Benaroya Hall isn’t just an amazing place to watch The International because it is a prestigious beautiful building that is home to the Seattle Orchestra, but at game time, it is also filled with friends and of course other Dota 2 fans.

<img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/brew_pubstomp.jpg" width=624 height=405>

While not everyone can fit in the hall, you can still watch with friends and other Dota 2 fans as a group. To help you find events, we’ve put up an <a href="http://www.dota2.com/pubstomps/" title="Official PubStomp page">Official PubStomp</a> page. Here organizers can submit their event to be listed and the community can find ones in their area and sign-up to attend. Make sure to check back for events in your area as more are submitted leading up to The International.

But what if you can’t make it to the event and instead you plan on watching the game from home – only one problem. You don’t own a Windows computer but instead use Mac or Linux? We’ve got you covered. Not only can you now watch games in client on Mac and Linux computers, the complete Dota 2 game is available for Mac and Linux players.
<a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/570/">Grab it here</a>.

<a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/570/"><img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/applelinux.jpg" border=0 width=624 height=405> </a>

Now that the what and where are covered, here is the when everyone keeps asking for.

The International Official Schedule
Group Stage Days
August 3: 9AM -> 10PM
August 4: 9AM -> 10PM
August 5: 9AM -> 2PM

Main Event at Benaroya Hall
August 7: 12PM-> ~9-11PM
August 8: 12PM-> ~9-11PM
August 9: 12PM-> ~9-11PM
August 10: 12PM-> ~7-11PM
August 11: 12PM-> ~6-9 PM

Since this is a live sporting event, the ending times may vary. All times are listed in PST.

What if you already knew all of this – how about this one? <a href="http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=421525">Team Liquid Merchandise </a> will be available at The International and Valve store once The International 2013 kicks off.

Benaroya Hall isn’t just an amazing place to watch The International because it is a prestigious beautiful building that is home to the Seattle Orchestra, but at game time, it is also filled with friends and of course other Dota 2 fans.



While not everyone can fit in the hall, you can still watch with friends and other Dota 2 fans as a group. To help you find events, we’ve put up an Official PubStomp page. Here organizers can submit their event to be listed and the community can find ones in their area and sign-up to attend. Make sure to check back for events in your area as more are submitted leading up to The International.

But what if you can’t make it to the event and instead you plan on watching the game from home – only one problem. You don’t own a Windows computer but instead use Mac or Linux? We’ve got you covered. Not only can you now watch games in client on Mac and Linux computers, the complete Dota 2 game is available for Mac and Linux players.
Grab it here.



Now that the what and where are covered, here is the when everyone keeps asking for.

The International Official Schedule
Group Stage Days
August 3: 9AM -> 10PM
August 4: 9AM -> 10PM
August 5: 9AM -> 2PM

Main Event at Benaroya Hall
August 7: 12PM-> ~9-11PM
August 8: 12PM-> ~9-11PM
August 9: 12PM-> ~9-11PM
August 10: 12PM-> ~7-11PM
August 11: 12PM-> ~6-9 PM

Since this is a live sporting event, the ending times may vary. All times are listed in PST.

What if you already knew all of this – how about this one? Team Liquid Merchandise will be available at The International and Valve store once The International 2013 kicks off.

When we first announced the <a href="http://blog.dota2.com/2013/05/introducing-the-interactive-compendium/">Interactive Compendium</a>, we hoped it would be something that Dota players would be interested in. Shortly afterwards, we were forced to admit we underestimated <a href="http://blog.dota2.com/2013/05/stretch-goal-two-completed/">the community's response to it</a>. Upon reflection, we decided that the community was clearly sending us a message - so we spent the next two months adding more features to the <a href="http://www.dota2.com/international/compendium/">Compendium</a>.

With the International only three weeks away, we thought we'd cover some of the things we've added. If the last time you looked inside the Compendium was back when it first shipped, we hope you find some of these additions interesting.

<strong>THE INTERNATIONAL FANTASY CHALLENGE</strong>
Assemble a fantasy team of players from those attending The International. As they play in the tournament, your fantasy team will earn points. At the closing of the tournament, each of your fantasy teams will earn you an item based on its performance. The in-game UI tracks the points earned by your fantasy players, so that you can easily compare and compete with your friends. Leaderboards and highlights on fantasy teams will displayed at both the International web site and the event itself.

<img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/inline_compendium_2013_fantasychall.jpg">

<strong>PLAYER CARDS</strong>
Collect trading cards of your favorite players at The International, and stamp them into the Compendium's team pages. Collect an entire team and earn more customization options for your International Courier. Trade your extra player cards with your friends to complete the whole set, and bag yourself a mythical crab mount as well.

<img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/inline_compendium_2013_playercards.jpg">

<strong>PREDICT THE FUTURE</strong>
Compete with your friends to make accurate predictions on many results in the tournament. With seven pages of predictions to make, there's an endless amount of statistical analysis you can do to prove you knew what was going to happen all along.

<a href="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/inline_compendium_2013_predictions_full.jpg"><img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/inline_compendium_2013_predict.jpg"></a>

<strong>SOLO CHAMPIONSHIP AND ALL-STAR MATCH</strong>
Vote on the players you'd like to see participate in a Solo Championship to determine who's the greatest solo mid-lane player in the world. If you haven't yet, don't forget to also vote on the ten players you'd like to see in the All-Star Match.

<strong>NEW REWARDS</strong>
Along with your compendium itself, you also receive a number of extra bonuses: a limited edition 125% XP Battle Bonus that lasts until the International is over, an International Smeevil courier with customization capabilities, and new taunt animations for several Heroes.

<img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/inline_compendium_2013_rewards.jpg">

If you're interested in more in-depth details, check out the <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=144566542" target="_blank">The International 2013 Interactive Compendium Guide</a> that Jimo and <a href="http://www.cyborgmatt.com/" target="_blank">Cyborgmatt</a> put together.

When we first announced the Interactive Compendium, we hoped it would be something that Dota players would be interested in. Shortly afterwards, we were forced to admit we underestimated the community's response to it. Upon reflection, we decided that the community was clearly sending us a message - so we spent the next two months adding more features to the Compendium.

With the International only three weeks away, we thought we'd cover some of the things we've added. If the last time you looked inside the Compendium was back when it first shipped, we hope you find some of these additions interesting.

THE INTERNATIONAL FANTASY CHALLENGE
Assemble a fantasy team of players from those attending The International. As they play in the tournament, your fantasy team will earn points. At the closing of the tournament, each of your fantasy teams will earn you an item based on its performance. The in-game UI tracks the points earned by your fantasy players, so that you can easily compare and compete with your friends. Leaderboards and highlights on fantasy teams will displayed at both the International web site and the event itself.



PLAYER CARDS
Collect trading cards of your favorite players at The International, and stamp them into the Compendium's team pages. Collect an entire team and earn more customization options for your International Courier. Trade your extra player cards with your friends to complete the whole set, and bag yourself a mythical crab mount as well.



PREDICT THE FUTURE
Compete with your friends to make accurate predictions on many results in the tournament. With seven pages of predictions to make, there's an endless amount of statistical analysis you can do to prove you knew what was going to happen all along.



SOLO CHAMPIONSHIP AND ALL-STAR MATCH
Vote on the players you'd like to see participate in a Solo Championship to determine who's the greatest solo mid-lane player in the world. If you haven't yet, don't forget to also vote on the ten players you'd like to see in the All-Star Match.

NEW REWARDS
Along with your compendium itself, you also receive a number of extra bonuses: a limited edition 125% XP Battle Bonus that lasts until the International is over, an International Smeevil courier with customization capabilities, and new taunt animations for several Heroes.



If you're interested in more in-depth details, check out the The International 2013 Interactive Compendium Guide that Jimo and Cyborgmatt put together.

<a href="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/keyart_beastmaster.jpg"><img class="aligncenter" alt="" src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/inline_beastmaster.jpg" width="100%" /></a>

We are now approaching the two year anniversary of Dota 2’s limited release, and we feel like we’re ready to expand to include anyone who wants to give it a try. In the case of Dota 2, or other games with large backend systems that support them, this isn’t quite as simple as pressing the big red launch button, then sitting back and watching, because of the large infrastructure they rely upon.

As a result, we’re going to take a different approach to the launch of Dota 2 than we have with our previous titles. Our goals are to create little disruption for the existing Dota 2 audience, to bring new players into a system that will work reliably, and to not immediately melt down all of our datacenters. We aren’t sure how long this is going to take, but in our experience everything with Dota ends up involving a lot more people than we predict, so we’re going to ease our way into it.

<a href="http://blog.dota2.com/2013/06/transitioning-into-launch-mode/">Read the full blog post</a>

We are now approaching the two year anniversary of Dota 2’s limited release, and we feel like we’re ready to expand to include anyone who wants to give it a try. In the case of Dota 2, or other games with large backend systems that support them, this isn’t quite as simple as pressing the big red launch button, then sitting back and watching, because of the large infrastructure they rely upon.

As a result, we’re going to take a different approach to the launch of Dota 2 than we have with our previous titles. Our goals are to create little disruption for the existing Dota 2 audience, to bring new players into a system that will work reliably, and to not immediately melt down all of our datacenters. We aren’t sure how long this is going to take, but in our experience everything with Dota ends up involving a lot more people than we predict, so we’re going to ease our way into it.

Read the full blog post

<img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/inline_communication_reports.jpg" width="100%">

One goal we have for Dota 2 is to have as many people playing and enjoying the game as possible. To do so, we suspected we'd need to encourage behaviors that have positive effects on the game and community and discourage behaviors that have the opposite effect- like causing other players to play less or not at all or to discourage them from trying out the game in the first place. One of the things we also suspected was that we wouldn't be able to tackle that kind of problem without releasing the game - it's the sort of thing where you need a lot of data to know whether or not your changes are having any effect.

Now that Dota 2 has been out for a while, and gathering a nice mix of new and original Dota 1 players, we're able to gather data to find answers. One of the first things we dug into were the factors that contributed to a player quitting. While it might seem obvious that someone is more likely to quit if they have a negative experience in a game, we've learned in the past that we really need to test our assumptions to make sure we're not fixing the wrong thing. Interestingly, some of the factors we assumed would affect leaving didn't - for instance, the outcome of matches doesn't correlate at all to the likelihood of quitting. Losing a bunch of Dota 2 games doesn't seem to cause people to quit. But one thing that did stand out in the data was the amount of negative communication between players. Put simply, you are more likely to quit if there is abusive chat going on in your games.

So, further investment in discouraging negative communications seemed like it would be valuable. But where to draw the line? Should we allow all (potentially) abusive behavior in-game, or should we work to diminish it and push players more towards the positive and collaborative side of things? We don't want to restrict anyone's speech nor prevent anyone from speaking their mind, but for everyone who feels slighted by their inability to say exactly what they want to their teammates or opponents in-game, there is someone on the receiving end of that criticism who is having just as bad an experience (or worse).

After some discussion internally, we reached the decision that it seemed in the best interest of the Dota community to not push away players who actually enjoyed the game. As a consequence, this meant restricting the ability for some members of the community to say whatever they want. To put it another way, we only want people to quit playing if they actually just don't like the game. That thinking led us to the current communication ban system. Its goal is to reduce the toxicity that occurs verbally or via text chat, and as a result, to avoid causing players to quit the game solely due to negative communication experiences.

Now that it's been live for over a month, we're able to see some of the effects it's having, and the conversation the community is having around it, and we felt we should answer some of the questions we're seeing out there and pass on some of the data we have.

First, a couple of notes on the implementation:
<ul>
<li>Multiple people ganging up on you to report you in the same game has no effect on whether or not you are banned. We are looking at patterns of behavior over time only.</li>
<li>If you are currently communication banned, any communication reports you receive in that time period do not contribute towards, nor result in additional bans.</li>
</ul>The system is not yet ideal, but we felt it was better to gather data on this first step before trying to complicate it with extra nuance. We've changed the algorithm several times already, and we'll continue to update it in response to the community's feedback, and the data we're gathering.

Read the rest of the post on the <a href="http://blog.dota2.com/2013/05/communication-reports/">Dota 2 blog</a>.

One goal we have for Dota 2 is to have as many people playing and enjoying the game as possible. To do so, we suspected we'd need to encourage behaviors that have positive effects on the game and community and discourage behaviors that have the opposite effect- like causing other players to play less or not at all or to discourage them from trying out the game in the first place. One of the things we also suspected was that we wouldn't be able to tackle that kind of problem without releasing the game - it's the sort of thing where you need a lot of data to know whether or not your changes are having any effect.

Now that Dota 2 has been out for a while, and gathering a nice mix of new and original Dota 1 players, we're able to gather data to find answers. One of the first things we dug into were the factors that contributed to a player quitting. While it might seem obvious that someone is more likely to quit if they have a negative experience in a game, we've learned in the past that we really need to test our assumptions to make sure we're not fixing the wrong thing. Interestingly, some of the factors we assumed would affect leaving didn't - for instance, the outcome of matches doesn't correlate at all to the likelihood of quitting. Losing a bunch of Dota 2 games doesn't seem to cause people to quit. But one thing that did stand out in the data was the amount of negative communication between players. Put simply, you are more likely to quit if there is abusive chat going on in your games.

So, further investment in discouraging negative communications seemed like it would be valuable. But where to draw the line? Should we allow all (potentially) abusive behavior in-game, or should we work to diminish it and push players more towards the positive and collaborative side of things? We don't want to restrict anyone's speech nor prevent anyone from speaking their mind, but for everyone who feels slighted by their inability to say exactly what they want to their teammates or opponents in-game, there is someone on the receiving end of that criticism who is having just as bad an experience (or worse).

After some discussion internally, we reached the decision that it seemed in the best interest of the Dota community to not push away players who actually enjoyed the game. As a consequence, this meant restricting the ability for some members of the community to say whatever they want. To put it another way, we only want people to quit playing if they actually just don't like the game. That thinking led us to the current communication ban system. Its goal is to reduce the toxicity that occurs verbally or via text chat, and as a result, to avoid causing players to quit the game solely due to negative communication experiences.

Now that it's been live for over a month, we're able to see some of the effects it's having, and the conversation the community is having around it, and we felt we should answer some of the questions we're seeing out there and pass on some of the data we have.

First, a couple of notes on the implementation:

• Multiple people ganging up on you to report you in the same game has no effect on whether or not you are banned. We are looking at patterns of behavior over time only.
• If you are currently communication banned, any communication reports you receive in that time period do not contribute towards, nor result in additional bans.

The system is not yet ideal, but we felt it was better to gather data on this first step before trying to complicate it with extra nuance. We've changed the algorithm several times already, and we'll continue to update it in response to the community's feedback, and the data we're gathering.

Read the rest of the post on the Dota 2 blog.

After some thoughtful games of Dota, we came up with four new stretch goals that we'll be updating the Compendium with tomorrow. The initial stretch goals for the Compendium were at $1,700,000, $1,850,000 and $2,600,000 granting a new Battle Booster, improved Courier upgrades, and an Immortal item.

<a href="http://www.dota2.com/international/compendium"><img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/inline_stretchgoals.jpg"></a>

The new goals are:

<strong>$2,000,000</strong> - A custom HUD skin for all Compendium owners

<strong>$2,200,000</strong> - A Taunt item with a brand new animation for all Compendium owners

<strong>$2,400,000</strong> - Vote on participants in an 8 player Solo Championship (1 vs 1) at <i>The International</i>

<strong>$3,200,000</strong> - Choose the next hero we release

Don't miss Day 3 of Western Qualifiers starting tomorrow at 14:30 CEST. Tomorrow's games will feature Evil Geniuses, mousesports, ICCup and Qpad Red Pandas. You can watch the game in the client or at <a href="http://qualifiers.thegdstudio.com/" target="_blank">The GDStudio</a>.

After some thoughtful games of Dota, we came up with four new stretch goals that we'll be updating the Compendium with tomorrow. The initial stretch goals for the Compendium were at $1,700,000, $1,850,000 and $2,600,000 granting a new Battle Booster, improved Courier upgrades, and an Immortal item.



The new goals are:

$2,000,000 - A custom HUD skin for all Compendium owners

$2,200,000 - A Taunt item with a brand new animation for all Compendium owners

$2,400,000 - Vote on participants in an 8 player Solo Championship (1 vs 1) at The International

$3,200,000 - Choose the next hero we release

Don't miss Day 3 of Western Qualifiers starting tomorrow at 14:30 CEST. Tomorrow's games will feature Evil Geniuses, mousesports, ICCup and Qpad Red Pandas. You can watch the game in the client or at The GDStudio.