Dota 2: Dota 2 Scene Update #2: It's long

Time: 04:02:20 CET 19:02:20 PST 22:02:20 EST 11:02:20 Seoul 10:02:20 Beijing

You are here: Home / News / Dota 2: Dota 2 Scene Update #2: It's long

NEWS

By Hendrik 'chsn' De Backer

Jan 5, 2012 10:09

A lot of things happened this week, check inside to get up to date.

Before I dive into the wondrous world of Neurology, Neurosurgery, Psychiatry and Ophthalmology and celebrate my birthday, I decided to give you guys a little wrap up of all the things that happened recently. I'll start off with the more boring stuff and give an update of all the events,tournaments and line-up changes. At the bottom you can read a small update on the more fun stuff.

A new MYM Team

Let's start with Meet Your Makers fixing their Dota 2 team. If you've watched any of MYM's recent games lately, you'd agree they looked out of shape. While being a very promising team, inactivity played a huge factor in the failing of MYM's line-up. Daryl Koh 'IceIceIce' Pei Xiang, Chee Jin 'Roy' Sheng Royston and Toh Wai 'xy' Hong had army obligations to attend to and so captain Han Yong 'hyhy' Benedict Lim mixes things up and reforms his team with the help of MUFC eSports .

This is how the old MYM looked like:

Han Yong 'hyhy' Benedict Lim

Daryl Koh 'IceIceIce' Pei Xiang

Chee Jin 'Roy' Sheng Royston

Joshua 'ToFu' Tan

Toh Wai 'xy' Hong

The new Meet Your Makers :

Han Yong 'hyhy' Benedict Lim

Wai Cheong 'Ling' Sim

Wai Pern 'Net' Lim

Raymond 'Sharky' Wong Kie Yong

Daniel Wei Khit 'TFGood' Wong

Here's what team captain Han Yong 'hyhy' Benedict Lim had to say about the matter:

""The MYM Dota 2 team as we know it, has not been performing. Efforts in coping with the departures of ice, roy, xy for the army has also been without success. I've personally been sourcing for both local and regional players, but none of which available, quite meet the MYM level of play.

Playing with MUFC players began as a casual joint-effort in pubstomping. Then with certain internal issues arising within the MUFC team concurrently, successes in raping asian pubs saw us through to a possible partnership between MUFC and MYM.

After much thought and negotiation, we've finalised the new MYM D2 lineup.

Apologies to the true MYM fans and management for the past months.
We will do better from now.""

Star League official list

The final list of 16 teams that will fight for big prizes over four seasons has been made official. It's Gosu eSports and Infused.Tt eSPORTS are the ones who make the list complete. Finals will be played offline in Kiev.

Power Rangers

The Retry

Team Shakira

Team Hungary

SK Gaming

Evil Geniuses

mTw

fnatic

Team Dignitas

NEXT.kz

It's Gosu eSports

Infused.Tt eSPORTS

Premier League team updates

Not a big surprise here, Chinese teams DK and LGD have been removed from the Premier League. Chinese New Year is coming up and both teams are participating in the G-League Grand Finals and thus both teams have no time to participate in this brand new project. MUFC eSports is being replaced as well since they no longer exist any more and are replaced by Meet Your Makers which is kinda obvious. The replacing teams for DK and LGD are Team Dignitas and Evil Geniuses . Below once again, the teams who are participating.

10.000h

Nirvana

SK Gaming

fnatic

Natus Vincere

Yesterday the first matches were played between 10.000h and Team Dignitas which ended up in a draw.

D2E Challenge

Since SK Gaming is playing this as well, there's no way I could leave this one out. A lot of tournaments are being announced and created and a lot of money is being thrown at the teams. Groups will be drawn the 15th of January and the remaining four teams will be announced on their IRC channel #D2E.

Teams that are officially on the list:

SK Gaming

Team Shakira

Reinhardts Panzer Mannschaft

mTw

fnatic

.exe

neWave

As you can see a lot of big names have been announced. Natus Vincere will not be participating as they don't like off-line tournaments in general and will only participate in the major ones. Experience could be added to fill up a remaining spot but I'm probably forgetting more obvious choices. This all depends on how hard they will be sticking to the term "Dota 2 Europe Challenge" though.

Fun stuff

First of all, a great thread has been started by

CtChocula on GosuGamers. You can check it out here. In his series he recreates the Dota history so if you're interested make sure you give it a read. In his latest entry he talks about my all-time favourite version 6.48b and the insane ganking squad VP of that time.

For the ones interested in Lore, HippoVic together with some volunteers created an awesome project and is making a World Map of Dota2 where you can catch up with all the lore. It's still far from done but the work put in is impressive to say the least. Check out the hand drawn map here.

On a different note, ESFIworld created a new series called Hooked!, a new Dota 2 show where Nazroth will interview the best players Dota 2 has to offer. In his first Episode he talks with none other than Jonathan 'Loda' Berg about sponsors, tournaments, organisations and much more.

The most important thing still remains, where is the Dota 2 update? I expected a massive update on my birthday but unfortunately I opened the Dota 2 site with a lot of disappointment. The last update was on the 21th of December and two weeks without an update is a long time for a game that is trying to catch up with the regular Dota. On Christmas, the old Dota received a huge update with 4 new heroes and a lot of fun holiday stuff like a Christmas Pudge while Dota 2 is still waiting for a Christmas present. My hopes were high Valve! Then again, this also might be the last time IceFrog will be able to take care of his beloved Dota community with a big update as Dota 2 is slowly but surely taking over and will receive the most attention in the near future. This being said, I demand a Christmas Pudge in Dota 2 next year saying "Ho Ho Ho" while dismembering people!

All jokes apart, I think the next Dota 2 update will be a bit bigger than the ones before. Let's hope we can play with 2 new heroes instead of one so we can increase that way too small hero pool. Invoker will probably be next, unfortunately I won't be satisfied until I can get my hands on my beloved Pandaren Brewmaster and I'm sure a lot of players and teams would agree as well. Seeing the same bans and picks over and over again and being able to predict picks and bans outcome is not the reason why I watch and play Dota 2. At times like this we tend to forget we're still playing a Beta game but that doesn't make it entirely impossible to surprise opponents. The awesome Pugna+Zeus combination played by mTw is still fresh on my mind and is in fact the very reason why I watch games. All I'm asking for is: surprise me, make me say: "NO WAY!" and spill my drinks all over my keyboard.

I think it's time to lay down my pen and dive back into my awesome big books that have to be finished in a ridiculous short amount of time. For those who're studying as well, heads up: you're not alone! I hope you've enjoyed the read and expect interviews and game analysis features coming up in February.

Sources:
joinDOTA
GosuGamers
Cyberarena
Premier League
Dota 2 Europe
Dota 2 map
esfiworld