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$18 million up for grabs in this week's 'Dota 2' championships
The International is back and bigger than ever. The 2015 championships for Dota 2, Valve's massively popular MOBA, take off today in the "main event" stage, beginning with three matches between LGD Gaming and Team Empire. In total, 16 teams have a shot at winning The International when it comes to a close on Saturday, August 8th. There's a total of $18 million up for grabs, with payouts ranging from $54,000 for 16th place and $6.5 million for first -- and these figures should rise before the end of the tournament, since it's funded via ongoing purchases of the Compendium, a package that offers players in-game goodies at $10 or $27 a pop. Twenty-five percent of all Compendium sales go straight to The International's prize pool. Watch The International's official, live coverage below.
World of Warcraft offers up the complete Tales of Pandaria
Do you feel that you got a sense of all the storytelling to be found in Mists of Pandaria? Probably so; you've had more than a year to get through everything, after all. But there's more to the lore than just what's found in World of Warcraft. The complete Tales of Pandaria series of short stories has been collected on the official site, complete with the option to download the stories for offline reading. None of them is essential for understanding what took place on Pandaria, of course, but each of them provides a larger context that questing can sometimes miss. Not really your thing? More interested in watching players beat one another up in-game? Then you can watch the World of Warcraft North American Arena Tournament this Sunday. Starting at 9:45 a.m. EDT, the live stream will cover the best-of-five matches between the current teams in the running, with the three best teams getting a shot at the championships at BlizzCon. If that's more interesting to you than fiction, get the full details on how to watch and who's in the running.
Dota 2's 10 million dollar e-sports tourney will stream on ESPN
Whether or not you believe e-sports are real sports, Dota 2 is at least big enough for sports TV. Valve today publicized a deal that will bring streaming coverage of its MOBA's The International tournament to ESPN. Well, ESPN3, which is sort of like ESPN in the same way Dota 2 is like a sport. We're kidding. ESPN3 will broadcast matches live, and come Sunday, "viewers can tune in to ESPN2 for an exclusive preview of the tournament's final match, featuring highlights from the games, expert analysis, plus interviews with the players and Valve's Gabe Newell." The International championships begin tomorrow in Seattle with a prize pool worth over $10 million. It turns out your mom was wrong: You can get rich and famous playing video games. [With thanks to tipster Mike!]
SMITE announces world championships for 2015
Are you the best SMITE player in the world? Are you sure about that? If so, maybe you should go ahead and take part in the SMITE World Championships. The company has just announced that the championship tournament will take place January 9th to 11th, 2015, along with qualifier dates for North America and Europe, all of which can be found just past the break. Players will be competing for a grand prize of $600,000, a pool which is expected to grow over the next half-year in the lead-in to the event. You can check out the official e-sports site for the game to find out how to register your team and try to make it into the big leagues, or just check out the trailer below. Maybe you just like to spectate, after all. It's cool.
League of Legends contract for 2014 prevents streaming of other games
The last thing that anyone at Riot Games wants is to provide free advertising to League of Legends' competitors. The first thing that the company wants to do is promote the professional gaming side of the community. In the contract for players taking part in the game's 2014 championship series, the company is aiming to kill two birds with one stone by preventing professional players from streaming any competing games during the duration of the 2014 season. Games considered to be "competition" include World of Tanks, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Dota 2, and StarCraft. An official response from the company states that this is comparable to the restrictions placed on pro athletes in several sports. Players in the official Reddit thread are upset by this decision, claiming that the comparison to professional athletes is both inaccurate and inapplicable in this particular context. It remains to be seen whether or not this will impact the game's championship numbers in any fashion.
League of Legends claims title of 'most played video game in the world'
This past week, League of Legends' Season Two Championship was sidetracked by a cheating scandal that left some fans feeling alienated. Now, on the eve of the finals, Riot Games has released a load of statistics to highlight the fact that LoL is indeed a popular competitive game worthy of its place in the MOBA pantheon. The title boasts over 70 million registered summoner names hailing from more than 145 different countries. LoL has also declared itself the most played video game on the planet, averaging over one billion monthly hours world-wide. Other graphs include comparisons of daily active players (12 million) and peak concurrent players (three million). Check out all of the stats compiled in the infographic after the cut. [Source: Riot Games press release]
League of Legends' World Championship is worth a cool three million bucks
League of Legends' hold on the e-sports community appears to be going strong, especially if we're judging based on the sheer size of the prize pool up for grabs in this season's World Championships. How much money will players be competing for this time around? Something to the tune of three million bucks. The folks over at PC Gamer got the opportunity to sit down with Riot Games' Vice President of e-sports, Dustin Beck, to have a chat about the upcoming League of Legends World Championships and the competitive gaming scene as a whole. The interview includes some insight into the game's success in the e-sports circuit as well as some discussion on the various teams and strategies we can expect to see on the tournament level at this year's championships. For all of the sweet, juicy information, just head on over and check out the full article.
Gaming for the gold: Na'vi take the first International Dota 2 Championships title
Pay homage to the kings of the International Dota 2 Championships, Na'vi! These six Ukrainian studs won $1 million over the five-day tournament held at Gamescom, followed by China's Ehome, who landed in second place. The top eight teams competed bravely, so show some respect as follows: 1. Na'vi - $1 million 2. Ehome - $250,000 3. Scythe.SG - $150,000 4. MYM - $80,000 5. (tied) M5, iG - $35,000 each 7. (tied) OK.Nirvana.int, Mith-Trust - $25,000 each Handing out over $1.5 million to the people who love your game enough to make it a career seems like a wonderful advertising strategy from Valve. Maybe eventually it'll be altered to include people who love Valve's games but have day jobs too. Maybe. [Thanks, Aibbi!]
PSA: Dota 2 International Championships finals begin (early) Sunday morning
The International Dota 2 Championships will crown a victor Sunday, starting at 9 a.m. GMT (5 a.m. EDT), broadcast live via the official tournament site. Teams Ehome and Sythe.SG will battle in the loser's bracket for the chance to face team Na'vi for a $1 million first prize. Even "losers" in the International Championships end up winners in our eyes, with second place earning $250,000, third $150,000, and down all the way through eighth place's $25,000. It's just like T-ball, but more lucrative.
Upper Deck awards TCG and minis North American Continental Champions
I spent my Saturday out at Gen Con in Indianapolis, and while I did hunt down some of the World of Warcraft action there, there was just too much going on to pay attention to the 2009 North American Continental Championships for the WoW minis and TCGs, which took place right there in the TCG hall. Fortunately, the official site covered it all, so if you're a fan of the trading card game and want to know who the best current players in North America are, there you go. On the TCG side, Corey Burkhart took the top spot by playing a Troll Shaman deck for the win. In the minis competition, Michael Allen picked up the big prize. The official site has lots more information, including rundowns of each match, standings for each round, and even a Facebook album full of photos.The winners picked up thousands of dollars in prizes (including a 17" MacBook Pro and a 30" Apple monitor for Corey), and all of these guys will all compete in the World Championships, to be held in Austin, Texas this October (that prize goes up to a whopping $100,000 overall, so the stakes can get big). Congratulations to all the winners -- sounds like it was a rousing event there in Indy, and Upper Deck is probably on their way as we speak off to meet with us later this week at BlizzCon.
Upper Deck starts "Road to Worlds"
Upper Deck has announced the series of tournaments that will bring them down the road to the World Championships for the WoW trading card game -- "The Road to Worlds," they're calling them -- and the events began this past weekend. You can check on their website right now to see what's going down where -- odds are that if you're near a metropolitan area, there's something happening near you. These events aren't that big themselves (the prizes are a few art pieces and some extra cards, including this awesome Robotic Chicken quest card), but the big deal here is that the top two from each event move on, and eventually will try for a chance to compete in the World Championships later this year.Good luck if you do go, and as always, bring your camera and let us know if you get pictures of the events. This is the small end of Upper Deck's tournament year (things will get much bigger later on as they move towards the big Championships), but all the same, every time they show up somewhere to play cards, there's a lot of fun to be had.
BTN to air 2008 Big Ten Championships
Sure, college football season is still a good ways away, but Big Ten fans can get their minds off of said dilemma by focusing on the 2008 Big Ten Championships on the Big Ten Network. Reportedly, the station will broadcast men's and women's gymnastics, men's and women's swimming and diving, men's and women's indoor track and field and wrestling during a six-week span from February 29th through April 5th, and every minute of every event will be aired in high-definition. Things get kicked off at 8:00PM EST on the last day of February when the Women's Swimming and Diving Championships take place from Ohio State's campus -- 'tis a shame you Charter and Comcast folks will (still) be left in the dark, huh?[Image courtesy of OSU]
Robot golf tournament underway in Italy
Over a hundred robots from 28 countries are in Italy this week for the annual World Robot Championships, this time pitting battle-hardened bots against each other in a fierce game of golf -- the crowd has gone deadly silent, a Cinderella story outta nowhere. Former door assembly unit, and now about to become the masters champion. But this game of golf seems to be slightly modified rules as well, with robots playing in pairs, simply having to score points by putting colored balls into same colored holes, losing a point if they hit the ball into the wrong hole -- kinda like robo-goofy golf. So it looks like we won't be treated to the spectacle of robots trekking across the golf course, human caddies in tow; we're not sure if mechaNicklaus going to be in attendance this year, but he's gonna have a helluva time taking out Top Swing this year.
Spectator sports: competitive MMOs
NCsoft is trying to establish Guild Wars as a competitive game as well as a more casual MMO, but appealing to such a diverse audience isn't easy. However, the crowds gathering at NCsoft's booth to watch two hardcore Guild Wars PvP teams duke it out seemed to enjoy the show.At this particular event, Team EvIL and Team PnH were going head to head. The commentator did an excellent job of both explaining the game and getting enthusiastic about the action. We're somewhat familiar with the Guild Wars mechanics, but the action was incomprehensible -- while it's fun to watch the truly skilled ply their trade, it's hard to follow the intricacies of MMO as a spectator.Guild Wars introduced an observer mode last December, but we'd have to spend a lot of time watching before tournaments like this became easily accessible. On the other hand, watching the pretty colours flash by is relaxing amidst the buzz of E3.
