Keep in mind that these guys are playing for a million dollar first prize.

Their goal at this point is to not **** up at all costs. This probably translates to more passive play.

Ever watch the first 2 days of WSOP main event? "What's that, I don't have AA KK or AKs? Fold"

Their goals were to make it through the group stages in as good of shape as possible. They might loosen up later. Just like WSOP play loosens up as you get closer to the money.

This, there's no reason the games can't on average be completed in half as much time (20 minutes is ideal IMO)

EM Mode isn't quite right though because the denies/cost of dying and some other things don't quite balance out the negative impact spectrum of events.

For the amount of 'action', either ganking on larger scale team fights, theres like maybe 2 minutes of action per game... and they last like 40 minutes.. most games consist of 5 minutes of people pausing, 10 minutes of team selection etc.. yawn.

Welcome to pro dota.

I can assure you that pug games are not ANYTHING like these pro games.

They'll have a forfeit system in place, and the only games that will go beyond 30 minutes will be the epic back and forth.

I am so disappointed in the graphics. I do not fall over graphics easily but this looks so ****ty and the animations look like they were created 10 years ago.

As Inso0 already stated most of what you guys are complaining about is part of pro dota. There is a lot of in depth strategy during the 10 minutes of picking and banning which you find annoying. For the casual viewer it will definitely be a turn off, however anyone who enjoys pro competitive dota should find the picking and banning phase interesting to say the least.

I don't think any person who plays dota thinks a 20 minute game is ideal unless it is an extreme push strategy in which the other team is caught completely off guard. Dota is a game that probably aims for a time frame of 30-50 minutes usually due to the progression of items. Anything shorter would cause dota to lose the balanced competitive nature of the game.

Every team plays differently also with regarding the amount of "action". Yesterday was not a good example of pro dota in my opinion. There were a lot of times where they would pause the game because of lag. The lag will not be an issue in the future. The observer of the replay also was not very good since there were times where a fight would be occurring yet it would focus on a part of the map where nothing was occurring. The prize pool of 1.6million is definitely a huge factor as well.

If you want more action play a pub game. People will be dying left and right. No one is forcing anyone to watch a pro game where people actually know how to avoid ganks by themselves or whether it be with a teammate helping them.

I think the graphics are fine however I am a bit disappointed regarding some of the animations.

agree strongly with being dissapointed with spell animations. For spells that have such a huge impact Tiny's abilities are pretty lackluster. Leshrac stun is pretty cool. Tidehunter ult is epic, of course and AA's ult is very nice. Lina's spells are incredibly underwhelming compared to pyromancer and dota Lina.

i think the pick and ban stage is interesting its like a mental exercise predicting team lineups and the changing dynamics that each pick causes

and watching this ehome vs tyloo game highlights dire roshan advantage...just ridiculous

Pretty fun game to watch though, better than most yesterday even though it's already lasting 50mins it seems more action-packed.

that was a great game

Very good game between Ehome and Tyloo. Ehome is finally starting to get some more respect. Everyone has been counting them out since the other Chinese teams have been more dominant.

SGC vs VRS


shadowfiend pickup

i got a little hard

Here is an alternative stream in english from some NA dota pros. http://www.twitch.tv/neodota

I'm not sure whos is speaking but I know power.net is one of them. He is from Ok.nirvana.int but was not able to attend the event because he is only 16 years old. His parents supposedly did not want him to go to Germany. They mentioned that Ok.nirvana.int practiced 14 hours a day.

Sick comeback from IG, probably the most exciting game so far

I think the graphics are perfect for what it is.

I don't know wtf you guys are talking about with regard to spell animations. One of the primary NEGATIVES about HoN was how ridiculously sparkly the screen gets with too many heroes in one place.

Watching this game now, and Lina looks just like her WC3 version, with a little more transparency involved. Same with Sven and Morphling.

Did any of you who are complaining actually play the original dota? And I don't mean just trying it out and saying it sucks. I've played many hundreds of games on the WC3 engine, and this is turning out to be exactly what it was billed as: a direct port of that.

They'll use the new engine to fix issues that WC3 is lacking in. leaver protection, some quirky unit/ability bugs, and allowing the game designers to truly unleash their creativity with heroes that do things that weren't possible with WC3's engine.

I feel like a fanboi here, but I'm really not. I haven't played dota in years, but I feel like I'm the only person ITT who realizes that Valve wasn't trying to make HoN or LoL. They were trying to make Dota.