MYM working on turning the current game on it's head, get hyped!
http://www.dota2.com/tournaments/international/
What is DotA?
The history of DotA is a long and tragic (not really) tale involving spin-offs of spin-offs and other such intrigue. It all began with Aeon of Strife, a custom map for Starcraft where units would march down three lanes towards each other's bases, aided/hindered by player-controlled heroes on each side. When Warcraft 3 came out, a chap named Eul brought the AoS experience to WC3, and named it Defense of the Ancients (DotA). It caught on, and tons of DotA spin-offs with different heroes began to surface on Battlenet.
To unite the madness, Guinsoo (now best known as the creator of LoL) created a map called DotA Allstars, which brought together everyone's favorite heroes in a single map. The bad part of this is that Guinsoo isn't/wasn't exactly the brightest when it came to balance, and the map was riddled with problems.
Enter Icefrog, the man credited with creating DotA as we know it today. Icefrog took Guinsoo's map and toiled away at it for ages, eventually spawning a competitvely balanced map that caught on like wildfire, eventually easily surpassing WC3 itself in popularity, and establishing tournament scenes that live on to this day.
Icefrog was later picked up by Valve, and they all eventually began work on DotA2, which we're about to see for the first time this week.
DotA, and all of its spin-offs, feature a large variety of heroes to choose from. Two teams of 5 players each face off with eachother on a map with a base in the upper-right and lower-left corners. There are three lanes leading from base to base, each guarded by towers that attack the computer controller enemies (and heroes too!) that get too close. The goal of the game is to destroy the opposing team's base. What sounds like a simple goal is complicated by how radically different each of the 100+ heroes are. There's far too much to get in to here, but a basic idea of each hero (all of whom will be in DotA2) can be found here: http://www.playdota.com/heroes
What's going on, again?
This Wednesday, August the 17th, Valve is hosting a huge tournament at Gamescom. The prize is the largest for a single tournament in esports history, $1 million to the winning team alone. This tournament will be the first time the public sees DotA2, and all the best teams from the original DotA have been invited to compete. The tournament will run the length of Gamescom, beginning on Wednesday and running through Sunday the 21st.
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Falcon Punch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFtw7qW7Vcw