Author’s Note: This recap was made possible with contributions by Andres Greer.
Friday was the first day of the Main Event at Dota 2’s biggest tournament, The International. The three matches on Friday were played in the Winner’s Bracket with three of the four teams in the bracket knocked into the Loser’s Bracket. How exactly did the day play out, you ask? Luckily you are in the right place to get caught up!
Big news for fans of eSports, as Valve has partnered with ESPN to broadcast Dota 2's largest tournament, The International. Partnering with the traditional sports juggernaut is a move that could potentially increase the legitimacy of eSports from an outsider's perspective. Valve's own Erik Johnson had this to say about the partnership:
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
If you are a stranger to esports or the internet, you may have missed that Dota 2’s largest tournament “The International” has been underway for over a week now. You may be wondering how in the world you could catch up with all that has gone on before the main event begins on the 18th. Fret not, you have come to the right place to get you caught up right before the Main Event begins.
Dota 2's biggest tournament, The International, has surpassed an overall prize pool of $10 million. The massive size of the prize pool should be mostly credited to dedicated Dota fans who have contributed nearly $9 million so far. The base of the pool was contributed by the game's developer Valve which clocked in at $1.6 million.
"Fantasy Dota is a game that you can play with up to nine of your friends, where each of you forms teams made up of pro players to compete against each other, earning points for your team based on how each of your pro players performs in tournament matches."
Valve introduced and tested this out back in February, and now it’s ready for action. Starting on May 19th, Season 1 of Fantasy Dota runs for 70 days until July 28th. If you have a Fantasy Ticket from the The International Compendium, you can start drafting your fantasy teams now.
Welcome to our first-ever Dota 2 patch analysis here at ZAM! We plan to have an installment in this series every time there is a significant patch to the Dota 2 main client. On a side note, this is open to debate and that is the best facet of doing these features so that we can gauge what the community feels about the patch as well. With that little introduction out of the way, let’s jump right into our analysis!
The latest Dota 2 update is here and with it Valve aims to roll out a host of new features. After the entire Diretide fiasco, Valve has released two giant updates that have been aimed at squashing the community's biggest problems with the game while also adding waves of new features that aim to add depth to the overall Dota 2 experience.
Major League Gaming will be kicking off its 2013 championship next weekend, starting on the 22nd of November. The three day event will have over $150,000 in prizes up for grabs.
Valve has once again put out a very impressive update to Dota 2, the Three Spirits Update. In this update, Valve gives us two new heroes: Kaolin the Earth Spirit and Xin the Ember Spirit, who join their fellow elemental Raijin the Storm Spirit.
