Category Archives: News

G-League Dota2 online preliminaries update

Original: http://gleague.gamefy.cn/view_26989.html

(Dotaland note: in the above link, click on the big letters in boxes to find upcoming matchups for each prelim group. As a recap, also note that iG and DK will not be playing in the prelims as they have been seeded to the finals brackets due to being 1st and 2nd last season, overall prizepool is over $40k)

On November 23 at 20:00, Gamefy will bring live coverage of G-League 2012 Season 2’s Dota2 competition in the form of matches from the A group in online preliminaries. The match will be between Noah’s Ark who just moved to Shanghai, and new up and coming team VG, the format will be a best of 3.

This day of competition is G-League’s first official Dota2 live streaming coverage, so who will claim group A’s one qualification spot, let us anticipate together!

Of note is LGD.int making its debut at 18:30 on Nov 23 (less than 6 hours from now) against team All iN

Stream is found at the Gamefy Fengyunzhibo page: http://www.gamefy.cn/tv/pplive.php — http://www.fengyunzhibo.com/tv/youxifengyun.htm

Sign-ups begin for Dota2 beta survey in China

http://event51.wanmei.com/dota2/201211/cdkey/user.htm

As can be seen in the link above, sign ups are live for Dota2 Chinese version, provided by Perfect World! According to this Sgamer post, the beta for the China region is supposed to begin in December of this year, which is a lot earlier than many people expected. Looks like Perfect World is pushing things forward.

G-1 League 2012 season comes to an end: LGD takes top, iG places 4th

In a bit of an upset, iG first lost to LGD 2-0 in the semi-finals (video of crowd reaction after LGD won), and then lost 2-1 to Orange in the 3/4th match.

LGD on the other hand defeats DK 2-0 in the Grand Finals to take home the 180000 RMB ( 28000 USD) prize. Some candid photos of the live venue and emotions from LGD vs DK here.

DK takes home 60000 RMB (9500 USD), Orange gets 50000 RMB (8000 USD), and iG gets 40000 RMD (6000 USD).

Vods of the full tournament are available at the 17173 official G-1 page: http://dota2.17173.com/zt/2012/zt02/index.shtml

Vods of just the LAN finals, on Youtube instead of Chinese providers: http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/13f2el/g1_league_lan_finals_spoilerfree_vods/

Perfect World’s Dota2 site now ‘live’

Check it out at: http://dota2.wanmei.com/

Right now it’s got a collection of the hero spread artwork that Valve uses on its blog posts, a couple Dota2-related videos, and some epic music. No signups for access to Chinese Dota2 yet, but this is another step closer.

note: technically, as some readers have pointed out, this is not ‘officially live’, and indeed some of the videos on the site allude to a dota2.com.cn, which is not yet accessible

Chisbug back to iG for a guest appearance at WCG

Original: http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201211/147936.html

 

In the WCG China region preliminaries, DK has defeated TongFu 2-0 and will be facing their old adversary iG next. This very well may be a prelude to the ultimate finals at WCG, but iG has announced on their Weibo that ChuaN will not be a part due to his Malaysian nationality, and instead chisbug will take his place for this.

Chisbug is also a 4 position player, known for a very aggressive and ruthless style. At LGD’s peak last year, his Enchantress and Chen left us deep impressions. After iG’s current roster was formed last year, chisbug faded out of the scene and never joined another team, although recently it’s been rumored that he was to form a new team with ZSMJ, and indeed he has been seen playing a lot of Dota2. Will this represent another wave of iG’s cold-blooded gank strategies? And will iG be able to continue their dominance in the DotA and Dota2 worlds? We wait and see!

In the end, we wish good luck to DK and iG and hope they perform well, and win glory for the mother land!

G-league 2012 Season two registration opens, finals venue revealed

Original: http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201211/147750.html

Dotaland note: partial translation. Also, I’ve been to this venue and it is an impressive one, located in urban Shanghai right along the Huangpu River, quite cool…

In the new season of the G-league, DotA has been replaced with Dota2, and LoL makes an appearance too, alongside SC2 and WC3, this makes a total of 4 games in which competition will be held for the new season. Registration will open on November 8.

Additionally, the finals venue has been revealed as Shanghai’s Mercedez-Benz Arena, which is China’s premier and largest arts and culture venue, with the capacity to adjust for audiences anywhere between 5000-18000 in number. It has held NBA matches, hockey matches, large-scale concerts, and more.

In recent years, G-League has chosen various high-profile locations for its finals venues, such as at Shanghai’s famed Nanjing Road, Oriental Pearl Tower, Shanghai International News Center, and more, all for the promotion of esports. And now, their work has paid off and they have gotten the support of Shanghai’s municipal government and secured the rights to use the Shanghai Mercedez-Benz Arena, which we believe is another big step in the development and growth of esports, so we are excited!

G-League switching to Dota2

Original: http://dota2.replays.net/news/page/20121103/1743245.html

On the G-league website at http://gleague.gamefy.cn/ it can be seen that there is no longer a DotA icon, and in its place there is instead a Dota2 icon. While nothing happens when it is clicked yet, it seems that the change from DotA to Dota2 has become the greater trend in China, and Dota2 will enter its own period of dominance.

We hope that Perfect World can quickly and effectively get things going and get Dota2 open to everyone, as there are millions of gamers waiting, so that we can all partake in its joys!

ZSMJ returning with an all-new team, alongside chisbug, 820, and more?

Original: http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201210/147599.html

In the G-1 League match between TongFu and Flash, Chinese commentator 2009 revealed that ZSMJ is currently putting together a new team. The former supporters of LGD have devoted an amount of money to 830GOD, the goal being to create a new team. Involved are ZSMJ, Chisbug, and in addition they are trying to recruit 820, though he hasn’t shown much interest, so they’re also currently in contact with WE’s Jiejie and WE captain Luo. They’ve already been practicing together (video link – Dire team is Chisbug, 830GOD, ZSMJ, Jiejie, and Luo from top down), and ZSMJ’s Steam account confirms, with over 111 hours in the past two weeks on Dota2. Added to all the previous rumors, we have reason to believe that the news of ZSMJ making a comeback to be true.

Perfect World press conference confirming partnership with Valve

dotaland note: Press conference going on in China with Perfect World, officially announcing the partnership with Valve.

Duowan and Sgamer have put up an interview with Erik Johnson of Valve, with some good insight. I’m sure it was done in English but I can’t find the original English source anywhere, only Chinese version… the interview seems like it had a lot of PR talk in it, so I’ll just quickly translate it a selection of the more interesting/revealing comments…

Original: http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201210/147555.html

Question (Q): Surely many players want to know the answer to this, rumors from Perfect World state that Dota2 will only go open to the public officially at the end of next year, is this for real?

Erik Johnson (EJ): We want our game to go open to Chinese players as soon as possible, players all over the world have already established a massive following. So we will work to allow Chinese gamers to join this following as quickly as possible.

Q: What brought Valve to choose Perfect World as the Chinese partner, and will there be even more partnership with them in the future?

EJ: First off, we have a very solid working background with Perfect World. Perfect World subsidiary Runic Games we know very well, they’re a bunch of geniuses, and their Torchlight series has been brilliantly received here in North America. We have a lot in common, so it’s not hard to understand why we chose to work together. Our company really pays attention to the players, and Perfect World has similar views on this. Perfect World is an able company, and they understand the Chinese market more than we do. There are a lot of things we need to learn from them.

Q: As for China’s large Dota following, I’m quite worried that the China servers will not be up to par.

EJ: This is something we’re worried about too, our advantage is that globally, we have built up a community of millions of gamers. This size of community is one that also requires a similar level of large scale server support. Our choice in Perfect World is also due to their ability and experience in handling this kind of thing, so for your question, we are carefully assessing solutions. Our hope is that we can solve the problem carefully, at the same time utilizing statistics and data to our advantage.

Q: Will the Dota2 International ever come to China?

EJ: The next International is still undecided as to where it will be held, after all the last International has just ended. But both our company and Perfect World recognize the importance of professional play. From a technical standpoint professional play can help other players learn more about the game and how to play the game, including for players such as myself. When Dota2 officially enters China we will hold many events, and players will be able to participate in a lot.

———————————-

Also, Anderson is announced as joining Perfect World in a product and events capacity: http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201210/147552.html

As of August of this year, PW has been recruiting talent for their Dota2 work. Anderson has just been announced as joining Perfect World.

Perfect World + Valve = official (official press release from PW), IceFrog to visit

Reported here: http://dota2.replays.net/news/page/20121019/1738014.html

http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201210/147469.html

Confirmed… Statements from Perfect World CEO, Gabe Newell, below… doesn’t seem to be on the Dota2 website/blog yet as of Thursday night

Perfect World CEO Hong Xiao: “Valve is one of the best developers of online games in the world. We are very excited to partner with Valve in bringing Dota 2 to Chinese gamers. Dota 2, a refined work by the developers at Valve, has received great attention from players worldwide. With our years of expertise in delivering quality games in China, we are confident that adding this action strategy game to our diverse portfolio of games will bring additional world-class entertainment and premier gaming experiences to our players in China.”

Official Perfect World press release here: http://www.pwrd.com/html/en/news_c_121019.html

Valve managing director Gabe Newell: “We knew when we started building Dota 2 that Dota was already loved by millions of gamers in China. Valve gave very careful consideration to which potential partner, among multiple candidates, would best serve the Chinese Dota community. In the end, Perfect World was the clear choice to best bring the full Dota 2 experience to customers in China. IceFrog, and the entire team at Valve, are looking forward to moving Dota 2 forward in China with the rest of the world.”

 

Additionally, it is reported that IceFrog is working with Chinese Dota2 localization lead HippoVic on a trip to visit China…
 http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201210/147472.html

Dota2 Chinese localization lead HippoVic revealed, he is currently working on paperwork and arrangements for IceFrog to visit China. IceFrog had previously said he wished to visit China, and this time if he does visit, he would likely be there to settle the partnership arrangements with Perfect World, visit the company, and tour China while getting a feel for the Chinese Dota atmosphere. As the current Dota’s lead designer, he has millions of loyal fans, yet he maintains a very low key profile, and has yet to reveal his true identity. Even during TI2, he declined to reveal his public face, with only star commentators and players having met him. There haven’t even been photos leaked out, nor even clips of audio, nothing.

So, will we finally get to see who IceFrog really is in his visit to China this time? What will Dota2’s Chinese servers be like? Let us look forward to IceFrog’s visit to China.