Dota 2 Finally Out of Beta

[Cognimancer]

Dota 2 Finally Out of Beta

Valve's Dota 2 is out of beta and releasing on time... sort of.

Dota 2 has been in an invite-only "closed" beta for two years now. It's been long enough that you'd be forgiven for forgetting that the game technically isn't complete, despite having a monthly user base of over three million active players. Evidently, the quality gurus over at Valve have decided that the game is finally ready for the public. An announcement today explained that the MOBA will be officially launching in a gradual multi-phase process, to ensure that the servers can support a massive influx of noobs eager new players.

Many of you probably have an invite to the Dota 2 beta in your Steam inventory, if not multiple - Valve hasn't been stingy in dishing them out. If not, getting into the game won't be quite as easy as downloading the client and pressing play. Upon visiting the Dota 2 Steam page [http://store.steampowered.com/app/570/] and adding the free-to-play title to your library, you'll be entered into a launch queue. Players will be notified by email when a position is available in-game, and after that point logging on should be instant.

So even the not-beta will involve waiting for an invite to come play. It's just for logistics at this point, though: Valve notes that the number of concurrent users has been peaking at 300,000, and additional servers are ready to support an additional 450,000. Deciding when and where to deploy those machines is complicated for a launch of this scale, but it seems like the folks at Valve have done their homework to prepare for a smooth launch.

Source: Dota 2 [http://www.dota2.com/thebetaisover]

Permalink

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Isn't this one of the signs of Armageddon?

Jokes aside congrats Valve on completing another game, although I'm sure you'll never stop tweaking it.

 

[Zakarath]

I'm not too sure this will cause a large influx of new players. I mean, if you had any inclination to give the game a try, invites were trivially easy to get...

 

[Strazdas]

There is alpha, there is beta, but valve skips Ceta and goes striaght to Dota.

sorry, couldnt resist.

this wont change much. its as much "finishing the game" as WOrld of tanks that dropped the beta title after 2 years of profits.

 

[shirkbot]

Well, I suppose congratulations? I'm not really sure how I feel about this because I had actually not realized that the game was still unfinished. Well, I got twice the news per article. Huzzah!

 

[Longstreet]

Still not playing it. Dota2 and LoL are two games i am staying FAAAAAAR away from.

Besides, as other users here mentioned, if you wanted to play the game by now, you would have. There are more keys than gamers out there.

 

[Marik Bentusi]

I'm not too sure this will cause a large influx of new players. I mean, if you had any inclination to give the game a try, invites were trivially easy to get...

I think there's plenty of people that just "don't do" incomplete games and those too scared to touch MOBAs without something like the extensive tutorial they've updated recently.

Personally I've already ticked off about 40 hours in DOTA2, but bot matches only 'cause the community scares the crap outta me. With the official launch that could have a good amount of noobs and guys that give the game another chance, I might actually give the player matches a shot.

My primary problem with DOTA is how unintuitive an overwhelming amount of elements are. Like for advanced players it's no question that neutral creeps spawn at 30s and every minute from then on, can/should be prevented from spawning with wards in the enemy's jungle in their easy lane, should be stacked in your own lane to help your jungler or support so he doesn't sap XP or even last hits from your carry - none of these things are obvious in any way, you have to grind your way through several wiki articles or tutorial videos so you don't embarrass your family.

 

[schtingah]

I think once its properly released and gets added to the main steam page is when we may see an influx of new players, since it'll be a new free to play title for people that haven't heard of it yet (I assume that everyone that knows about this game and is interested is already playing it). How many of those will stick around in the hostile enviroment that is the Dota 2 community remains to be seen though .

 

[HavoK 09]

I'm not too sure this will cause a large influx of new players. I mean, if you had any inclination to give the game a try, invites were trivially easy to get...

I think there's plenty of people that just "don't do" incomplete games and those too scared to touch MOBAs without something like the extensive tutorial they've updated recently.

Personally I've already ticked off about 40 hours in DOTA2, but bot matches only 'cause the community scares the crap outta me. With the official launch that could have a good amount of noobs and guys that give the game another chance, I might actually give the player matches a shot.

My primary problem with DOTA is how unintuitive an overwhelming amount of elements are. Like for advanced players it's no question that neutral creeps spawn at 30s and every minute from then on, can/should be prevented from spawning with wards in the enemy's jungle in their easy lane, should be stacked in your own lane to help your jungler or support so he doesn't sap XP or even last hits from your carry - none of these things are obvious in any way, you have to grind your way through several wiki articles or tutorial videos so you don't embarrass your family.

well i have a 1000 hours and im still learning stuff, nothing feels better than finding a good hero combo and proved to roll with it. That is one of the beauties about dota, you never know everything.

Yes that might be a turn off at the start, but when you have played the game for so long it feels pretty good

 

[james.sponge]

Ah Dota the vilest hive of gaming scum and villainy on Earth, available now!

My primary problem with DOTA is how unintuitive an overwhelming amount of elements are. Like for advanced players it's no question that neutral creeps spawn at 30s and every minute from then on, can/should be prevented from spawning with wards in the enemy's jungle in their easy lane, should be stacked in your own lane to help your jungler or support so he doesn't sap XP or even last hits from your carry - none of these things are obvious in any way, you have to grind your way through several wiki articles or tutorial videos so you don't embarrass your family.

Precisely, that's why you should use tutorials which are available all over the web. You can't expect to know everything once you jump into the game, especially since said game is a sequel to a user-made modification making the game much more inaccessible.

Still once you learn the basic mechanics the game is easy and being a veteran rts player can only help.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Are you ready for a influx of Sniper and Drow users in every match now?

'Cos that's what's gonna happen -_-

 

[CardinalPiggles]

There's probably about 30 million or more keys floating around. I'm sure if anyone wanted one they could get it.

 

[Living_Brain]

EVERYONE, this could be important:

I have 12 copies of Dota 2 to give away. Twelve! If anyone has a problem getting the game contact me.

 

[Vale]

And the LoL players are going to be pretty freakin' surprised when they realise Windrunner is an Intelligence hero.
I know I was.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Are you ready for a influx of Sniper and Drow users in every match now?

'Cos that's what's gonna happen -_-

No worse than seeing Pudge in every bloody match.

Besides, last hitting and denying are important skills to (re)learn in DotA.
Both of them are at least useful for learning about frontswing and backswing canceling, and learning that unlike LoL, ranged attackers have a turn speed delay so kiting is much less effective than it is there.