Dota 2 officially launched

It just took two years, but Dota 2 is finally out of beta.

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Although Dota 2 has been playable--competitively, at that--for the past two years now, it's technically been in "beta." Valve promised that its MOBA would officially launch before August, and in a weird reversal of Valve Time, it appears they've launched early.

Grabbing the free-to-play game off Steam will add you to "the launch queue." That means you won't get immediate access to the game. Instead, you'll receive an email "when we are ready for you to come play," Valve explains on their official website. "The volume of players let in will gradually increase so we can spread the launch load out over time."

The launch only applies to the PC version of the game. Valve explains that the Mac and Linux builds are currently in testing and will be available soon.

Once you gain entry into the game, you'll be placed into the New User Experience which has you playing a tutorial and then playing some practice matches against bots. Once you're ready to start playing full games via matchmaking, you'll be matched with other similarly-skilled players. This way, newcomers won't be decimated by the two year veterans, while the experts won't be frustrated playing against n00bs.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 9, 2013 6:11 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Dota 2 officially launched.

    It just took two years, but Dota 2 is finally out of beta.

    • reply
      July 9, 2013 6:12 PM

      [deleted]

      • reply
        July 9, 2013 6:20 PM

        This was just in the news....the Supreme Court declared the 1st one unconstitutional a couple of weeks ago.

    • reply
      July 9, 2013 6:22 PM

      You are currently 902 in the Launch Queue

    • reply
      July 9, 2013 6:34 PM

      If you know a Shacker that is currently playing, they can probably invite you to the Shack guild. If you don't know one, you can join the Shacknews channel and ask for one. Being a member of the guild makes it easier to include you when other groups are looking for more people.

    • reply
      July 9, 2013 6:51 PM

      Fresh meat!

    • reply
      July 9, 2013 10:01 PM

      The tutorial is very well made. I think I'll make the effort of learning how to play this game now.

      Anyone got some good YouTube beginner tutorial recommendations? I've heard of Purge, but his videos all seem to focus on one specific heroes. Which heroes are beginner friendly? I assume ranged heroes are easier for starters, right?

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      July 9, 2013 10:19 PM

      Awesome.

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      July 9, 2013 10:51 PM

      WTF I thought this was out long ago

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        July 9, 2013 11:19 PM

        They were giving out keys/invites like candy for a while. Never did manage to get one because I was always at work.

        Now I think I know what I'll be doing after work today.

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          July 10, 2013 7:18 AM

          There was a bot that gave out over 80k invites.

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        July 9, 2013 11:21 PM

        Was "beta" but it's been available and playable for a while. They've even held a couple million dollar tourneys during that period. It's still going to be a work in progress so I don't know what the difference is aside from them saying it's officially out now. If you didn't have a dozen gift copies / invites yourself, you could have bought one for a penny on the steam market so it's not like it was hard to get.

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