Dota 2 News

Team Liquid's new facility is a show of faith in its European players

Over the years, Utrecht has oozed with sporting talent. The Netherlands' fourth-largest city has produced footballing icons like Marco van Basten and Wesley Sneijder, or Olympic athletes like sprinter Dafne Schippers. But it's not just traditional sports Utrecht is famous for - it's also the birthplace of Team Liquid, one of the most iconic organisations in esports.

Earlier today, Team Liquid officially cut the ribbon to its second state-of-the-art esports facility. After opening the doors of its California space in 2018, the new Alienware Training Facility in the centre of Utrecht brings all the shiny toys over for the European teams to have a go - as well as seeing Liquid invest in the city where it was first dreamt up.

From Liquid's Dota 2 team to its fresh new Valorant roster, this will be the base for a number of its esports teams to not only train, but in some cases live. The 10,000 sq ft facility is not only packed to the rafters with top-spec gaming equipment, but with all the health and wellbeing features that the world's biggest organisations are beginning to invest in heavily.

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Dota 2 gets a Windranger Arcana, with new model, second style, effects, more

Hot on the heels of Valve's update on when the Dota 2 Pro Circuit will resume, the developer's now revealed the latest batch of goodies for the MOBA game. It's a shiny new Arcana bundle for Lyralei, the Windranger, which features a completely new hero model, items, and loadout pedestal, as well as custom animations and effects, VO, and more to reflect her mystical new style.

"Not even Lyralei herself understood the true extent of her connection with the guardian wind," the bundle's description goes. "With no knowledge of her forebears, or memory of her first days, she could but listen for the truth in the whispers of sun-dappled trees around her, or the howling storms that keep even daylight at bay. But as she grew, and her strange connection with the guardian wind became ever stronger, an unease about her origins began to take hold."

Windranger's new pack is all about unleashing this power of the guardian wind. Her new character model, items, pedestal, and special new animations and effects reflect this, giving the hero a glowing blue aura and ambient swirling breeze that surrounds her. She also gets new death effects for both her and enemy heroes she's taken out.

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The Dota 2 Pro Circuit will "likely" resume in early 2021

Competitive Dota 2 pros and fans have been grumbling for the past months over Valve's silence about the Dota 2 Pro Circuit and its uncertain future. The DPC has finally broken that silence in a blog post that explains some of its rationale and provides a rough idea of what to expect in the pro scene moving forward.

In a post titled 'Update on Competitive Scene', the Dota team outlines the impact COVID-19 has had on planning this year's The International competition. It became clear in the spring, the team says, that The International would have to be delayed, but the hope was to hold the championship as soon as it was feasible.

Over the course of the summer, the team found that it was going to take longer than expected to be able to hold The International. Even without opening the event to an in-person crowd, the Dota Team says holding an in-person event for competitors was important to maintain, and with teams located all over the world, it could become impossible to travel to any specific location at a moment's notice as restrictions on international travel could be imposed unexpectedly at just about any time.

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Compass of the Rising Gale — Windranger Arcana

Not even Lyralei herself understood the true extent of her connection with the guardian wind. With no knowledge of her forebears, or memory of her first days, she could but listen for the truth in the whispers of sun-dappled trees around her, or the howling storms that keep even daylight at bay. But as she grew, and her strange connection with the guardian wind became ever stronger, an unease about her origins began to take hold. Unleash the power of the wind with the all-new Compass of the Rising Gale Arcana bundle, available now in The International 10 Battle Pass.

This Arcana bundle includes a new model and base items, new animations, a custom channel bar and Focus Fire damage counter, ambient wind effects for both styles, additions to base and Immortal effects for her abilities, new death effects for both Windranger and enemy heroes she takes down, and over 500 new Arcana-exclusive voice lines. Rack up damage on targets you kill using Focus Fire to unlock the Reflections of the Gale alternate style.

Learn more at the Compass of the Rising Gale update page.

Dota 2 Bot TI returning for its third run later this month

Beyond The Summit has revealed Bot TI is returning for its third run soon, to help smooth over the gap until TI10. The main tournament has been delayed until next year because of the pandemic and has already reached a record breaking $34 million prize pool.

The Bot TI plays out much like the regular TI tournament, which is the biggest event not only in the Dota 2 esports calendar, but one of the biggest esports tournaments full stop. The only difference is that the bot version of the tournament is played entirely by AI, and instead of the usual crowd funded, multi-million prize pool, there is no prize money. Bots don't need cash, after all.

"Bots can't get COVID so they are totally unaffected by the pandemic right now," BTS says in its announcement post on Reddit. "However, the Bots are wearing masks and social distancing as a sign of solidarity to their human Dota player brethren." The tournament will run September 23-27.

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