Dota 2's Impact on eSports .

We all knew one year ago how popular Dota 2 was going to be. When the game came out of beta on July 9, 2013, it had 3 million unique players. It has now surpassed upwards of 9 million. To put that in perspective, World of Warcraft, the “King of MMOs” currently only has 7.8 million as of May 6 of this year. What changes has Dota 2 undergone to achieve this massive spike in numbers? Let us review it all.

Although Dota 2 is in its official release, it is constantly expanding and improving upon itself. Immediately following Dota 2’s release was the third “International”, a large event hosted by Valve themselves with only the best of the best. Finally, anyone was able to play the same game reserved for only the lucky and the professional. Being able to enjoy this new experience while also watching veterans allowed people to ease into the brand new community before them. What better way to learn than watching pros duke it out?

Since then, there have been new heroes as well, some of which were added to Dota 1 even after Dota 2 was released. Shortly after the official release, the community was introduced to Abaddon, who everyone accused of being overpowered. This started to become the norm for each new Dota hero. Abaddon’s ultimate not only makes him immortal, but turns all incoming damage into health. On top of that, he doesn’t even need to cast it. Though labeled as a support, everyone played him as a carry that relied on gold. His strength was quickly patched, and is now accepted as being balanced.

The next hero update wasn’t released until 125 days later. What’s worse is that it seemed Valve had forgotten something they did the previous year that upset the community to a great degree. They had forgotten to do Diretide.

Diretide is Dota 2’s Halloween event. The lore is that once a year, the beast Roshan is allowed to leave his pit without consequence and hunt for his favorite food – candy. It is up to the heroes of Dota to quench his hunger and lull him back to sleep. In reality, it’s just a fun event that takes away from the competitiveness of Dota. It also gives free cosmetics. When the community realized Valve wasn’t surprising them with a brand new event, they got mad. They started complaining all throughout the internet to ensure their voice was heard. Their demands stretched from the car company Volvo’s Facebook page to President Obama’s presidential address. The demands were always the same as well. One simple phrase was all it took to make their point. “༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Give DIRETIDE”.

The community fought for Diretide, and on November 14, Diretide was given. Valve incorporated it into the “Three Spirits Update”. In addition to re-enabling Diretide, they released Earth Spirit and Ember Spirit, alongside a new Storm Spirit model. This event came soon after the news that someone had bought an in-game item valued at $38,000. This update altered how special items are valued and obtained, and as such reduced its value drastically. As of today, the same item can be bought for around $400. Regardless of bad financial decisions, Valve had certainly created quite the monster.

Ember Spirit keeps getting better while Earth Spirit has around a 35% win rate.

Knowing the community would most likely make the same demands for Frostivus, Dota 2’s Christmas event, Valve ensured they would be ready. They announced Frostivus well in advanced. Soon after announcing it, they “cancelled it.” They also introduced the hero Legion Commander, but also removed Skeleton King from the game. As it turned out, Skeleton King was the one responsible for cancelling Frostivus! He began the Wraith-Night, a brand new event whose gameplay felt akin to only Warcraft 3 user map setting games. Players would pick their hero, each with new types of spells to fend off hoards of incoming enemies to protect Skeleton King’s transformation into Wraith King.

Though everyone enjoyed the event (It too came with free hats), people were confused as to why Skeleton King was turned into a new hero. Storm Spirit was revamped during Diretide, but he was still the jolly flamboyant oaf we all knew. Wraith King wasn’t even a Skeleton any more. People had theories that it had to do with China’s issue regarding visible human bones. Even players of World of Warcraft might remember that Blizzard had to hide or cover up all human bones from the Chinese version of WoW. The majority of Dota 2 players are from China, so it seemed only natural. Another reason is the concept behind Skeleton King. In Dota 1, Skeleton King is the same as the Skeleton King in the Diablo franchise. When he was imported to Dota 2, his lore and name changed from Leoric to Ostarion. Though it seems this is the more likely explanation, it bears almost no weight (unless Blizzard happens to have copyrighted the idea of a skeleton being a king). Even so, Nature’s Prophet’s resemblance to WoW’s Furion bears the same logic, yet he remains untouched. Whatever the case was, it has since been pushed aside.

Rip in peace, king of bones.

Continuing onward, we were introduced to another update called “New Bloom” which featured the heroes Phoenix and Terrorblade alongside with a new event called New Bloom Festival. This entire event was created in commemoration of the Chinese New Year. The goal of this new game mode was to fight the “Beast”, a monster no one had ever seen before. People would fight using tokens obtained in normal games or tokens bought directly from Valve. They would spend the tokens to buy items to fight the beast. Depending on how much damage everyone dealt, they were rewarded with points that could be spent on presents.

Following New Bloom was “The Spring Cleaning Update”. Although it was mostly a basic update, it drastically altered how Valve monetized Dota 2. Up until this point, players would often receive a chest after games. Each month featured a brand new type of chest. In order to open these chests, players would need to buy a key valued at $2.50. Opening the chest would reward the player with one of around 10 items, with a chance at special couriers. It seemed as though Valve felt it was no longer worth the effort when they overhauled the chest system this update. From this point on, chests no longer dropped after games. Instead, players would now have to buy the chests directly from the store. Keys were also no longer required, and instead of single items, players were rewarded with entire sets they were guaranteed not to get duplicates of. The chests retained having a chance of better rewards, but at a much higher rate of success.

Terrorblade, destroyer of fun.

We finally arrive full circle. We started with The International 3 and are now at The International 4. The popularity of this event has trumped everything in the past. The International 3 was held in a concert hall. The International 4 is being held in a stadium. With a 10 million dollar prize pool, it is clear that Dota 2 Esports mean business. Teams are currently fighting one another to gain a greater slice of that massive award. Upsets and shockers are occurring all the time. Alliance, TI3’s grand champion, has already been eliminated while Cloud 9 and Evil Geniuses, teams everyone took for granted are destroying veterans like Na’Vi and Invictus Gaming. Individuals are allowed to take part of the action by buying “Compendiums”, $10 digital books that feature rewards and prizes. $2.50 of the proceeds are directly placed into the prize pool. You can also “level up” these books by finding, buying or working towards points which can redeem even more items and increased battle point rates. For those unfamiliar with Dota, playing games awards players with battle points. Collect 1000 and you get a free item. It used to take around 8 games to gain 1000 points and level up. Now thanks to these compendiums, one can easily level up in 3 games. Compendiums were around during The International 3, but were not as detailed as this set. There is no doubt Valve is giving greater rewards for less money, but they are by no means in financial troubles. Everyone can take a lesson from Valve. If a game is good, those involved shouldn’t have to resort to selfish methods.

What does the future hold in store for Dota 2? Quite a bit. For one, we are still missing five heroes. Goblin Techies, the hero that drastically changes the game are slated for release soon after The International 4. Valve still plans to keep true to their promise of having modded games in Dota 2, but until then players can check out d2modd.in which features fun Warcraft 3 games like Run Kitty Run, Pudge Wars and Hero Line wars. Until then, you can keep watching The International 4 directly through Dota 2 or through Twitch. We want Evil Geniuses to win. EZ rares, EZ life.