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

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

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

… [visit site to read more]

Valve have announced more information on The International 2015 which, assuming you’ve already clicked on that headline, surely needs no introduction.

We already knew Valve’s Dota 2 tournament was being held between August 3rd and 8th in Seattle; now we know it’s returning to KeyArena, last year’s venue, and we also know when tickets are going on sale and how much they’ll cost. … [visit site to read more]

Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. Today, however, is not that day. Today is the story of the worst Dota setup known to man. Worse than Fear’s desk in the Free To Play movie.>

Whenever I go traveling for work I have my trusty laptop in tow. It’s an old Macbook – old enough that persuading it to do anything useful feels like the digital equivalent of dragging a recalcitrant cat through a river of molasses to a vet appointment.

It wheezes and whirs and can’t hold battery charge for the length of time it takes to write a Dote Night column. At one point, though, it was my main gaming machine and I forced it to run Dota 2.

… [visit site to read more]

The Rekreational was a games industry Dota tournament which played out over the course of about a billion years seven or eight months. It was organised by Indie Megabooth’s Christopher Floyd and IGN’s Mitch Dyer. Here’s what I learned from being a part of it: >

I took part of The Rektreational as one fifth of team Venomancer? I Hardly Know Her! along with Ted ‘PyrionFlax’ Forsyth, Shane ‘shaneomad’ Clarke, (both Dota streamers and casters) and Chris Thursten of chipper RPS fanzine PC Gamer and Phill ‘I work over at Gamasutra now’ Cameron.

We made it through to the finals (the FINALS!!!!) against Pit Lord Meta but after an exhausting best-of-five had to settle for second place. You can watch the final before we continue but I’ve made a list of some of the things being part of a tournament crystallised for me. They’ve definitely made me a better player already which will come in handy, particularly if the tournament returns and we get another shot at glory!

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As we ve all learned the hard way, the longer you leave something you re anxious about, the more terrifying it becomes. (I really must get that thing on my foot looked at). (And the car in for its MOT). (And oh God all those emails to people who wrote nice things whenever I mentioned difficult times). Case in point: Dota 2. … [visit site to read more]

Alec has been asking me to come to Brighton to teach him Dota 2 for a while now. Thus far scheduling had made the trip impossible (plus I’m still not entirely convinced it isn’t an elaborate childcare trap), But then an opportunity presented itself. A chat with their deputy editor let me know that cheery RPS fanzine, PC Gamer had decided to learn to play Dota 2. The one problem was that they needed a team to face off against a team of similar skill, or at least sufficiently inexperienced that four Dota babbies with between four and ten hours of play under their belts wouldn’t just get ground into a fine paste over the course of eight minutes…>

I volunteered RPS.

… [visit site to read more]

Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. THIS WEEK, however, she will be telling you all about her exploits with the All-Hero Challenge:>

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

… [visit site to read more]

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

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

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

… [visit site to read more]

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

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

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

… [visit site to read more]

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

… [visit site to read more]