My heart was pounding. The tip of my fingers twitching. My breath was racing.
It was 5:45pm here in Melbourne, and Valve finally fired up the livestream of The International on www.dota2.com.
As 1.5 million people tuned in to watch the World Premiere of Dota 2, I couldn’t help but feel the excitement shared by millions around the world as a testament to the large scale audience and fanbase the original DOTA created.
This feeling was familiar to what I would normally feel during a build up to the FIFA World Cup!
Friends whom I barely talk to started tuning in and sharing the love on facebook.
Twitter’s #Dota2 trends were taking off and taking over the twittosphere.
The first match was about to take off and nothing seemed to be able to take away the euphoric feeling of the greatest computer game of all time premiering on a large scale platform.
6 games in total were streamed and casted throughout the night.
As game 1 took off, my immediate reaction initialised with a joyful bliss which almost couldn’t contain the excitement I was feeling.
However, technical issues delayed and disrupted most of the casting streams. Every 10 minutes or so, the stream would cut off an into the unbearable red screen of lag. This created unnecessary drama for worldwide spectators. I was ashamed, but mostly dissapointed, that a grand feature at this scale was baring technical costs.
As the game progressed, victories were celebrated, upsets were consoled and lag issues just didn’t want to go away. Frustration took the better of me and I gave up sitting infront of my screen all night, and instead checked up on the results every 20 minutes or so.
But despite all that, the games continued and went on throughout the night. Unfortunately, I only managed to catch the first 3 and a half before sleep took the better of my priorities.
Waking up in the morning, I jumped onto www.dota2.com results page to check the leaderboard on Day One:
Unfamiliar with most of the DOTA scene (since I started playing HON two years ago), my fanboy ego took to the closest representation of my origins.
Malaysia’s only Dota 2 representatives, MUFC, failed to impress :(
However, the group stages doesn’t regulate on a knockout format and MUFC and all other teams who faced an upset still has a chance to come back from the Loser’s bracket.
The first two places from each group will go on to play in the winners bracket and the two last places will play in the losers bracket the next 3 days.
It is a usual double-elimination bracket, and is guaranteed to find the rightful winner of the big prize:
$1 MILLION USD!
Despite the lags and technical difficulties faced thruough last night, I am hoping tonight’s match up brings a new light and features a more explosive and entertaining event than its predecessor. I don’t want to judge the game based on one or two laggy matches, but I am truly hoping the rest of the championship extends itself beyond its first impression!
