Ever since its announcement on the 13th of October, we’ve heard next to nothing about Dota 2. We’ve seen some character art… and that’s about it. There’s a closed beta going on, with no information getting out, and rumors of a world debut in the form of a live invitational tournament that will be held at Gamescom in a few weeks. Our very own Flamov has just written about these rumblings.
But more unofficial information has recently surfaced, and the hype train is showing no signs of stopping.
A closed beta changelog was leaked yet again, this time on the TF2 blog. This entry appeared in either the blog’s “News”or “Updates” categories. It’s gone now, but someone wisely took a screenshot:
Some very interesting stuff. A “channeling bar” is mentioned, something that is not currently present in DotA. We again notice that there is parity with version 6.72d of DotA, which should prove very useful in keeping the two games tightly linked. Valve News has a bit more on the subject. Make no mistake, the picture is taken from the TF2 blog, as the color scheme and element layout are identical to that of the actual TF2 blog.
Also of interest is the fact that the official Dota 2 blog has now been moved to a special URL: http://blog.dota2.com/ (it was originally placed at the root URL). In fact, the entire domain now redirects to this new Dota 2 blog. This implies that Valve is beginning work on the site, in preparation for the Dota 2 reveal which should take place at Gamescom.
And, finally, there’s also this tweet, from Valve’s L4D Developer Twitter account:
– Do you guys have any thoughts on the current matchmaking system? It seems to be a popular subject these days.
– We are internally testing some social things and dota2 will test a complete new match making system we might see.
Yes, part of it does refer to L4D, but the other part is quite interesting. A whole new matchmaking system? Dota 2 is starting to sound near revolutionary. Let’s hope Valve really delivers on all fronts with Dota 2.
I have to seriously consider changing to a new, more capable PC.
Yesterday I saw Valve employee under Steam nickname “jason” playing Dota 2. The game does not appear to have any name in friends list or Steam Community page. He was playing on a 24-slot server, 12 slots were used. His in-game name was Player 2, so, no Steam nicknames at the moment. The map name was simply “dota”.
Very interesting. Thank you!
If this is a leak it’s 95% an intentional leak.
Fuck the matchmaking system, we want HATS!