Official statement for GamesCom DotA 2 tournament from Valve

Valve just confirmed what we at DotA 2 Talk have been speculating for months now - an official preview of DotA 2 along with "The International" DotA 2 tournament with a winning cash prize of $1 million - the biggest prize purse any e-Sports tournament has seen so far!

The International announcement was posted on the official DotA 2 blog, while a poster with some details of the tournament and participating teams is posted on the official DotA 2 website.

The world's sixteen most elite DotA teams competing for the first ever DotA 2 championshipAugust 17th - 21st 2011DotA 2 shown publicly for the first timeGroup stage double-elimination playoff formatWinner takes 1million USD in prize moneyTournament hardware provided by NvidiaLive worldwide video broadcast in four languages
Gabe Newells statement:
Quote

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The International teams talk about DotA 2

« on: August 12, 2011, 01:27:08 AM »GosuGamers.net has featured a series of interviews with 'The International' participant teams regarding their tournament preparations and DotA 2. Teams 'Mineski Infinity' and 'Scythe' have been playing DotA 2 in preparation for GamesCom, and they briefly talk about their experience with the game so far. The following are excerpts relating to DotA 2; for full interview see source links at the end of this article.



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IceFrog announces first DotA 2 fan art by Kunkka

« on: August 13, 2011, 07:49:57 PM »Today we get a little more teasing in the visual department with IceFrog breaking his almost 1-month silence by announcing Kunkka's first piece of fan art for DotA 2.


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First in-game screenshots of DotA 2 leaked

« on: August 14, 2011, 02:02:18 PM »Hot on the heels of the first fan art by Kunkka are some leaked in-game screenshots that are said to be from DotA 2.




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Glimpses of GamesCom from Tobi Wan

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GamesCom 2011 The International - end of day 1

« on: Today at 12:03:32 AM »It is end of day 1 of The International DotA 2 tournament where the public got to see DotA 2 in action in all its glory for the first time since it was announced. Today featured the round robin group stage where each team played every other team in the group of 4. Results are below, from the official website:



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Gabe talks about DotA 2 beta, release date in 2012 and pricing

In an interview with eurogamer.net Gabe Newell has revealed a few big pointers about DotA 2 that we have been discussing since it's announcement.

DotA 2 invitation-only beta to start soon after GamesCom
Valve plans to launch an invitation beta after the Gamescom tournament ends. After that a public beta will launch.

DotA 2 launch pushed back to 2012!
Talking about how the beta will work, Gabe said:
QuoteWe'll just go into progressively wider and wider distribution. I don't think it'll be shipped until next year. But then, with a game like this, you just keep shipping. You add new heroes. You try out new game modes. You are constantly tweaking item and hero balance. It's very much an ongoing thing.

Game polish is priority - no pricing decided yet
Gabe stressed that Valve is really looking at polishing the game and making it something the community really accepts and enjoys before they start thinking of setting a pricing model for the game.

QuoteCould Dota 2 end up going free-to-play, like Team Fortress 2? "We don't know. We don't have plans yet," Newell said. "The problem isn't to figure out what your monetisation strategy is. If you have something with a super careful monetisation strategy and it sucks, it doesn't matter.

"The most important thing is to do something that resonates well with the existing Dota players and creates a vehicle for new players to join into the community. That's the hard problem. That's the interesting one to solve."

Community and beta tester feedback is important
For those unsure about the current user interface / icons and general feel of the game, Valve is all about community feedback!

QuoteIceFrog has a bunch of testers he's worked with as long as he's been doing development. The first thing we've been working with is addressing their concerns. We've been through four or five different versions of the user interface, getting it to the point where we've addressed the feedback we've got from those guys.

For us now, this tournament is a really good step. A bunch of the features we're building in the design of Dota 2 related to being able to put on a tournament like this. There's a bunch of stat stuff. There's a bunch of website development, support for simultaneous, four-language broadcasting. This was the next step.

Source:
Eurogamer: Newell: Dota 2 won't ship until 2012« Last Edit: Today at 07:52:51 PM by Rav »

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