The Official Live On Three Thread - Page 20

gh0un

601 Posts

August 02 2011 23:12 GMT

#381

On August 03 2011 07:54 Torpedo.Vegas wrote:
For DOTA to go big, it seems like the type of game that needs a lot of support in order for it to really take off. Like in the form of maps that highlight various kinds of Character/Item and Character/Character relationships. Perhaps Valve can support it well, but we shall see.

Also, how duped is DoTA? I know China isn't really the poster child for respecting I.P.'s so it the DoTA community scattered across several games or has it stayed together?

Thats one of the biggest problems (which finally will be resolved with DotA 2).
The DotA community is scattered across an (what looks to me like) infinity amount of unofficial platforms, because the only thing that is close to an official platform is battlenet, however battlenet sucks.

Why does battlenet suck?
First off, battlenet for wc3 imposes a 250ms delay on every game that is being played on it.
0.25 seconds delay is not a good condition to play such a competitive game with.
Thats why several third party programs popped up that would alter the delay according to the hosts wishes.
Then blizzard came and banned everyone that used those programs, with the explanation that it was giving them an unfair advantage.
No it doesnt make any sense, as the host doesnt have any delay anyways.
The hosts were forced to use those programs because people were inclined to leave their games as soon as they noticed that the host wasnt using some kind of delay reducer program.

There was a time (and to some extend its still like this) when games in the lobby had to be called "dota -apso -lc" (lc standing for listchecker, one of those delay reducer programs), or "dota -apso -dr" (delayreducer), or "dota -apso -vck" (visualcustomkick, also a delay reducer).
There were plenty of delay reducer programs, and all kind of other programs that offered features that were useful for hosting games, or in general, to enable people to get games going.
Then blizzard came and banned everyone.

Many people fleed from battlenet, rightfully so.
Shortly after, a huge amount of bots popped up, all of which were able to reduce delay.
People joined those games... until blizzard decided to ban those bots aswell.
For some time there were no bots and no third party programs.

Some time later, bots managed to circumwent blizzards way of spotting them, which is where the story ends actually.
Currently there are almost exclusively bot games on the custom game list (the customgamelist of wc3 is only able to show the 20 most recent games, which of course is occupied by bots because they refresh their games faster than humans).
Finding a particular game is impossible, because wc3 has no way of filtering games.
Normal hosts are back to using their third party programs (otherwise they cant compete with delayfree bots and their abusive way of refreshing their games), because by now blizzard stopped caring about custom hosts when there are plenty of bots they cant ban either.

So the only platform that could be called official, is shit.
There is no other official or inofficial plattform, everyone is scattered on all the other platforms.
I tried garena and rgc, but didnt particularly like them, because the delay is 100 over there (garena is simulating an lan environment, wc3´s preset delay for lan games is 100, online games 250) and thats still way too much for me.
Thus im back on battlenet, hosting my own games with my own third party programs to make the delay bearable.

As you can see, such a situation is not the best fundament for a game to be a great esports title.
Its hurting esports. (had to do it xD).

dacthehork

United States2000 Posts

August 02 2011 23:15 GMT

#382

On August 03 2011 05:01 djWHEAT wrote:
In preparation for the upcoming LO3 discussion on DotA, I would appreciate it if the well versed members of the community (which many of you have demonstrated you are) could help answer the following questions. Keep in mind, these are not meant to be condescending or "set up" questions, after reading everything in this thread, these are the things I'm still a bit unsure about. Instead of making assumptions, I'd rather hear from you guys.

You can also send your answers to: djWHEAT @ OneMoreGame.tv

- Of the established leagues and competitions, who is the largest, what is the frequency of said events, and how much prize money has been given out (average) during these competitions?
- DotA is popular in Asia, so are a million really bad MMO's... what efforts have been made to bring DotA OUT of Asia to other countries? (i.e. GomTV began English broadcasting several years ago). Does it need to leave Asia?
- Who is the Day[9] of DotA?
- With such a popular community, teams, etc... why haven't we seen DotA showcased at well-known international eSports competitions? I know that it made some appearances at WCG, ESWC, and Blizzard events, but these were typically "one off" type competitions?
- Does the population of Chinese players (which sounds like it's the biggest landscape of players) rely on non-legit versions of WarCraft 3: TFT? I always felt like one of the biggest issues with the advancement of DotA dating back to like BlizzCon 2005 was the fact that new players had to purchase WC3... this was also a problem with games like Quake 3. I'm just curious how that works in China (and everywhere else for that matter)
- Is the DotA community satisfied living in a self-contained bubble? It seems like other eSports games/audiences are fairly uneducated when it comes to the history Rotegirte provided in this thread.
- Why do you think there are people (like myself) who have extensive knowledge in eSports, yet don't know much about DotA? Is this the fault of the individual? Or is it the fault of the collective DotA community? Or is there no fault at all and it's just two paths that have not crossed?
- If someone heard about DotA and wanted to get into it at the most basic level, which website would you send them to? If I had no one to ask, how hard would it be for me to find? Would it be PLAYDOTA.com?
- SC2 and Street Fighter 4 have been two games that have proven that they can carry an active audience of people who do not even play the game. Do you think this audience already exists in the DotA scene and if not, do you think it can?
- Who is your favorite team?
- Which country do you believe has the largest population of players and fans?
- As a DotA fan, do you follow any other eSports titles? If so, which ones and how often?

- Of the established leagues and competitions, who is the largest, what is the frequency of said events, and how much prize money has been given out (average) during these competitions?
SMM, prizepool $32,000 (2010), $40,000 (2011). It's the largest event and happens once a year. Considered basically the evo of dota. WDC is also very large with $40k avg prizepool. Farm4fame, ADC, G-league, ECL, dreamhacks, Intel Challenges, MyM always hosts big tournaments and they have a great history with MyM Pride tournaments, Star Wars (china lan event), WCG side event, etc. Average prize pool is usually 5,000-10,000 dollars . The frequency of events is pretty high, especially in China. G-league (china) for instance had a $23,000 first place prize for dota and very large live crowd / stadium set up. There is definitely more prize money than NA/EU SC2.

- DotA is popular in Asia, so are a million really bad MMO's... what efforts have been made to bring DotA OUT of Asia to other countries? (i.e. GomTV began English broadcasting several years ago). Does it need to leave Asia?

JOINDOTA.COM is a business venture, with tobiwon (caster for gamescom) living fulltime in germany, doing shoutcasts every day. (website is a temp one) http://www.dotacommentaries.com/ another commentary group. Also you really show ignorance on this one. DOTA TV will be integrated into Dota 2 with unbelievably good features (shoutcastings, unlimited spectators, inbuilt delay, search options for what to watch, and observe any public game).

- Who is the Day[9] of DotA?
There is a caster I also dislike for dota who does a dota daily show directly copying day9 even with unneeded facial shots. http://blip.tv/Nebu1a

- With such a popular community, teams, etc... why haven't we seen DotA showcased at well-known international eSports competitions? I know that it made some appearances at WCG, ESWC, and Blizzard events, but these were typically "one off" type competitions?
There are no well-known international esports competitions it hasnt been at that I can think of. dreamhack, WCG, g-league, SMM finals... it's been at every even ESL.

- Who is your favorite team?
FTD circa SMM 2009

Also please djwheat never cast a dota game

mdma-_-

Nauru1213 Posts

August 02 2011 23:23 GMT

#383

Edit: unfortunate double post : (

mdma-_-

Nauru1213 Posts

August 02 2011 23:23 GMT

#384

- The biggest international events this year will be WDC (taking place in china, prizepool is 50.000 Dollars), SGNDT (Tradionally the biggest Dota tournement taking place in Malaysia, 40.000 Dollars) and ESWC (Paris, only big tradional tournament that includes Dota, prize money not yet announced)

All these tournaments are yearly. WDC is now happening the second time, Its the third for ESWC to include Dota and SGNDT has been happening since 2008 i think.

On top of that there are various china only events. For example G league (27.000 Dollars), WCG China, Stars War (5.200 Dollars)

In Europe most of the tournaments are 1000-5000 Dollar online tournaments. For example Farm for Fame, Pick League, Battle of Masters, MYM Prime, Darer Tournament. the most notable online tournament was RGC, which featured more than a 1000 teams (5000+ players) and a 30.000 Dollar prize pool. (concluded November 2010)

The most notable regular European Dota Lan is ASUS in Kiev (ASUS Summer will feature a 6.300 Dollar prizepool) , which happens 3 or 4 times a year (not sure). On top of that we had OSPL Spring in Kazakstan (15000 Dollar prizepool)

SEA also has various smaller Lans with 2000-5000 Dollar prizepools. For example WCG Asia (took place in singapore last year i think, 5000 Dollars) or I-City (Malaysia, 5000 Dollars)

NA Dota is pretty much dead.

- WDC is a big effort to include european teams into Asian competions. They paid the teams who could not afford the travels + made an english streams. SEA competions usually have english streams. More english coverage on chinese tournamets would be highly appreciated since info without speaking chinese is very hard to get :S

- The best known caster for Dota is surely Tobiwankenobi. He recently moved from Australia to Berlin to cast full time. (www.joindota.com)

- I think the main problem was the lack of a decent platform. Also i think a problem is that the countries Dota is most popular in are not the countries the bigger tournaments operate from. (aka IEM is german, WCG is korean and MLG is american and in none of those countries dota is one of the most popular games)

- I'm pretty sure almost every chinese copy of Dota is pirated. 99% of players play outside of battlenet so the original version isnt rly needed.

dont really have an answer to the next 2 questions

- I dont think u can enjoy watching dota without at least playing it a little bit. Knowledge of most spells/items are needed to follow the games i think.

- GGnet or whatever team Kuroky goes lol

- China by far. Followed by countries such as Malaysia (+ Show Spoiler +

), Vietnam, Phillipines, Russia, Ukraine.

- Before sc2 came out i mainly followed Warcraft as well as Dota. Since then i've pretty much been following sc2 instead of wc3, cos the scene has gotten much less interesting. I do not follow any other games, but i enjoy watching quake once in a while.

ne0lith

537 Posts

August 02 2011 23:31 GMT

#385

I actually got interested in esports thanks to Dota. Here's my input:

"- Of the established leagues and competitions, who is the largest, what is the frequency of said events, and how much prize money has been given out (average) during these competitions?"

The 3 international events where both asians and the rest of the top teams in the world are ESWC, SMM and WDC and they are held every year.
The prizepools for last year's editions were:

ESWC:
$ 14,000
$ 7,000
$ 3,500

SMM:
Total 101,500RM (~24,155€, 32,000USD)
1st 50,000RM (~12,000€)
2nd 21,000RM (~5,000€)
3rd 14,000RM (~3,300€)
4th 9,000RM (~2,100€)
5th 3,000RM (~700€)
6th 2,000RM (~470€)
7th 1,500RM (~350€)
8th 1,000RM (~235€)

WDC:
1st: 15000 USD
2nd: 7500 USD
3rd: 4500 USD
4th: 3000 USD

There was also an online tournament called Razer Global Challenge with a 30k USD prizepool. Besides that, there are LOTS of important tournaments in the asian scene. In the european scene, the more regular tournaments are Farm4Fame, 4 Asus Cups a year, DTS cup and a bunch of other online tournaments.

The scene in Dota is generally split into China/Asia and the rest of the world, like it is in Starcraft with the Korean and the foreign scene.

There are lots of other tournaments in China, some with bigger prizepools than the international ones(like 23,000USD first place for G-League in China).

EHOME, the best team of 2010, won 10 LANS last year and there were obviously more than that held within a single year. But like I said, most of these competitions are being
held in Asia/China.

"- DotA is popular in Asia, so are a million really bad MMO's... what efforts have been made to bring DotA OUT of Asia to other countries? (i.e. GomTV began English broadcasting several years ago). Does it need to leave Asia? "

DotA is extremely popular outside of Asia too but that does not reflect in its competitive scene, except for follower numbers. The 3 tournaments I named before
are generally the only ones which bring the two scenes together to compete. Outside of that, each has its own tournaments.

Dota does not need to be brought out of Asia because it already is out. What it needs is a foreign scene similar to the chinese one. As a casual game, it already has more than 8 million players in Europe from what I've heard last time and around 20 million players worldwide.

"- Who is the Day[9] of DotA?"

TobiWanKenobi

"- With such a popular community, teams, etc... why haven't we seen DotA showcased at well-known international eSports competitions? I know that it made some appearances at WCG, ESWC, and Blizzard events, but these were typically "one off" type competitions?"

What you have to undersand about DotA when you compare it to all those other games you mentioned is that this is the only game that is NOT madeby any company.

It is a custom map made on the Warcraf3 engine by ONE guy who actually does not have own any legal rights whatsoever regarding the game.
In other words, it is nobody's game and that's always been the game until actual companies picked up the idea.

What happens when nobody backs up the game is that you're gonna have a hard time getting your game into "regular" tournaments. That's why
most Dota tournaments are for Dota only and you don't see it in more broad competitions like WCG's, MLG's and so on.

Without a company behind a game's back it's almost impossible to attract regular sponsors for a custom map game of Warcraft3 and many sponsors in Dota are not hardware companies like in other esports but people who have a strong passion for the game and invest into
tournaments/teams from their own money.

Many tournaments and professional chinese teams are ran by the same principle, rich businessmen investing their money into a game they love.

What should really get you thinking is this. As soon as companies started picking up the idea of Dota(HoN and LoL) and promoting their games, more general gaming events started picking those games up, with prizepools generally higher than those in Dota, who has been around for years. And Dota is still more popular and considered the better game.

Basically, it's impossible for a game developed by a single person who does not own the game rights and who has never even been in public to make its way into mainstream events over games promoted and sponsored by companies.

"- Does the population of Chinese players (which sounds like it's the biggest landscape of players) rely on non-legit versions of WarCraft 3: TFT? I always felt like one of the biggest issues with the advancement of DotA dating back to like BlizzCon 2005 was the fact that new players had to purchase WC3... this was also a problem with games like Quake 3. I'm just curious how that works in China (and everywhere else for that matter)"

Most Dota players probably don't own legit copies of Warcraft 3. Dota itself is free and a very high majority of platforms do not require a legit copy of W3 to play Dota on them. Being a custom map, there are LOTS of platforms where you can play the game, unlike BNet for Starcraft for example.
This also makes the community split and hard to keep track of in numbers but with Dota 2 coming that should change.

"- Is the DotA community satisfied living in a self-contained bubble? It seems like other eSports games/audiences are fairly uneducated when it comes to the history Rotegirte provided in this thread. "

I'm not entirely sure I understand the question but Dota community usually has a bigger interest in the history of the game than other communities, from what I've seen.

"- Why do you think there are people (like myself) who have extensive knowledge in eSports, yet don't know much about DotA? Is this the fault of the individual? Or is it the fault of the collective DotA community? Or is there no fault at all and it's just two paths that have not crossed?"

It's mostly that those two paths have not crossed. Like I said, while Dota is extremely popular, its competitive scene is somehow on its own and isolated from the rest of the esports' scenes
and if you don't search for it, there are not many chances you are gonna bump into it by accident.

Most Dota tournaments are only for Dota and are organized by people who know the game, love the game and take the initiative,most sites with Dota content are only for Dota and you will never see any promotion for Dota other than the word of mouth.

Most of the more general esports sites also do not cover Dota so it's hard to know anything about it unless you seak to find it. You can try to look on gosugamers.net or mymym.com if you want to see the only 2 exceptions that I know of. Also MYM has had probably one of the most legendary teams in Europe that's still standing strong after lots of years.

"- If someone heard about DotA and wanted to get into it at the most basic level, which website would you send them to? If I had no one to ask, how hard would it be for me to find? Would it be PLAYDOTA.com?"

The best site is playdota, yes. This hasn't been an issue, the official site was always easy to find but like I said: If you hadn't heard about Dota by word of mouth you would have never run into it from ads or reviews.

"- SC2 and Street Fighter 4 have been two games that have proven that they can carry an active audience of people who do not even play the game. Do you think this audience already exists in the DotA scene and if not, do you think it can? "

The only thing I would consider a small problem with Dota is that you need some knowledge about the game to enjoy it as an audience member.

Quake or CS are great games that can be enjoyed as a viewer even if you don't play the game but Dota requires certain experience as a player to understand what's going on. Dota has also a big learning curve with no in-game tutorials or help, which will probably change in Dota 2.
The already existing audience from Dota is huge and once people will be able to learn the game in-game and not from all kind of guides scattered over the internet it will attract even more players and viewers.

"- Who is your favorite team?"

I'm gonna list a few.

Current one: CCM(China).
Past ones: EHOME(China,2010 Roster), Ks.int(Europe), Nirvana.int(Europe)

"- Which country do you believe has the largest population of plaayers and fans?"

Definetely China.

"- As a DotA fan, do you follow any other eSports titles? If so, which ones and how often?"

Dota has actually got me interested in Esports. Like I said, Dota has a big learning curve so when I started playing I read many hero guides
which had replays from professionals playing that certain hero.

Then I started following the scene and completely fell in love with it, although I had minimal knowledge of the game. Since then, I became interested in esports in general and followed the Warcraft3,CS and Quake Live scene but more casually than Dota.

Finally, I started following the SC2 quite a lot which I still do on a constant basis(and I unsderstand it and enjoy it), although I never played it nor Broodwar.

Also, my final thoughts: Dota and MOBAS in general are a new genre of games making their way on the scene and people will always be skeptical aboutwhat's new.

I'd suggest you give it a shot since it's free and you'll see for yourself if you keep playing that the skill cap is definetely very high, enough to make it have the right to be called an esport.

People coming from RTS games tend to mark Dota as a strategy game where you don't need skill and only micro one unit but truth is it can't be further from the truth and you can see that as soon as you start playing. It's a team game not a solo game.

In Dota, not only that you need lots of game knowledge(100+ heroes, each has different spells, lots of items and builds on the heroes), but you also need individual skill and teamplay. There are totally different heroes with totally different roles, the possibilites of sinergy between
them in a team are endless and very interesting to execute.

My advice for you is: Wait for Dota 2 to come out and maybe you'll get into the beta somehow, and start watching some streams for tournaments when it comes out, maybe you'll like it. Starting Dota 1 can be a pain right now.

Also, Dignitas.Select was a pro player for a short time in Dota, he played for a NA team called Azn. Maybe you can talk to him about that.

Ok, that's really my final word. You can watch some vods of streams from online tournaments here: http://www.joindota.com/vods, Day[9] of Dota in terms of popularity :D. You won't understand much but it's worth having a look.

zex66

Canada651 Posts

August 02 2011 23:44 GMT

#386

On August 03 2011 07:48 Senx wrote:

Show nested quote +

In that case the community failed misserably.. just look at CS 1.6, a game that is seen as Valves unwanted child ever since it became popular, they understood its popularity but did NOTHING to really support it ( 10 year old bugs STILL remain, no marketing, no money involvement, no community feedback/interaction ). Now cs 1.6 happens to be one of the most succesful western esports titles of all time.

CS 1.6 is an actual game whereas DotA is a mod that is practically unplayable on its original platform (regular warcraft) and exists on tons and tons of third party platforms. For whatever reason western developers don't want to support a mod (probably legal issues with blizzard) and therefore it can't exist as it is. Why didn't ICCUP have huge backing at MLG or ESL or any other big tournament that SC 2 is now a part of? Because the ICCUP client was a third party platform akin to what DotA is now being played on.

djWHEAT

United States925 Posts

August 02 2011 23:54 GMT

#387

On August 03 2011 08:06 kyser wrote:
As everyone has already mentioned it is hard, possibly even impossible, for someone who has never played DotA to enjoy watching a stream. This is undoubtedly a massive flaw with the game but i would like to add that it does not suffer from the TF2/CoD dilemma you talked about on your show some time ago. Even in the lowest pub levels the game is extremely competitive, among those participating in that pub game, and that coupled with the fact that if one player performs poorly it effects the games outcome greatly is the reason why DotA/HoN have the notion of being the most hostile community. This hostile community, however, has its benefits as it will often push people to become a better player, thus leading new players to finding out about the professional scene, and could possibly replace some of the audience lost by the fact DotA is hard to watch without prior knowledge of the game if you happen to turn the stream on at the wrong time.

Although I think it's a stretch, I do think it's an interesting perspective. A certain level of BM in gaming is somewhat expected. You could even argue that it has helped StarCraft 2 in some regard.

dacthehork

United States2000 Posts

August 02 2011 23:54 GMT

#388

The online client/features for dota 2 are 10x better than SC2. The actual player base will probably also dwarf SC2. There is absolutely no reason it won't become the #1 esport now with valve backing it and designing it for ESPORTS. Dota has been growing prizepool wise lately and has been a competitive game for a long time, even CAL-I days with sent vs scourge. It's just silly bias to not consider it a legit competitive game. I believe djwheat has no idea how to even play dota anyway.

DOTA TV will let you observe any public game (distributed load so as many viewers as you want). You can search by friend/clan/player/hero/skill level. You can look for special tags from shoutcasters and watch their games. You can watch old tournament games by casters etc. You can have this set up so you can be in a matchmaking queue while watching. Replays can be watched in a group, with free roaming camera (any angle/distance, great for highlights/videos) and cut to any point in the match.

In terms of new players, tutorials, interactive guides, vs bots, etc. Probably the best matchmaking of any game ever. Dedicated servers for each game with some placed in places optimized for international play. Reconnects/pausing and for public games even bots to take over leavers.

Bnet 2.0 will be a complete joke in comparison. Yet despite these factors it's "is this a cash grab or a real esport".

When valve heads have even said they are focusing on supporting competitive play and improving spectator experience.

djWHEAT

United States925 Posts

August 02 2011 23:59 GMT

#389

On August 03 2011 08:54 dacthehork wrote:
I believe djwheat has no idea how to even play dota anyway.

Dude I'm trying to legitimately understand the history and evolution and all you do is come in my thread and be a dick. I don't know how to fucking play DotA. I know the general concept, but I've OBVIOUSLY not put the time and effort into the game. No I don't plan to cast it.

Now get off my dick and let me do my fucking job.

CountChocula

Canada2068 Posts

August 03 2011 00:00 GMT

#390

On August 03 2011 08:44 zex66 wrote:

Show nested quote +

You don't think CS 1.6 is a mod?!

zex66

Canada651 Posts

August 03 2011 00:03 GMT

#391

On August 03 2011 09:00 CountChocula wrote:

Show nested quote +

You don't think CS 1.6 is a mod?!

I know that counterstrike was a mod, but when a company backs the development and releases a game, it's no longer a mod.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/10/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_1

http://us.blizzard.com/store/search.xml?q=dota

dacthehork

United States2000 Posts

August 03 2011 00:14 GMT

#392

On August 03 2011 08:59 djWHEAT wrote:

Show nested quote +

You've ran an esports show for the past 3 years and never covered a single dota event despite large prize pools, lots of spectators, and professional teams and even said in this thread "when it's a legit competitive game". To even mention the gamescom tournament on the last lo3 took an effort by many people bringing it up. Its obvious the 1,000,000 prize pool is what it finally took. There has always been a huge Dota scene thats been ignored on Lo3 for whatever reason (probably just lack of any insight/passion by anyone on the show). I would rather see more fair coverage instead of waiting for an event you can't ignore, and from the wording of tweets wanted to slightly bash on for being a pure publicity stunt. This is for dota like flash/jaedong/savior/iloveoov all showing up to the first SC2 reveal to play a huge tournament. It's amazing for longtime fans, for longtime pro players, for everyone involved. Valve themselves have dedicated huge features/dev time to promoting dota 2 esports, and this event is way more than a publicity stunt. This is valve putting a stamp on competitive dota 2 and letting everyone know who is #1.

The reason people are antagonistic is that dota really has not been getting the credit it deserves on Lo3 and really in western events in general

Alexj

Ukraine440 Posts

August 03 2011 00:18 GMT

#393

On August 03 2011 05:01 djWHEAT wrote:
- Why do you think there are people (like myself) who have extensive knowledge in eSports, yet don't know much about DotA? Is this the fault of the individual? Or is it the fault of the collective DotA community? Or is there no fault at all and it's just two paths that have not crossed?

I follow eSports too, but I have absolutely zero knowledge about Street Fighter, Halo and CoD. Why? I live in Ukraine, you live in US. I follow mostly Russian sites for non-SC2 eSports news, and DotA is definitely featured in European and ex-USSR competitions. Street Fighter and other console games? Never.

DotA definitely gained a lot of attention in Europe last few years, which War3 fans (including me) didn't really like. Then SC2 came out and I completely stopped caring about both War3 and Dota. I know that Navi, RoX and most other Russian/Ukrainian multigamings have teams in Dota and Dota-clones

kyser

United States19 Posts

August 03 2011 00:20 GMT

#394

On August 03 2011 08:54 djWHEAT wrote:
Although I think it's a stretch, I do think it's an interesting perspective. A certain level of BM in gaming is somewhat expected. You could even argue that it has helped StarCraft 2 in some regard.

would like to note that i have been editing my post that answers some of the questions you posted wheat just to make sure you dont miss anything. Prepare for more optimism and stretches.

To add on my previously made point not wanting me to be terrible, my competitive nature, and being called out by players in pubs is what led me to finding out more about the DotA professional scene. I however was already competing in low level competition in another game, so it is not a fair comparison.

zex66

Canada651 Posts

August 03 2011 00:23 GMT

#395

On August 03 2011 09:14 dacthehork wrote:

Show nested quote +

It's still a fairly big publicity stunt though. Instead of advertising for the reveal of DotA 2, they invested all of their money into the players (and to the e-sport) as the prize pool is large enough to generate enough buzz to serve as advertisement. I don't really blame wheat for being in the dark about the DotA scene as it was and still is very limited to people who played wc3 since it can't really have much of a showing in the western world because of it's mod roots. MOBA's only started becoming big as an e-sport once developers made their own games. Before SC 2 came out, broodwar was really only big in Korea with only very few international tournaments - which is kind of the same situation DotA is in now.

As for the credit that DotA deserves, again it was in a really unique position where a mod for a game became more popular than the game itself but failed to be realized by the developers. Part of the reason for Battle.net 2.0 is the fallout of blizzard failing to capitalize on DotA which allowed games like LoL and HoN to exist.

Horse...falcon

United States1851 Posts

August 03 2011 00:33 GMT

#396

On August 03 2011 09:14 dacthehork wrote:

Show nested quote +

Honestly Dota has been poorly organized and presented in the past. How many times did top pros jump from team to team? Switch sponsors? Change their team names? It was very unprofessionally run until about a few years ago. Starcraft has been big in Korea for over a decade so SC2 has had something to build on. Streaming/casting for Dota only came into it's own in the last year or so and before that we pretty much only had replays of top matches. It's difficult to spread an esport when the medium everyone shares has to require the game. Be happy that Dota is finally getting some attention and that it figures to only get bigger.

(Worst thing about Dota has always been the people, most of them are enormous entitled and self-important dweebs. Especially the hardcore people, my god are they testy. I can't tell you how many pointless arguments I've gotten into just asking questions on Dota forums.)

Yeaaaah

Belarus27 Posts

August 03 2011 00:39 GMT

#397

On August 03 2011 06:10 phrame_ wrote:
Disclaimer: Though I've played DotA casually for four or so years now, I gave your questions to a friend of mine who has followed the game since its RoC days (but can't get on TL to post his responses himself). These are his responses, unedited by me.

Also, djWHEAT: TobiWanKenobi (probably the most active DotA shoutcaster in today's scene) expressed interest in coming onto Lo3 to talk about DotA and Dota 2 on his stream today. Something to consider if you haven't already been told? I'd personally love to hear his responses to the questions that I'm sure the hosts will have.

------------------------------

- Of the established leagues and competitions, who is the largest, what is the frequency of said events, and how much prize money has been given out (average) during these competitions?

There are too many leagues to count, mostly because the Dota community uses too many platforms to host Dota with custom clients such as Dotalicious to Garena to B.net leagues such as Dotacash and Throneit. Comp play uses private servers and services such as Dotalicious. Most tourneys nowadays are Internet affairs, varying between 50 Euro + gear to 1000-3000 Euro for first place (5k euro total prize pool). Three big Dota tourneys are coming up in SE Asia in the fall, SMM, ESWC and one more. Chinese Dota is a little more secretive than Euro/Western Dota, but they have tournaments and the reported 6.2mil USD buy of CCM.

- DotA is popular in Asia, so are a million really bad MMO's... what efforts have been made to bring DotA OUT of Asia to other countries? (i.e. GomTV began English broadcasting several years ago). Does it need to leave Asia?

Shoutcasters such as TobiWanKenobi and Slash have recently bandied around numbers between 18-20 million, getdota.com reports around 10 million dl's? The other half is estimated to be Chinese dota alone. This does not include one map download which is spread through lan centers. There exists english/german/russian dota with a number of sites, primarily centered around gosugamers.net, mymym.com, prodota.ru. Shoutcasts exist at joindota.com for english, there are shoutcasters that take replays and redub at LuminiouStudios on youtube, as one example. Eurodota exists and works well.

- Who is the Day[9] of DotA?

Quite honestly, there is none for english speaking dota. TobiWanKenobi is the most wellknown but does not have a good understanding of comp. dota, usually shoutcasts in tandem with a pro player such as Slash (german) or SyndereN- (danish, plays for nevo), they also shoutcast for other places such as MYM for SyndereN-. There is noone that can do everything that day[9] does for dota.

- With such a popular community, teams, etc... why haven't we seen DotA showcased at well-known international eSports competitions? I know that it made some appearances at WCG, ESWC, and Blizzard events, but these were typically "one off" type competitions?

ESWC still exists, MYM used to run the only major dota tourney called MYM Prime and MYM Prime Nations, a national pride tourney. There exists OSPL in Kazakstan with a reputed 10k USD prize purse, going for second/third year now. Most corporate sponsorship/lan center (such as SMM in Malaysia) happens in SEAsia.

- Does the population of Chinese players (which sounds like it's the biggest landscape of players) rely on non-legit versions of WarCraft 3: TFT? I always felt like one of the biggest issues with the advancement of DotA dating back to like BlizzCon 2005 was the fact that new players had to purchase WC3... this was also a problem with games like Quake 3. I'm just curious how that works in China (and everywhere else for that matter)

China/SEAsia to a limited extent relies on non-legal versions, requiring switching between versions to watch their replays. Everywhere else uses the latest version.

- Is the DotA community satisfied living in a self-contained bubble? It seems like other eSports games/audiences are fairly uneducated when it comes to the history Rotegirte provided in this thread.

Some of us are, some of us aren't. Some of us just want dota to get the recognition it deserves - it's the dark shadow in the corner, the 4chan of eSports, and while we love that, we want you to know how good it is too.

- Why do you think there are people (like myself) who have extensive knowledge in eSports, yet don't know much about DotA? Is this the fault of the individual? Or is it the fault of the collective DotA community? Or is there no fault at all and it's just two paths that have not crossed?

See above. Also it's incredibly hard to get into, you get frustrated and take breaks and come back and find everything has changed, it's a equal split - something i'd like to rectify and that a lot of people are waiting to change. There are coaches ready for the dota2 feature alone. Some of it comes down to a Nome post over at S2 - people play ladder for ladder, people play dota for dota.

- If someone heard about DotA and wanted to get into it at the most basic level, which website would you send them to? If I had no one to ask, how hard would it be for me to find? Would it be PLAYDOTA.com?

Playdota.com is the official site for dota/englishdota. Check your local language site for better local interaction.

- SC2 and Street Fighter 4 have been two games that have proven that they can carry an active audience of people who do not even play the game. Do you think this audience already exists in the DotA scene and if not, do you think it can?

It doesn't yet. Can it? I believe it can, it just needs positive press to get pass the negative first impressions, and shoutcasters like day[9]/tastosis to explain it. Valve is providing some of the first, and we have some to fill the latter, but not all to fill the latter.

- Who is your favorite team?

(5:04:51 PM) him: MYM FIGHTING
(5:04:54 PM) him: easy.
(5:04:57 PM) me: verbatim?
(5:04:59 PM) me: lol
(5:04:59 PM) him: yes
(5:05:00 PM) me: k
(5:05:09 PM) him: easy.

- Which country do you believe has the largest population of players and fans?

China is estimated to have roughly 10 mil players, at G1 recently commentated by Tobi they said the finals were held in a outdoor stadium. Easily the biggest, although dota is popular in india as well - although no one in really knows much about them.

- As a DotA fan, do you follow any other eSports titles? If so, which ones and how often?

Dota fans play all other titles: SC, WC3, CS, CoD, FIFA, etc. Other gamers don't necessarily play Dota. I follow SC2, Fighting scene mostly.

I agree with most of what he said.

Basically, the only weakness that dota has as an Esport serious plateform are

1) Mainstream Watchability

2) Commentators.

The watchability problem is bound to be fixed quickly with the new Valve DotaTV streaming features, and all the recent patches (6.72f is amazingly agressives and make for 25 min games very often), this can really be fixed easily if they want. Valve and Icefrog (especially Icefrog) are faaaaaaaar from stupid.

No, the biggest problem Dota, in the Western world really have is that we have no real BIGTIME, technically competent, charistmatic, non-stupid, non-nerdy looking, Shoutcaster/Commentator.

Tobiwant Kenobi and to a lesser extend Madmortigan are the guys we have, and they are both very very weak. They are either both pretty incompetent technically in their deep knowledge of the advanced game strategy (they conceide it themselves), and are too neerdy/stupid-looking/non-serious to be taken seriously for big big profile competition.

They, quit simply, blow. No offense, but that's what most serious peoples is thinking. The fact is that they are no other ones at the moment as historically Dota is not a game with a big shoutcasting culture, people prefer to watch and follow the game themselves on WTV because of the freedom and superior image quality. So today, we basically have no choice and those commentators are forced down our throat. I'm a Dota Pro, I speak with many of the pros in the scene, as well as read most of the comments on Playdota.com and gosugamers, and appart from little kids who like to watch Tobiwan dancing like a moron in front of his webcam, all other peoples dislikes this kind of 2nd rate casting.

We need some guys who are REAL PROFESSIONAL and know their stuff. Some guys who can be the voice of Dota.

But it will certainly come pretty soon and pretty fast, with so much money and such a HUGE COMMUNITY. The future of Dota now can only go in one direction : Professionalization.

bOne7

Romania85 Posts

August 03 2011 00:50 GMT

#398

About who is the day[9] of DotA ..... obviously the right answer is Luminous . I saw this being a regular watcher of both the day9 dailies as well as the luminous casts ^^ . I mean he , casts + has the most insights in the game as a commentator , because the truth is , DotA commentators don't really have the dota knowledge of a pro DotA player .

http://www.youtube.com/user/LuminouStudios?blend=5&ob=5

Of course , he is the closest to day[9] (in dota) , but not even near to what day[9] has contributed to bw/sc2 =D

HarryKlein

Germany220 Posts

August 03 2011 00:58 GMT

#399

Sorry if this was posted already, but I think this is a great post (from Gosugamers.net)

Dj Wheat read this.

It's the same old story, a person without knowledge who belongs to a certain group of people/community protects himself by blocking and differentiating himself from "the other" via various means, normally linked to a strong sentiment of the own superiority and bestowing the own standards/believes onto something else.

All the information DjWheat needs/wants is out there, if he cares and is interested let him search it himself, there is no reason to answer to a disrespectful call like this. DotA does not have to proof itself anymore, it did that already. It's the reason there is a Dota 2, that there are major games like LoL and HoN and many other clones and that it is one of the most frequently played games of the world.

We could enter a discussion with him, yes, but we simply shouldn't fall for the cheap troll/flame bait attempts anymore. Do you think it's a coincidence that Totalbiscuits played DotA for 4 years (according to his own words)? That Husky (or HD? not sure anymore) explicitly mentioned DotA and items like Boots of Speed in his casts or that he used the annihilation quote from HoN?

It's because both are naturally RTS games, DotA may be a variation but it shares some very basic mechanics.

Don't let people like DjWheat fool you, DotA and Starcraft have always been "friends" or at least on good terms and had a surprisingly nice relationsship ever since Eul created DotA based on Aeon of Strafe (Valley of Disent too) from Starcraft. Many people follow(ed) or have been part of both scenes or have even been active in both. Babyknights decision to move to Starcraft was widely accepted and respected even on the troll-like GosuGamers community website, Xeqtr's appearance from CS in DotA was welcomed and players like Kuroky openly displayed their interest in Starcraft 2 aswell.
And Athene even casually finds the time to troll both LoL and HoN in a way only he can do (and according to a statement from a friend of mine he already announced to win the Dota 2 Tournament at Gamescom on his own^^).

If you follow the TeamLiquid comments (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=250261) concerning the Tournament (posted by 5-s, a player who too has openly displayed his interest in Starcraft 2 while being a talented DotA player and part-time caster) you will realize that there is a surprisingly friendly atmosphere in the thread.

The DotA community isn't like it was in 2006 either, young and craving for attention and recognition. It learned, matured, improved, it sustained itself, it maintained itself, despite heavy competition, all on it's own without backup which is why it is unique in it's own way in the world of eSports and why it does not have to answer to a person with a different set of standards and believes who wants to apply his own logic to something he does not know nor understand, without even considering to understand or LEARN about "the other" first. This basic lack of respect prevents the creation of understanding (for everbody who hates to think: Avatar by James Cameron was pretty much about this theme).

Respect has to be earned. DotA has learned to respect itself and shows respect to those who deserve it once you are able to see through the trollish shitstorm which interestingly, works the same way DjWheat's comments do, just into a different direction. It's also created the same way: by trollish, ignorant, disrespectful, uneducated, uninformed, childish and dumb comments.

You wanna talk? Send Totalbiscuits and leave it to him, he will understand and respect and in turn will be understood and respected despite possible frictions and different opinions.

And I suggest closing this thread because that's what always eventually happens: someone somewhere will say something stupid, someone will answer, and the true feelings from both sides will get lost in the religiously fanatical shitstorm that follows from both sides.

kyser

United States19 Posts

August 03 2011 00:59 GMT

#400

On August 03 2011 09:39 Yeaaaah wrote:

Tobiwant Kenobi and to a lesser extend Madmortigan are the guys we have, and they are both very very weak. They are either both pretty incompetent technically in their deep knowledge of the advanced game strategy (they conceide it themselves), and are too neerdy/stupid-looking/non-serious to be taken seriously for big big profile competition.

They, quit simply, blow. No offense, but that's what most serious peoples is thinking. The fact is that they are no other ones at the moment as historically Dota is not a game with a big shoutcasting culture, people prefer to watch and follow the game themselves on WTV because of the freedom and superior image quality. So today, we basically have no choice and those commentators are forced down our throat. I'm a Dota Pro, I speak with many of the pros in the scene, as well as read most of the comments on Playdota.com and gosugamers, and appart from little kids who like to watch Tobiwan dancing like a moron in front of his webcam, all other peoples dislikes this kind of 2nd rate casting.

We need some guys who are REAL PROFESSIONAL and know their stuff. Some guys who can be the voice of Dota.

But it will certainly come pretty soon and pretty fast, with so much money and such a HUGE COMMUNITY. The future of Dota now can only go in one direction : Professionalization.

I, and everyone else, agrees with you on the fact that Tobi does not have deep knowledge of the game at a professional level, but he does show professionalism in how he presents his casts. He does get extremely energetic which is where his goofiness comes from, but if you dress him up he will certainly appear to be a professional. What Tobi needs is a true professional player to cast with him to provide what he is lacking.

For those who do not know Tobi is very similar to Total Biscuit in his style of casting, and his points about WTV and the shoutcasting culture are correct. I do not know the stream numbers of WTV but some of the download numbers for replays at gosugamers are quite outstanding, with the most downloaded game at 85539, and this isnt even from a Chinese site

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