August 17, 2011 by Paul Curtin
Although the game is still in the very early stages of production, it’s clear that Dota 2 is going to cause a fanboy war similar to what we’re currently seeing with Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3. With the original DotA, League of Legends, and Heroes of Newerth already battling it out amongst fans as to which is the superior game, Dota 2‘s wild marketing stunts by Valve in an effort to bring the Dota genre into the public eye are sure to only heat up the war.
Valve has taken an unheard of approach to marketing the game’s debut by offering up $1.6 million in prize money at a tournament this week at Gamescom 2011 which might turn out to backfire in their faces. After debuting cartoon-like graphics that are sure to have fans of the Dota series split, midway through the first game of the tournament, lag issues caused the game to be stopped for a solid twenty minutes. While lag issues at the tournament aren’t a big deal for the future success of the game, the unique art style, minimalist UI, and lack of revolutionary features is sure to disappoint a lot of people who were hoping that Valve would take the game to the next level and not just make another Dota clone. You can check out a HD live stream of Valve’s “Dota 2 International” right now below and make sure to click the space between “Share options” and “Full screen” in the bottom right corner of the video to turn on commentary.
