Late last month, Dota 2 developer Valve announced that the multiplayer game's 7.28 gameplay update would be arriving sometime in mid-December, along with its next Hero, whose release was delayed by a few weeks. Now, the studio has confirmed a release date for the impending patch, announcing it's called the Mistwood update.
"Thursday is a bright day to enjoy a good cup of coffee, some time with the family and release the Mistwood update!" Valve teases on Twitter. So, the Dota 2 update 7.28 release date is now confirmed for Thursday, December 17 - but that's more or less it for now in terms of what we know about the patch itself.
We know a new Hero is on the way - the first new addition to the MOBA game's character roster of 2020 - but details are scarce, to say the least. We know from the November dev post that "she need[ed] a bit more time to cosy up for the winter", so she's a 'she' - but that's all in the way of information about her just yet.
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A research group has surveyed around 80,000 esports fans about which competitive scenes they watch other than their favourite game, and the results show some unexpected results.
While two of the biggest esports, Dota 2 and League of Legends, lead the way for MOBAs in the esports scene, the two fanbases are often quite tribal when it comes to which is the best. However, according to the Observatoire du Sports Business, it turns out that over half of Dota 2 fans also follow League of Legends esports. Flipped the other way, only 21% of self-proclaimed LoL fans indulge themselves in Dota esports.
The highest crossover rate for two esports involves arguably the two biggest competitive games in the world. The study finds that 60% of Counter-Strike Global Offensive fans also follow League of Legends esports, despite the two being completely different genres. A slightly lower 59% of CS:GO fans also watch rival MOBA and fellow Valve title, Dota 2.
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