 "Dota 2 finally out of beta; new players to be added in waves")
Dota 2 is finally out of beta and is available to all through digital distribution platform Steam. Valve made the announcement on the official Dota 2 website. However, not everyone can start playing just yet. To prevent the expected spike in players cripple the back-end servers, Valve is letting in new players in waves. To start playing, players can hit the Get Dota 2 button on its Steam page. Doing so will add the players to the “launch queue” and Valve will email them when the servers are ready. The volume of players let in will gradually increase.
The game is completely free-to-play and the only content that is locked behind a pay gate includes aesthetic items like nicer-looking armour and weapons for characters, different announcer packs and UI skins. These items have no effect on gameplay other than making your game look nicer.
After years of lying around in beta, the game is finally out
There are also items like tournament passes and battle point boosts. As the name suggests, tournament passes let you spectate Dota 2 tournaments either live or at a later date, while experience boosts increases the rate at which players get battle points, which in turn lets you get access to aesthetic items for free.
While the game seems to be more or less complete when you play it, it still doesn’t have all the heroes that were present in the original Dota-Allstars map for Warcraft 3. However, the game is complete and polished enough to have entire tournaments.
Dota 2 is a MOBA-styled game developed by Valve and game veteran IceFrog. Matches in Dota 2 consist of two teams with five players each. Both teams must battle it out in the arena along three lanes. The aim of the game is to push past your opponent’s towers and eventually destroy his main stronghold, dubbed the Ancient.
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