In the previous patch notes articles, I mentioned how I wasn’t expecting new heroes and major changes in DOTA 2, as it would affect the teams’ preparation for The International 2013. Apparently, Valve and Icefrog have proven me wrong. The changes from WC3 DotA 6.78 have been ported DOTA 2 as of June 3, 2013 (GMT-7) and at the time of writing this article, the updates are available in the test client and will probably be ported to the main client in a day or so. This change doesn't include the new heroes so I'm still pretty much correct on...

In this week’s DOTA 2 update, we are given another non-hero patch. Also, because of the fast approaching The International 2013, no major changes will come out of this patch and, most probably, none from the upcoming patches as well. There are, however, significant user interface changes as well as performance improvements. UPDATE NOTES May 23, 2013 Source: DOTA 2 Dev GAMEPLAY - Elder Titan: Fixed Natural Order not upgrading on Elder Titan. - Elder Titan: Fixed Ancestral Spirit waking up units that were hit by the Spirit Stomp. - Elder Titan: Fixed Ancestral Spirit having the wrong radius while...

With The International 3 fast approaching and its qualifiers on-going, we can't expect any major patches that can bring significant changes to game play. So no new heroes as of the moment and no significant nerfs, buffs or balance changes. There are, however, several performance and community updates including vsync on window mode as well as reduced memory fragmentation. DOTA 2 also now supports 6 broadcaster channels so we can expect wider coverage for different casters and different languages. UPDATE NOTES May 16, 2013 Source: DOTA 2 Dev Forums GAMEPLAY - Elder Titan: Fixed Ancestral Spirit giving vision to Elder...

PMS-Asterisk is a group that will always amaze me. They’re an all-female competitive team and they’re into gaming for fun. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to say that all the other girls are not gaming for fun. By all means, there are a lot of female gamers that play for fun, but we must also admit that today, it’s quite easy to drown in all the attention girls get from other people. It’s very “easy” to use gender as an advantage or to market one’s self. But that is a topic for another day. PMS-Asterisk is the first...

My last big gaming event was years ago. Don’t ask how many. Attending the Pinoy Gaming Festival 2013 Summer Assembly was a good way to get back into the habit. In one of my previous posts, I mentioned my excitement in meeting Team Asterisk, particularly “Furryfish”  Tammy Tang. With my overwhelming desire and failure to attend The International 3, I really looked forward to PGF 2013. I really thought I’d handle meeting Team Asterisk and Team Orange with manageable fangirly feelings. I was wrong. As soon as I entered the venue, Tammy walked past me and I mindlessly utter-squealed her...

Remember when I said “Everyone should buy a Compendium because Goal 3” in a previous article? Well, that’s about to change. If you haven’t bought a Compendium yet, I wonder why. If you have then I understand you were happy when we were able to reach up to Goal 2, but there is more to be happy and excited about because now, everyone should buy a Compendium because Goal 3-6. Yes, you read that right. More stretch goals! Perhaps they realized that the wait between $1,850,000 to $2,600,000 was too long a wait that they figured something fruitful should go...

This week’s update gives us no new heroes and since The International 2013 Qualifiers is drawing closer and closer, there are no major changes, too. This patch, however, is mostly for people who enjoy playing 1-v-1 matches as well as for those who think that the weekly reports should be reduced.  Also, a performance update brings some good news for people running DOTA 2 on systems with 2GB RAM or lower. UPDATE NOTES May 8, 2013 Source: DOTA 2 Dev Forums - Added Solo Matchmaking option. This is an experimental feature that will match you with players who also queued...

Tickets for The International 3 went on sale at around 19:00 CEST yesterday and were sold out shortly after. If you’ve bought yours and are actually going to The International 2013 then congratulations, you lucky, lucky person! For the remainder of us who have no tickets and are not going to TI3, we are so jelly Valve offers us “the next best thing to being there” — The International Interactive Compendium! For the price of $9.99, you will be granted exclusive TI3-related features that allow you to virtually be part of the biggest DOTA 2 tournament in real-time. You can...

As mentioned in a previous post, the completion of the invites list is just the beginning. For the teams that made it to the list of East and West Qualifiers, the road to The International 3 officially starts now. The champions of each qualifier have a guaranteed spot at The International 2013. Teams who place second in each group will have one more chance to make it as part of the 16 TI3 teams if they win the Wildcard match to take the final spot. Each group has their own share of familiar names, returning teams and teams both new...

Just recently, we welcomed Skywrath Mage into the DOTA 2 hero pool. Now, we welcome Elder Titan as he enters the playable hero pool this week! Elder Titan is the new name given to the hero we know as “Tauren Chieftain” in WC3 DotA. If you've seen the supposedly leaked images of his skill animation, you would agree that this hero has the potential to "make a slam". That plus you have to agree he looks quite better compared the first images released with bright yellow and blue scheme.  As always, you can expect yourself to battle amongst other players...

After the past few days of anticipation, excitement and debate among many thingsw, the list of the thirteen invited teams to The International 2013 is finally complete! Invasion.MUFC and LGD.int taking the last two invites was rather expected judging by details the details that have been more-or-less revealed in various social networking sites. With the addition of these last two teams, fans can now move on to speculating and debating about who deserves to be part of the Eastern and Western Qualifiers. But before we do that, let’s move on to looking at the latest and final additions to the...

After all the hype created by the release of the first five TI3 invites after that of iG’s, you can probably imagine the anticipation and excitement when it was declared that the next wave of invites would be announced at 9:00 AM PDT on Monday, April 29, 2013 (12:00 MN SGT, Tuesday, April 30, 2013). And now, the names are finally out as five more teams join the list to almost complete the list of official invites. With this, there are still five remaining empty slots for The International 2013 — two slots for direct official invites, one for the...