Big news for MOBA fans this evening: Valve have finally – finally – launched Dota 2.
After a two year beta, Valve have announced that Dota 2 is now complete and launched and ready for everyone to play. Sort of. Except that it doesn’t have all the heroes in, yet. And you can’t actually play it right now, necessarily. It gets a bit complicated.
So yes, the game is officially out of beta, but – because of the expected surge of players – people are being admitted in batches to prevent the servers from falling over. If you want to play it, then head on over to the Dota 2 Steam page, click “Get Dota 2”, and you’ll be added to the queue and sent an email when your account is good to go.
Apparently, the servers currently in place have “the ability to host an additional 450,000 players concurrently.” Being that Dota 2‘s beta had peak concurrent users of 300,000, and roughly 3 million different people playing it a month, it’s perhaps not surprising that they’re being a bit cautious.
Not sure what the more vocal aspects of the community will think of this, being that there are a fair few who aren’t too impressed with the current state of the matchmaking, report/mute/ban system, and various other bits and bobs… but it’s still tremendously fun to play.
If you want to learn more, head on over to the aptly titled “The Beta is Over” page on the Dota 2 website. We’ve been running a fair bit of Dota 2 coverage over the past couple of months, so don’t forget to take a look at that too. And yes, there will be more. Lots more. I suppose I’d better get started on that newbie’s guide, eh?
