happened when they happened, things have changed, so you move on with the tournament as it is?

JL: Yeah. We have to be respectful of the Dota landscape itself. It's a pretty unique one, when it comes to team stability and where rosters are going. The nature of being an event organiser in Dota is that you need to be pretty agile. It's difficult to have very firm, concrete policies that will stand the test of time when the landscape is constantly changing.

PCG: With that in mind, then, what do you think of Valve's plan to introduce a fixed transfer system for players?

JL: The Valve approach to this is good overall. It's actually going to incentivise teams to stay together. If you just don't get along with your team, most of the time they break up because there's no cost to break ups. What Valve is introducing here is a set of incentives to say "hey, if you keep your team together and you can work through your problems then there's rewards for that". There are rewards for being stable, for investing your time and your energy into keeping that team alive.

That really helps all organisers overall in terms of storytelling. It helps with the fan experience and what we're trying to do with creating a larger sport out of this game.

PCG: What is your view on the Majors and the impact they'll have on the landscape of competitive Dota 2 over the next year?

JL: It's really hard to say because we don't have the details. There's just very minimal details right now. I think that plan overall will probably evolve. I know a lot of tournament organisers and teams will probably give Valve feedback, so it's really hard to say if it's good or bad without knowing what that plan looks like.

I think overall that Valve's intention with the Major system is a good one. I think the job of tournament organisers is to communicate what the possible effects of that system are.

PCG: We go through this cycle of esports chasing after more mainstream acceptance—being shown on ESPN and stuff. Is that a dead end?

JL: Whenever we have the discussion about whether we need to convert people, the very easy answer to that is no. We don't need to convert people because the audience growth in esports is just massive. Consistently breaking records event to event. I have friends back home who I never knew were even involved in gaming telling me about how they're watching our events, how they're following teams now. It's less interesting for me to try to convince my mum and dad to watch esports than it is to convince some of my younger cousins.

That's what we're really interested in right now. It's definitely a generational question, and one that over the next few years will start to solve itself as those stories of 'hey, this is what esports is' start to become old. Rather than the New York Times writing an article about 'what is esports', maybe they're directly reporting on a player transfer, a huge team deal, or an event final.

PCG: What is the goal for ESL over the next few years?

JL: We want to do more stadium events, simple as that. The question of whether you can fill a stadium with esports fans is one that we've answered, and that other people have answered too. Now the question is how many of those events can you do per year. No-one is shocked that a football stadium puts 40,000 people in it. What's more interesting is that a football stadium can put 40,000 people into it every weekend.

The long-term thinking is: if we can put 15,000 people into an arena in Frankfurt, can we do that five or six times a year in the long run? Can we take it around the world in a couple of different venues per month? These are the questions we're asking ourselves. It's a question of 'how many can you do and what does that structure look like overall', rather than 'do you offer the same product every year'.

ESL One Frankfurt is one of the last major Dota 2 LAN events before The International 2015. It's running from Saturday the 20th of June to Sunday the 21st, and will feature a roster of the best Dota 2 teams in the world competing for a prize pool in excess of $250,000.

It takes place in the Commerzbank Arena in Frankfurt - a massive Olympic football stadium with space to house a bunch of activities in addition to the main event. I attended in 2014 and had a really good time: it makes for a great primer for The International, there's lots to do and the standard of the production is high.

Wanna go? You're in luck! We have two pairs of Premium tickets to give away, worth 200 each. These give you access to VIP seating plus free drinks and food for the entire weekend, a goodie bag, signing sessions, your very own Secret Shop and a to-be-revealed in-game item. Premium seats are currently sold out for the event - if you didn't get them before, this might be your last chance.

We're going to be giving these tickets away via a raffle. To enter, stick your e-mail address in the field below. We'll open it up for 24 hours, from 5pm GMT on the 2nd of June to 5pm GMT on the 3rd. At that point, two lucky winners will receive their tickets via e-mail.

This giveaway is available to everybody, but winners will need to arrange their own transport and accommodation for the event.

If you miss out on a ticket this time around, keep an eye out for PC Gamer's daily match coverage. Until then, the ESL Dota 2 Twitter account is posting updates in the run-up to the event.

Good luck, and have fun!