DotA2 - Original Thread

After watching an entire match. The graphics are just right. Detailed bushes and tree's with slightly more plain pathways. But even in the plain pathways they details are very good. Although at first it didn't have that completely dota 1 feel to it but once seeing an entire match it has really improved. I had to wait 30 minutes to find a match and I would often waste time doing so.
I wouldn't dota is all hardcore but it's level of difficulty can be toned down with game modes like -em. I am sure steam will put players into easy and medium modes in Dota 2, making the ability of a casual player to increase in level slowly but not be frustrated by it's difficulty.

I find this a bit funny as most of the mechanics in DotA/2 nowadays weren't discovered for a good while, so saying it was initially designed to be as such is misleading. It evolved over the years to be this "Hardcore and punishing", but it never started off like that whatsoever.

I'm talking about the state of the game by the time IceFrog picked it up, and the way that he has developed the game. DotA wasn't a serious competitive game until just before IceFrog started developing it, it was just a very popular UMS.

I didn't start playing DotA until 6.4x (2007) so I've always known it as a mechanically complex and difficult game.

I'm sad that MyM didnt go further but grats to

 Spoiler

Na'Vi

MYM
Ugh I liked EHOME so much. Na'Vi is too aggressive
I don't understand what's so bad about the UI system.

I like EHOME but I don't like the Chinese farming metagame. It's good to see that the more aggressive European playstyle can beat it.

I am interested in this game, very interested.

After looking at the game, I am very very very frightened how fast this can go South. If you compare gameplay to the trailer to the gameplay videos, you'll notice that the gameplay videos are much less detailed. That's normal, as that happened with Portal 2. What this does reveal however, is that the ground is very defined and detailed, something that source wouldn't be able to do with displacements, but rather with models. If they are in models, that would ruin the one and only (valid) selling point of DOTA2: the fact that since it is source, it is looking forward to modding and mapping. If it's models, it'll create major issues with mapping. The other issue, is that DOTA and its spawns usually have communities that will play only one or two maps, over and over again, rejecting other maps or changes because they are different. If that takes foot, mapping, even if not crippled, won't be able to survive.


On a side note, they interviewed Erik Johnson on DOTA2, and eventually they asked him about hats eventually. He looked at the ground for a solid minute, and finally mumbled something about just trying to get the basics working first. I guess Robin has been busy with his crayon drawings.

http://blog.dota2.com/2011/09/i-said-good-day-sir/

We’ve been a bit quiet lately. As always, we learn a lot whenever we put something out and get feedback from you all. Showing Dota 2 to the world at The International gave us a lot of feedback to chew through, and the many recent forum threads talking about the information leaking out of the beta has added to the pile. After a bunch of thinking, we’ve decided to change our plans a little.

Our original plan was to spend the next year or so in beta, adding new features and slowly growing the number of heroes until we reached a level of parity with Dota 1, at which point we’d release Dota 2 to the world. But the feedback we’re seeing everywhere is that people just want to play it, even though there’s still a ton of heroes yet to be implemented. We’ve also seen that the folks who are already in the beta are chomping at the bit to show everyone else some of the fun games they’ve had. So we decided our original plan was dumb.

Welcome to the new plan: We’re going to take the current version of Dota 2, which has The International set of heroes, and get it out there as fast as we can. We’ve still got some work to do in a couple of areas, so we’ll be keeping it invite-only for a (hopefully short) period of time. But there’ll be no restrictions on what players can do with it – they can release screenshots, make movies, shoutcast matches, write guides, publicly make fun of our HUD, or anything else their hearts desire. While they do that, we’ll be shipping regular updates with more heroes, new features we’ve been working on, and improvements on the existing content as we get more and more feedback.

What does this mean for you? It means it’s even more important that you get on the list that we’ll be inviting from. If you’re talented, you could take a shot at winning an invite in the GosuGamers competition or the Playdota contest. Once you’ve got your hands on the game, feel free to talk about it however you’d like – we’re excited to see what you’ll produce.

In the meantime, we’re going to be ratcheting this blog up a little too, so you can expect some more regular posting from us.

AWWWWWWWW YEAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Yeah, the Dota 2 subreddit has a lot of threads of streams going up already.

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/

Back home from the UK and i see a ton of DotA2 streams @ TL.net, feels good.

Sweet mother of mercy - http://blog.dota2.com/2011/10/thats-wort...le-of-rum/

One thing we’ve received a lot of feedback on is the Dota 2 spectator system. We thought it might be interesting to talk a bit about the thinking that led us to the current system, in the hopes that it might help you understand what we’re trying to do, so that you can help us improve upon it. We think that spectating games, both live and saved replays, is an important part of the Dota experience.

At a high level, we felt there were two important ways that players would be using our spectator system, beyond simply watching games for fun. The first way is that they’d be using it to watch in the interests of improving their skills. The second is that they’d be watching commentated matches in tournaments and leagues. Overall we felt that spectating should be treated as importantly as playing the game, so we started with a WATCH button featured prominently in Dota 2′s main menu.

If you’re looking to watch games to improve yourself, there are a number of filters you can use to find a useful game, such as one with a particular hero or player, one featuring players of specific skill levels, and so on. This is an area we expect to improve upon in the future too: if you want to learn a new hero, we want to make it really easy to find a set of replays that’ll help you quickly get a handle on it. If you’re following a favorite competitive team, or missed a friend’s great match last night, the game will know and lead you to those replays. If you’re an experienced player who wants to expand your skill with a specific hero, or work on your teamwork as part of a specific team of heroes, we want you to be able to easily find replays that’ll let you see high level players using those heroes in matches.

The second main feature we added for players who are watching to learn is the Player Perspective camera mode. In this mode, you select one of the players in the game, and you see the game as if you were at their computer. You see the player’s mouse cursor and input, their camera work, their HUD, their interaction with UI elements, and so on. We wanted you to be able to see exactly how a highly skilled player is playing the game, so you can see ways of improving your own play, and that’s what this camera mode lets you do.

When you’re watching a tournament match, you’re usually watching it at the same time as a large number of other spectators. We wanted to improve the experience of watching live games, and the first problem we identified is that individual spectators don’t have a shared view of the game. This makes it harder to have a conversation with other spectators around what’s happening onscreen, because everyone will be watching from a different position. This problem led us to creating the Directed camera mode, where we were able to leverage our experience with Source TV to build a smart camera that knows what’s about to happen, and tries to make sure it’s in a good position to let you see that action unfold. So in addition to being able to kick back and relax knowing that the camera will always be where the action is, you’re also able to talk about anything happening onscreen because you know that everyone else watching the Directed camera is seeing the same thing you are.

Another goal we had for spectating matches was to have better support for commentators. If you’ve watched any of the matches from The International, you’ve probably already seen that a good commentator can make a match much more exciting to watch, and help beginners understand what’s going on. But previous implementations of commentating systems have had the commentator’s voice stream sit outside the game. This means that it isn’t captured along with the game – and that means that if you weren’t there to watch the live game, you won’t hear the commentary when you watch the replay at a later date. We felt that should be fixed, so we built commentator support fully into the game itself, and bake it into the replay itself. So if you download one of The International matches, you can watch it as if it was a live game, with all the commentator’s camerawork and commentary intact. For matches commentated in multiple languages, you’ll find all the different languages there in the replay too.

If you don’t have Dota 2 yet, and haven’t had a chance at seeing these features for yourself, you’re in luck: there are a ton of players out there streaming the game, so take a look and let us know what you think. A handy site we’ve been using ourselves is StreamDota2.com, which provides a nice set of streams to choose from

BEST REPLAY/COMMENTATOR/SPECTATOR SYSTEM EVER? I THINK SO.

Now if only Riot would take notes from Valve. They definitely seem to know what they're doing with DotA 2.

TotalBiscuit did a wtp Is...? video on the beta

[video=youtube;_Q2LKGfhVwg]www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q2LKGfhVwg[/video]

I never liked TotalBiscuit

I never liked TotalBiscuit

A lot of people don't, because he will definitely speak his mind even if it's extremely hurtful. He's not afraid to tell the truth.

A lot of people don't, because he will definitely speak his mind even if it's extremely hurtful. He's not afraid to tell the truth.

And when commentating starcraft 2 he often says stuff that's stupid and or not true.. That's more my problem with him.
I don't care about the truth part

A lot of people don't, because he will definitely speak his mind even if it's extremely hurtful. He's not afraid to tell the truth.

He's a nice guy and seems like he'd be fun to hang out with, but yeah, he's also extremely opinionated and he can be pretty obnoxious about it sometimes.

Twice the blood shall I shed!

 Spoiler

Twice the blood shall I shed!
October 6, 2011 - Dota Team

First things first, today’s update introduces Bloodseeker and Kunkka. Have fun!



This update also enables the practice bots. While they’re still a work in progress, they’re a great low-pressure tool for trying out new heroes and item builds. While practicing with them, note that you can ping the minimap to send commands to your allied bots – ping an enemy tower to tell them to push a lane, an enemy hero to ask for assistance in a gank, and so on. At the moment they only know how to play a subset of the current heroes, but they do know how to use all of Dota 2′s many items.

They’ll also use text chat to indicate their plans, so you can join in. For example, they’ll:

Let you know when they’re coming to your lane for a gank.
Communicate when they’re fleeing or losing a fight.
Indicate their high priority targets in upcoming team fights.
Expose their thinking about whether they should push or defend their lanes.
Call for assistance versus Roshan if they think the timing is right.

If you’re interested, here are a few features we’ll be adding to them next:

User specified difficulty levels, so you can tune them to your skill level.
Deeper control over your allied bots, so you can “command” your team at a high level. For instance, you might want your team’s carry to not join a fight, and instead keep farming their lane. Note that they do a good job of making these kinds of decisions themselves, but if you really want to be hands-on, you can.
Support for several more heroes.

As always, let us know what you think.

Finally, we saw that Playdota’s Photo Competition finished up, and handed out several Dota 2 keys. If you haven’t taken a look, there’s some great photos there.

Steeled and tempered.

 Spoiler

Steeled and tempered.
October 11, 2011 - Dota Team

Dota is a game where it sometimes look like it’s impossible for your team to turn the match around, but the large number of variables in the game can often lead to cases where a team in that position still manages to win. If you talk to anyone who’s played a fair chunk of Dota, you’ll find they still remember that recent game where they thought the game was over, but they turned it around and staged an epic win. One of the biggest challenges of improving Dota’s experience is that of trying to ensure that players don’t prematurely leave games, robbing team mates of a chance to have that comeback experience, and the enemy team of learning that they may have a fantastic early game strategy that falls apart in the late game. If a significant number of games end prematurely for any reason, we believe it’s fundamentally unfulfilling for everyone.

There are many reasons why players leave or go AFK. Aside from the obvious ones, there are many rare cases: they may get an important phone call, they may be having configuration issues with their computer, their team mates might be saying horrible things to them, they may get up to open the door for the pizza guy and accidentally lock themselves out (yes, someone at Valve actually did this). Some of these reasons are fundamentally undetectable to the game.

So, like all thorny design issues that can’t be play tested internally, this is something we’ll be working on for some time in public. We think it’s a key problem in Dota 1 for us to solve in Dota 2, and hence, it’s too important for us to just rush into. So far we have been focused on gathering data about what’s really going on. Now you’ll see us starting to venture into additions that actually perturb the system. As these come on board, we’ll be measuring each carefully to make sure it’s making the overall ecosystem better, not penalizing legitimate players or missing those who are out to hurt other player’s experiences. As a result, don’t be surprised if we measure something we’ve released and then choose to remove it after we have the data. It’ll be an ongoing process for us as Dota 2′s player base expands, but it’s one we’re not going to stop working on until you tell us we’re done.

As always, feel free to send us your thoughts and feedback.

I’ve been here the whole time

 Spoiler

I’ve been here the whole time
October 14, 2011 - Dota Team

Today’s update adds everyone’s favorite invisible hero, Riki. That sound you hear is everyone scrabbling to find the shop’s hotkey combo for buying Gems of True Sight. Among a host of other additions, the practice bots will also buy the courier now.



Lately we’ve been enjoying Dota Cinema’s series of 2 minute hero introductions. Neat stuff if you haven’t had a chance to see all of Dota 2′s current heroes yet. If you’ve seen all those, and still want more, check out Taylor Caines, who’ll be livestreaming a full 24 hour straight play session of Dota 2 for charity.

Misery loves company

 Spoiler

Misery loves company
October 20, 2011 - Dota Team

Now that you’ve got some practice against Riki, you’re ready to carry a gem against Broodmother. Who better to carry it than Skeleton King? And if you have a King, you need to have a Queen.

We’ve also added the ability to Pause the game. Each player can currently pause the game 3 times, and as always we’ll iterate over the ruleset as you guys test the feature and get us feedback.



With ESWC coming up on Sunday, we’ve kept most other changes in the game to a minimum. These new heroes will be enabled in Captains Mode after the tournament is over but are available for regular use in Matchmaking. You can root for your favorite team over at Gosugamers for a chance to win a beta key.

Heat wave coming!

 Spoiler

Heat wave coming!
October 28, 2011 - Dota Team

Today’s update adds Huskar, Batrider, and everyone’s favorite Twin-Headed Dragon, Jakiro.


Extra Crispy!

We’re continuing to experiment with community management features, so today we’re adding a commendation system, which allows you to commend players who made your game a happier experience, and report anyone being hostile. As always, we’ll be gathering a bunch of data on the usage of the feature to see how it’ll fit into our overall system. Also, since we’ve received a bunch of positive feedback about the Player Perspective view in spectator mode, we’ve been working on putting the finishing touches on it – in this update it now shows you the shop, so you can see exactly how the pros buy their items. As usual, there’s a variety of other gameplay additions and fixes, and some improvements to the practice bots.

The folks over at joindota.com, in partnership with own3D, have announced an online tournament featuring 24 teams that will compete for $14,000 dollars. The tournament will start on November 7th, so head over to the-defense.com for coverage.

Update notes are available here.

That took a while to edit into one post...

Soon to be great bot-AI? Check.

Working on making sure that games wont end because of premature leaves? check

Each player can pause 3 times, yesssss.

MY HYPE KEEPS BUILDING UP, DOTA 2 WILL BE AMAZING.


Also latest changelog if anybody cares:

 Spoiler

HEROES

Added Batrider, Huskar, and Jakiro!
Ancient Apparition: Fixed a bug with Chilling Touch attack speed reduction display.
Ancient Apparition: Fixed a recent bug with Ice Trail path debuff happening a little too early
Beastmaster: Fixed Call of the Wild resummoning showing up as a deny.
Broodmother: Fixed Poison Sting from affecting Wards.
Broodmother: Fixed the wrong web sometimes getting removed when a new one is added.
Broodmother: Fixed the Spiderlings and Spiderite passive abilities working on buildings and mechanical units.
Broodmother: Fixed Spawn Spiderlings not being a projectile.
Broodmother: Fixed Insatiable Hunger being purgable.
Broodmother: Fixed Insatiable Hunger bonus damage being considered as base damage.
Clockwerk: Fixed Hookshot interaction with alled units and neutrals.
Clockwerk: Fixed Hookshot not stunning magic immune units.
Clockwerk: Fixed the Hookshot target sometimes being able to run away before he arrives.
Clockwerk: Fixed cases where Hookshot would drop you to a lower level if your target was near a ledge
Enigma: Fixed Greater Eidolon movement speed.
Enigma: Fixed Dire Eidolon armor.
Faceless Void: Fixed Chronosphere's interaction with various passives
Juggernaut: Fixed Blade Dance working on wards.
Kunkka: Fixed Torrent slow not lasting as long as it should.
Kunkka: Fixed X Marks The Spot ignoring Linken's Sphere
Kunkka: Fixed X Marks The Spot vision revealer not working.
Kunkka: Fixed Ghost Ship not having vision.
Kunkka: Fixed Ghost Ship's allied buff not reducing spell damage.
Mirana: Fixed vision around Arrow when it impacts.
Pudge: Fixed cases where Hook would drop the pulled target to a lower level if your target was near a ledge
Queen of Pain: Fixed bug in Shadow Strike slow falloff.
Queen of Pain: Fixed Scream of Pain not hitting units in fog of war
Queen of Pain: Fixed Shadow Strike not being castable on regular units
Queen of Pain: Fixed Scream of Pain not hitting invisible units.
Queen of Pain: Fixed Shadow Strike not allowing you to deny heroes.
Razor: Fixed Eye of the Storm not hitting invisibile units.
Riki: Fixed Backstab working on mechanical units.
Riki: Fixed Smokescreen working on Ancients.
Riki: Fixed the timing on Blink Strike damage.
Skeleton King: Fixed Aegis not working on him once he levels up Reincarnation.
Skeleton King: Fixed Vampiric Aura on mechanical units.
Skeleton King: Fixed Vampiric Aura on denies.
Weaver: Fixed sometimes coming out of his invisibility for Geminate Attack.


GAMEPLAY

Fixed Heart of Tarrasque health regeneration from stacking.
Fixed various items and abilities not interrupting channeling when used
Fixed being able to revive a courier by upgrading it after it dies.
Fixed courier stopping in its position whenever the hero it's delivering items to teleports.
Fixed bug that caused illusions generated from a disconnected player to be controllable by the enemy team
Fixed Siege units being considered as heroes for Bloodbath's distance check
Fixed Chronosphere freezing other units you own
Fixed issue that caused issued commands to not be executed immediately.
Fixed a slight delay on many commands given to heroes.
Fixed Monkey King Bar from proccing on towers.
Fixed bloodstone charges stopping at 30.
Fixed Armlet active bonus continuing after dropping the item.
Fixed Creep Stats reseting after reaching 500.
Fixed gold bounty values on creeps after that lane's barracks is down.
Fixed Necronomicon not killing its previous units when used again (from Refresher, Tinker's Rearm, etc).
Fixed Necronomicon Mana Burn ignoring Linken's Sphere
Fixed Fountain mana regeneration being too slow
Enabled Broodmother, Skeleton King and Queen of Pain in Captain's Mode.
Fixed various stats on necronomicon units
Fixed Satyr Hellcallers to only consider units in its vision for deciding when to cast shockwave.
Fixed interaction with Roshan on Rocket Flare and Mana Void.
Fixed Heart, Urn of Shadows, and Dagger not being properly Disabled by Haunt.
Fixed a performance hitch when creating illusions.
Fixed towers not revearling invisible non-hero units (spiderlings, hawk, etc).
Wildkin Warchief's Tornado will now follow the target enemy you right-click instead of giving an error message.
Fixed Kobold Taskmaster HP.
Fixed Centaur Outrunner Armor and Damage.
Fixed Attack type on Centaur Chief.
Fixed small wolf's attack, armor and attack range.
Fixed Enraged Wildkin level and XP bounty.
Fixed Acquisition range on various neutrals.
Fixed various minor inconsistencies on unit stats.


UI

Added a commendation system, which allows you to commend players who made your game a happier experience, and report anyone being hostile. You can commend or report a player by clicking their name in the main menu, in-game scoreboard or end game score screen.
Added shop hotkey labels for shop category buttons.
Clicking or control clicking a unit now selects all units of that type onscreen instead of globally.
Player Perspective now shows shop and shop search text.
Tiny's Toss will now show an error message if he has nothing near him to toss when he reaches cast range.
When disarmed (Ghost Scepter, Decrepify, etc.), you can now right-click or attack-move-click on enemies to move toward them. The "Can't Attack" error will not appear until you reach attack range of the enemy.
Shift-queued orders that become invalid by the time they are executed will now show an error message.
Added an error message for when your shift-order-queue is full.
Fixed a problem where certain orders could be ignored if a player tried to execute them just before they became invalid, especially with a slow connection to the server. An appropriate error message will now be displayed in these cases.
Fixed losing key input when you search the shop with the chat up
Fixed a bug where you could swap a stash item with a channeling teleport scroll and still finish the teleport.
Fixed not being able to see your last hit gold effect through fog of war.
Fixed playing gold sound and visuals for things that give zero gold bounty.
Fixed a control group bug when Enchantress takes one of Chen's converted units.
Improved the accuracy of matchmaking parties of players. Note that this may increase party matchmaking wait time.
In matchmaking, servers are now selected before matches are ready.
Tooltip hover for hero stats and gold is more responsive.
HP Bars no longer lose some accuracy when the target is very low HP.
Fixed Necronomicon Level 2 & 3 Manaburn hotkey not working.
Added a new hotkey setting to select all units you own other than your hero (unbound by default).
Fixed the scoreboard and stats panels not updating while the game is paused.


VISUALS

Added a specific minibash effect for extremely short stuns.
Updated Queen of Pain's base attack to better match her color scheme.
Updated shadow strike.
Fixed lifesteal effects not being owned by their owner which resulted in them not properly culling in fog of war.
Added Spell Block effect to Roshan.
Adjusted the tower projectile collision so that projectiles will actually reach towers before exploding.
Detailed outer cliffs.
Added falling rock lava splashes added to dire base background.
Added Dire side moths.


AUDIO

Frost Armor sound effect now plays when the buff is refreshed.
Added Broodmother's Spiderling's voice code.
Heroes can now talk while dead as long as they just want to comment on a Victory or Loss.
Fixed a bug that prevented heroes from commenting on a rune pickup.


BOTS

Bots will now attack non-hero enemies.
Bots now want to attack couriers and Juggernaut Bot's Healing Ward.
Bots are now very unlikely to break off attacking when the target is stunned or slowed.
Bots will now buy dust/gem when playing against Sand King.
Increased the bonus-to-attack when a human pings a target.
Increased the impact of human pings for lane defends and pushes.
Fixed issue where tower pings from Dire players weren't working.
Pinging enemy heroes will also increase the desire for a Team Roam.
Tightened up the precision of pinging -
bots should no longer think you're asking for a lane push when you ping on an enemy that's near a tower.
Bots now know to move to healing auras if they need some healing and aren't desperately retreating. Currently works with Juggernaut's Healing Ward and Witch Doctor's Restoration Aura.
Bots will now prioiritize interrupting units that are channeling.
Fixed a number of cases where bots were getting stuck trying to use an item on an invalid (magic immune, invulnerable, etc) target.
Improved bot target-selection logic for Eul's Scepter.
Improved bot Diffusal Blade usage -
it will no longer cast it on retreating targets that have an incoming stun.
Improved Orchid usage -
bots will now use it to break channels.
Improved Urn usage -
bots will no longer worry about using it on allies that are being hit by creeps.
Bots now take damage on their own Barracks and Ancient much more seriously.
Bots are now better about defending the proper lane when in-base.
Bots should tunnelvision less on tower pushes when enemy heroes are nearby.
Slightly increased bot desire to attack the enemy Ancient.
Bots will no longer do Roshan when any lane needs to be defended.
Bots now announce when they're leaving Roshan.
Human players now need to be a bit further into a lane to claim it for laning purposes at the beginning of a game.
Bots should spam chat less about roaming and returning.
Bots should be much less likely to go for runes if a human with a bottle is on their team.
Fixed Tiny's build so he will use his final grow.
Fixed bug that was causing bots to be too timid late-game if they happened to be in a lane.
Decreased lane push desire when there are enemy heroes nearby.
Fixed a bug where bots didn't think they could purchase their next item if it would require selling an item.
Bots should be significiantly more likely to spot farming targets and roam to gank as a team.
Reduced spamminess of bot chat when pushing a lane.
Reduced bot willingness to tank a tower.
Slightly reduced the desire to push a tower when their potential co-pushers aren't nearby.
Fixed bots repurchasing a courier when their flying courier uses shield.
Bots should be better about picking stuff up from base late-game when they don't have any more pressing desires.
Added Team Roam chat announcements.
Bots will no longer defer all runes to humans with bottles when all the human heroes are dead.
Increased attack desire when a number of nearby allies are attacking, which makes bots more decisive in teamfights.

[video=youtube;OIiDdphonA8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIiDdphonA8&feature=channel_video_title[/video]
RELEVANT.

The sleeping dragon wakes
October 31, 2011 - Dota Team



We’ve just finished our first significant expansion of Dota 2 server capacity around the world, and that means it’s time to kick this thing up a notch. Starting this week, we’ll be handing out Dota 2 in increasing volumes. To celebrate, we’re releasing the first part of the official Dota 2 comic, Tales from the Secret Shop.

Once you’ve read today’s part, make sure you fill out the Dota 2 Survey in Steam to secure your place in the upcoming invitations (if you haven’t restarted your Steam client for a few days, you might need to do that before clicking that link). The extra data the survey provides will allow us to ensure we invite a wide spread of players and hardware.

One thing everyone will tell you is that Dota is a game that’s more fun with friends. Because of that, we wanted to make sure everyone we invited could bring a couple of friends – so everyone who receives Dota 2 will be given two extra copies that they can hand out to whomever they’d like. You’ll find your extra copies in the Steam section of your Steam account’s item inventory, and you can use the Steam Trading feature to give them to your friends.

Once you have Dota 2 installed, keep an eye on this blog. We update the game every Thursday with extra heroes, features, and bug fixes, and we’ll cover interesting elements of those updates right here. We’ll also be giving you some more insight into the development of Dota 2 over the coming months, as we roll through the rest of Dota’s many heroes.

Your time has come
November 3, 2011 - Dota Team

Check your email, because the first batch of invites are going out!

[COLOR="#B22222"]
The crusade continues[/COLOR]
November 3, 2011 - Dota Team

It’s Knight time!



In addition to Omniknight and Dragon Knight, today’s update includes another step in our process of tackling the problem of players abandoning games repeatedly. This is the first time we’ll be moving beyond just gathering data, and into the realm of taking action: players who have been identified as repeatedly leaving games will be moved into a separate matchmaking pool for a period of time. As usual, there’s a variety of other smaller additions and fixes.

We’d also like to welcome the new folks who received Dota 2 invites yesterday. If you weren’t one of the lucky folks, you’ll be happy to know we’ll be pushing out new invites every couple of days.

Finally, we’d like to give a shout out to Dreamhack’s Dota 2 tournament. If your team is in the area, sign up fast – there’s a limited number of slots.

You can read today’s changelog here.

Changelogs:

 Spoiler

HEROES

Added Dragon Knight and Omniknight!
Chen: Fixed Holy Persuasion not removing buffs from the converted creep
Chen: Fixed Hand of God working on dead heroes
Huskar: Fixed not attacking his target right after Life Break.
Batrider: Fixed Firefly being purge-able.
Batrider: Fixed Sticky Napalm working on ancients.
Storm Spirit: Fixed an exploit with Ball Lightning that could cause you to kill enemy units from your fountain.
Storm Spirit: Fixed Ball Lightning's stopping a little too early when almost out of mana
Huskar: Fixed the first tick of Berserker's Blood requiring you to be hurt.
Riki: Fixed the Backstab sound sometimes playing when it wasn't proccing.
Sniper: Fixed Assassinate reveal debuff never disappearing if the target dodges it with a blink.
Kunkka: Fixed X Marks The Spot teleporting you back if you buyback while the spell is still active.
Jakiro: Fixed Dual Breath not being target-able on units directly.
Queen of Pain: Fixed Sonic Wave not being target-able on units directly
Batrider: Fixed Sticky Napalm not temporarily revealing the area.
Batrider: Fixed Flaming Lasso not ending when Batrider dies.
Zeus: Fixed a bug with spamming Arc Lightning quickly while there is another one still bouncing (only happens for very large amount of units).
Skeleton King: Fixed loss of vision while reincarnating.
Added missing Flail and Stun animations for Kunkka.


GAME PLAY

Enabled Huskar, Batrider and Jakrio for Captains Mode
Massive server performance improvements.
Fixed vision range on Siege units.
Fixed bounty values on Siege units.
Added Legacy keys for new heroes
Fixed attack damage for Centaur Outrunner
Fixed limited life units (like Necronomicon units) having dramatically more duration when converted by Helm of the Dominator.
Fixed backdoor protection turning off when dominated units are nearby
Fixed legacy keys not working properly for a few of the recent heroes
Only allow one commendation/report per person.


UI

Added a separate matchmaking pool for players who have repeatedly left games. Note: Any party that contains a player matchmaking in this pool will cause the entire party to match-make in this pool.
Fixed Captain's Mode pick timer getting reset during the 2 hero pick phases once a player does the first selection.
Fixed Captain's Mode random (when out of time) being able to selected heroes not enabled for CM.
Added two spectator hot keys for controlling the replay speed (- and =).
Double-hitting the "select all other units" hot key will now add your hero to your selection
Game lobby leaders can now kick players out of the lobby.
You will now be notified when you are kicked from a game lobby or party.



DOTA 2 BOTS

Made bots a bit more wary of taking damage when defending a teammate.
Bots will no longer back off as much when defending the Ancient or Barracks.
Made bots (and particularly carries) want to farm a bit more mid-game.
Fixed bug where bots were considering dead enemies in their Push Tower desire.
Decreased the bots' desire to go back to base to retrieve cheap non-TP items.
Increased the bots' desire to visit the secret shop as they accumulate money.

I didnt get in ;-; ....
*slits wrist*