IceFrog recently announced a teamup with big gaming company Valve, the creator of such games as Counterstrike and Half-life. What this partnership entails is still unclear, but IceFrog promises to reveal more details soon. In the meantime I suspect more far reaching implications. IceFrog had already detached himself from Dota-Allstars.com and setup his own PlayDota.com portal, which is now considered the official Dota-Allstars website. I think it’s natural for IceFrog to scout for big companies to support his efforts in taking the game further.

Take a look at IceFrog’s statement:

I have some really awesome news I’d like to share with you guys. I am now leading a team at Valve! I finally have all the resources needed to do some very exciting stuff that you guys will love. I look forward to revealing more specific details when the time is right.

My goal and top priority in the future is to solve the surrounding issues that affect the DotA experience in order to allow it to reach new heights. Addressing these issues will enable us to further enjoy aspects of DotA such as the gameplay, mechanics, and in-game feel that currently work well and ought to be maintained. As I’ve said many times in the past and especially after today’s developments, I am very excited about DotA’s future!

With regards to the 6.64 patch, the focus will be primarily on more balance improvements. It is moving along very smoothly and I expect to have it ready soon. Once those refinements are done, I’ll be working on some fun new content such as heroes or remakes for the 6.65 version. If there are specific things, big or small, you want me to consider for patches that follow, let me know.

Now, as we all know (or if you don’t), Valve is the company behind Steam, a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform. Steam facilitates the distribution and sale of games through the Internet with over 20 million users and 800 different titles available. Four key components might play importantly in this partnership. One is Steamwork’s multiplayer lobby feature, a lobby system where players agree on game settings before joining a server, something we have yet to see in Dota. Another is a matchmaking system that automatically groups players based on a criteria. Steam’s social network, aptly called The Steam Community, is a place where players interact with each other, see player stats and history of gameplay. Lastly, Steam Cloud enables Steam users to store game settings and saves on a central server. Really, really exciting stuff here, but then again, all of this is pure speculation by me.

It may be a few weeks to a few months before we learn what IceFrog’s really up to. Whatever it is, I hope it will be awesome enough to give the community a much needed boost and fire up the game for years to come.

I note with an amount of sadness that some of the followers of my old blog were disappointed that I was no longer writing there. Rest assured that I myself must suffer the greatest pain of not being able to write with a full amount of freedom, and that I am highly grateful to Drew and the rest of the staff that at least I can still have a lease of blogging life even though I no longer write on my own.

On that old blog, I issued a challenge 4 versions ago - 6.59 - that Dota-ers should prove to the frog that certain buffed heroes back then would really make it into the league. And I myself predicted that one such hero would be highly used (and banned) by leaguers - even though, I can tell you, I have no s**t amount of league experience at all. My crystal ball of looking into the future is my own gut instinct, and common sense.

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It’s a joy to write this post as I take some time to reflect on the new version. In fact, the new version gives me a lot of encouragement to write this very post.

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Get it here.

Changelog:

* Fixed an exploit possible with Puck
* Armlet recipe now changed to include Quarterstaff instead of Blades of Attack (bonuses and total price unaffected)
* Fixed Wrath of Nature from targeting couriers
* Fixed a bug with Spirit Bear’s entangle and overgrowth
* Fixed Heart icon on the endgame scoreboard
* Undid a couple of the fun names recently added
* Fixed a rare abuse that could cause other users performance to drop

You probably know about the social network plague known as Facebook, so yes, while in some ways I am completely against it, there are still a few good reasons to join up (if you haven’t already).

The Dotastrategy.com Facebook Group - CLICKY!.

Over 10,000 LoL keys are up for grabs - League of Legends Facebook Page.

Oh right, I have a Facebook - IT’S A SECRET (adding people who add me).

DotA 6.63 is out!

Download it here.

Changelog:

HEROES

Anti-Mage
- Mana Void AoE increased from 275 to 325
- Strength changed from 16 +1.5 to 20 +1.2

Axe
- Battle Hunger duration reduced from 10/15/20/25 to 10/13/16/19 and increased damage to keep the same total damage output

Bane Elemental
- Fiend’s Grip manacost increased from 100/175/250 to 200/300/400

Batrider
- Reduced base damage from 64-70 to 48-52
- Sticky Napalm fixed from doing a higher constant slow instead of stacking and starting lower
- Sticky Napalm manacost increased from 15 to 20

Blood Seeker
- Base armor reduced by 2 points

Bone Fletcher
- Strafe changed from 50/60/70/80 AS for 10 seconds to 90 AS for 4/6/8/10 seconds

Bounty Hunter
- Imported a custom model for him that has his selection box fixed

Bristleback
- Warpath’s attack speed increase changed to bonus damage (10/20/30 base with 4/8/12 bonus per stack)

Broodmother
- Insatiable Hunger lifesteal increased from 40/55/70% to 40/60/80%
- Insatiable Hunger duration increased from 12 to 14 seconds

Centaur Warchief
-Double Edge manacost removed
-Double Edge can no longer cause a suicide
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by the talented barrierbreak

LULS! Parts 2 and 3 soon!

I wanna marry meet this guy… seriously.

This is an age old debate, a war that has been raging for… about 3 years and as is with most stories, there are two sides.

Graphics… and Gameplay.

I am classifying graphics as - any visuals ; and gameplay as the controls, style and story of the game.

The arguments we see are simple, if you support the graphics team, you say something along the lines of “Graphics are everything in a game” if you are on the gameplay side you say “Gameplay makes a game”

now I am going to come clean now and tell you that I am a supporter of the Gameplay team. If we go way back to the year 1998, Goldeneye 64 was released, a very good game, one of the best shooters of all time in that it really set the stage for the genre more than anything else.

new shooters have awesome graphics, but the trade of is gamespeed, you enter a heavy fire fight and your FPS drops to 2 as a result you die not knowing what happened. but using a shooter as an example is probably a bad idea. Their gameplay stems more from the fun you have while playing (not to say that dying in the metaphorical 2 FPS is fun) so instead let us use a different game.

Diablo II - the game is made by 2D sprites, by no means are these graphics good, but by some crazy chance, the gameplay was so addictive, it is still played by thousands today despite having games with “next gen” graphics on offer.

Now I know I am making it sound like gameplay is the all important factor, but it isn’t, I love great graphics, hell proof of my devotion to graphics is in me upgrading my graphics card and RAM so that I could play TES4 with all graphics on max with additional mods to improve them further. My point however is that gameplay is the most important element in a game, after that I would probably say music and then finally graphics. We also need to consider that graphics in some cases will fuel gameplay and vice versa.

So what do I want in a game? Simply, I want it all, gameplay, where applicable, an awesome storyline, good music and SFX (bad music is possibly the biggest turn off on a game) and finally beautiful graphics, not all that “next gen” crap, but something truly beautiful, we don’t need our circles to be perfect, we will not be using maximum zoom on a sniper rife to check and see that each brick is unique in any given shooter (we will hopefully be to busy blasting some suckers head off)

And so I reach the point in this blog where I get to insert some propaganda that is, HoN vs LoL - Graphics vs Gameplay.

this is the battle currently being fought between the two - HoN fanboys say that HoN has <insert big list of things that LoL has anyway> but also has better graphics, while LoL kids (me included I guess) counter with “but we have all that, and better and original gameplay” but wait, there is more.. I am still unable to post pictures of LoL (because of the NDA) but I can say that it actually has pretty amazing graphics, the thing that HoNboys don’t see is that it is the graphical style that is so different.

yes, HoN has those darn fangled “next gen” graphics but LoL has something simple, that runs fast, looks good and when you take the time to use the sniper rifle (or mouse wheel) to zoom in on bits of the forest floor, beautiful graphics.

/propaganda

while on the topic of MOBAs, I would like to once again point you in the direction of Bloodline Champions, a game I feel may be truly beautiful.

fast paced, fun, replay value, beautiful graphics and hopefully music to match.

As part of our efforts to be more hands-on with you people, we have an official Twitter page at:

http://twitter.com/dota_strategy

So what does Twitter do that will make DS more hands-on? Well, unlike Facebook and blogs (including this one), Twitter allows people to post short, simple, but relevant messages fast and in real-time. Meaning I could be at some DotA scrim and I wanna ask questions but I hate having to wait for a long while waiting for a reply to my thread (which is usually the case for many people)

Or I got something real interesting about Dota but that’s not long enough for a blog post or announcement, or I’m just plain lazy to post it.

Did I also mention that I prefer keeping it short and sweet?

Or maybe one of the mods are attending some big Dota event and they want to post updates real quick.

This is where Tweetown steps in, by

1. being free of charge
2. simpler to use than Facebook
3. faster in updates than anything short of IRC
4. keeping it short and sweet at 140 characters
5. addictively fun

I highly encourage you to register for an account at Twitter’s official website and follow us to get real-time updates, hints, and your Dota questions answered asap. Since some of our staff aren’t very good with twitting, that implies I’ll be there most of the time. So I hope you guys keep it real at

http://twitter.com/dota_strategy

*Driving to Tweetown now*

The people of Dotastrategy.com have spoken — Diablo III trounces Starcraft II as the community’s most anticipated Blizzard game. This is how you voted:

Diablo III 52% [ 1187 votes ]

Starcraft II 47% [ 1076 votes ]

Diablo pwned Starcraft by 111 votes. However, with a margin of error of +-5%, I call it a virtual tie. The poll indicates that both games have an astute following in the DotA/Warcraft demographic. The similarity in genre might have swayed the vote towards Diablo and put SC at a slight disadvantage (you know, mechs and all versus mystical beasts). How did I vote? I put my money on Diablo! Unfortunately for all of us, Blizzard’s been notoriously mum about the games’ release dates. Starcraft: Wings of Liberty may see the light of day in the middle of next year, at the earliest. And that’s just a rumor. Diablo may take a year or two longer. For now, we’ll have to do with those pesky (but awesome) cinematic trailers and previews to ease our pain.

Do you agree with how the poll went?