Post by Kowz on Aug 1, 2011 16:07:11 GMT -8
DotA 2 - Rise of the new CS?
For those of you who did not know about or had the pleasure of playing Warcraft 3's mod Defense of the Ancients you will get the chance to by the end of this year with the release of its sequal DotA 2. On top of that, get your gamer gear ready because being a competitive DotA player went from a tough, worrying about your next meal, job to perhaps one of the most profitable e-sport games in history.
Very little is known about DotA 2, but for those that have played DotA, you can get a pretty good idea of what is in store. Icefrog, the developer of DotA Allstars, is the head of the project at Valve to recreate DotA in its entirety on the source engine. This means players will get their beloved game with a brand new sheen from the source engine (check out CSS, HL2, L4D, etc.) and many new features that are becoming standard with new age versions of the popular WC3 mod: LoL and HoN. Many argue DotA 2 will be the end of its Moba competitors, but will it really spell doom for S2 Games and Riot Games?
The features being implemented into DotA 2 are vaguely referenced, but the general gist from the information gathered, which is very little, is that the game will be host to a whole new era of competitive team e-sports. It has been seen over the recent years that competitive games are generally more successful when it is one individual's wits and skills versus another. The idea of team oriented competitive play brings up questions of liability as a stable income for the typical professional gamer, but this might be a thing of the past.
For the first time in over ten months we get a new tidbit of information from Valve about DotA 2. The top 16 DotA teams in the world will duke it out in an international tournament with a prize-pool over $1,000,000 dollars in DotA 2 to kick-off its release. With first place receiving $1,000k we can assume second and third will have some form of reward. It is also safe to assume that all the teams competing will be given free room and board, travel fees, and even plain old cash for participating.
The last team oriented competitive e-sport this caliber was Counter-Strike nearly a decade ago. It was seen time and time again since then that players who put their time and reputation on the line prefer to play games without the reliance of a team, e.g. Starcraft & Starcraft 2. However, this new million dollar first place prize pool, that is 200k per player, will be the biggest prize pool in E-Sports history. While the general income of the top Starcraft players still overshadows our current Moba pro-scene we can hope if things go the right way DotA 2 it will flourish into a new hallmark E-Sport for the next several years to come.
Now the question: What are we going to do? We have always had a strong stride with our membership when playing DotA, HoN, LoL, etc., but now we can see a foreseeable goal in the distance. While I don't think we have the means to find ourselves at those million dollar tournaments just yet, we may in the future grow a stronger team, player base and membership for this forums to send a team of our players out to those tournaments to compete. Where it local or not, it is a fun idea to ponder. For those of you who are interested in DotA 2 speak your interest here. Depending on our collective interest in the upcoming months we will decide if want to take it in as an official game along with who will lead our crew into the fray.
For those of you who did not know about or had the pleasure of playing Warcraft 3's mod Defense of the Ancients you will get the chance to by the end of this year with the release of its sequal DotA 2. On top of that, get your gamer gear ready because being a competitive DotA player went from a tough, worrying about your next meal, job to perhaps one of the most profitable e-sport games in history.
Very little is known about DotA 2, but for those that have played DotA, you can get a pretty good idea of what is in store. Icefrog, the developer of DotA Allstars, is the head of the project at Valve to recreate DotA in its entirety on the source engine. This means players will get their beloved game with a brand new sheen from the source engine (check out CSS, HL2, L4D, etc.) and many new features that are becoming standard with new age versions of the popular WC3 mod: LoL and HoN. Many argue DotA 2 will be the end of its Moba competitors, but will it really spell doom for S2 Games and Riot Games?
The features being implemented into DotA 2 are vaguely referenced, but the general gist from the information gathered, which is very little, is that the game will be host to a whole new era of competitive team e-sports. It has been seen over the recent years that competitive games are generally more successful when it is one individual's wits and skills versus another. The idea of team oriented competitive play brings up questions of liability as a stable income for the typical professional gamer, but this might be a thing of the past.
For the first time in over ten months we get a new tidbit of information from Valve about DotA 2. The top 16 DotA teams in the world will duke it out in an international tournament with a prize-pool over $1,000,000 dollars in DotA 2 to kick-off its release. With first place receiving $1,000k we can assume second and third will have some form of reward. It is also safe to assume that all the teams competing will be given free room and board, travel fees, and even plain old cash for participating.
The last team oriented competitive e-sport this caliber was Counter-Strike nearly a decade ago. It was seen time and time again since then that players who put their time and reputation on the line prefer to play games without the reliance of a team, e.g. Starcraft & Starcraft 2. However, this new million dollar first place prize pool, that is 200k per player, will be the biggest prize pool in E-Sports history. While the general income of the top Starcraft players still overshadows our current Moba pro-scene we can hope if things go the right way DotA 2 it will flourish into a new hallmark E-Sport for the next several years to come.
Now the question: What are we going to do? We have always had a strong stride with our membership when playing DotA, HoN, LoL, etc., but now we can see a foreseeable goal in the distance. While I don't think we have the means to find ourselves at those million dollar tournaments just yet, we may in the future grow a stronger team, player base and membership for this forums to send a team of our players out to those tournaments to compete. Where it local or not, it is a fun idea to ponder. For those of you who are interested in DotA 2 speak your interest here. Depending on our collective interest in the upcoming months we will decide if want to take it in as an official game along with who will lead our crew into the fray.
