In August myself and two friends created a replacement bow for my favourite Dota character, Windrunner. After a long period of waiting the item we designed has finally been approved and put in the game. It is now on sale on the Dota 2 cosmetic store. It even got the highest rarity, Mythical, and includes some custom powershot animations which Valve created. If you would like to see the item on the store, click here.
From August 31st until September 2nd I was at the 2012 Dota 2 International event in Seattle, Washington. 16 teams were set to compete for the grand prize of one million dollars, and I was there in person watching the action.
During the event I met a lot of new people. I was even fortunate to run in to the main man himself, Gabe Newell. I can now check that-off the bucket list.
Upon entering the grand hall you are greeted by banners of all sixteen teams competing, draped from the ceiling. To the left there is the secret shop which sells Dota related merchandise for the event, many of my dollars were spent there
WETA, the same people who made the replica TF2 turret, have been hard at work creating more replicas, this time for Dota 2. So far they have made the Vanguard, Demon Edge and the Butterfly. These were not for sale at the event, but I believe they will be one day.
This is the Aegis of the Immortal. This is the championship trophy for the International, and has already been engraved with the members of Na`Vi for winning the first tournament. I have a feeling WETA created this as well, but I’m not positive.
This is the analysts desk from behind the camera.
This is the main stage in all of it’s glory. Both of the booths on the stage are completely sound proof. The monitors to the left and right display footage of cameras inside the booths to show the players reactions, and the middle one shows the commentators view. The main screen switches to the analyst desk and interviews in-between games also.
This is where the commentators do their thing. They must be using some pretty pricey headphones if they can still commentate through the noise of all of the crowd.
The Chinese and Russian casters did their own thing during the entire event. Apparently the Chinese were streaming the entire event live to a TV station in China, pretty cool!
In between games there were a bunch of “famous” people walking around in the lobby. I managed to get a picture with a few of them. Below is a picture of myself, Tobi Wan from joinDOTA and SyndereN from mTw.
Cyborgmatt and myself. Team Gabe represent! I’ve known Matt for over 10 years at this point, so meeting up was pretty awesome.
Freaktrap, Cyborgmatt, Qwiggalo, Jimo. Team Gabe!
Bruno the stats man and SingSing. I may or may not have been drunk when this was taken.
Myself and Dendi from Na`Vi. This was after their match with DK.
Chuan from iG right after they were crowned the champions of the 2012 Internationals.
After the event Valve held an after party. Loud music, beer, Dota, good times. It’s a shame that the price of alcohol was so expensive, I would of loved to have gotten drunk, but at $8 a bottle, no chance. For those wondering, it was House music, not Hardcore, sadface.
Overall, the International was great fun. I can’t wait to see what Valve does next year, so I’ll definitely be returning in 2013. Because I’m a sucker for any form of memorabilia, I loaded up on a tonne of awesome souvenirs, I have more than this photo shows even.
This is the second time I’ve said goodbye to Washington this year, I’m becoming a regular. Seeing as I was at the International for the majority of my stay I didn’t have a lot of time to go else where. I did manage put one day aside to spend with our friend Chloe though, which was totally worth it. We made good use of our time by visiting Krispy Kreme, obviously.
We even listened to Electric Zoo live on Satellite radio, awesome.
This is my prized picture of Boeing field. This picture will likely win first place in some sort of competition somewhere.
I am terrified of Chloe’s driving, my face doesn’t lie.
Hello Kitty meets Final Fantasy, welcome to the Anime Store. (Pretty sure neither are anime)
I wasn’t really sure if this was supposed to be art or if it served a purpose at one point, who cares… actually I kind of do.
Incredible view of the Seattle skyline
Welcome new visitors from Australia. My international promotion team has been hard at work. I’m sure you are just here to read my beer reviews though!
The weather here has been bloody fantastic. It’s also bloody fantastic for Mosquitos as well (Literally). I found out the other day that I’m actually allergic to the bastards, so walking my dog became rather difficult unless I wanted to turn in to a human water balloon every time we went.
So I got a bike! Magnus my Dog enjoys chasing the bike and I avoid most of the mosquitos, It’s a win-win! Check out some random pictures I took below.
Goodbye Washington, it was fun. Big thanks to Kevin and Chloe for having us, we really enjoyed visiting and look forward to doing so again in the future. Here is a collection of photos I took during our last two days from all over the state, Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Puyallup, you name it.
Awesome shop we found in downtown Seattle.
The fake flagship Starbucks shop, Chloe led me astray!
The REAL flagship Starbucks shop.
The space eagle, I mean needle.
Downtown Tacoma bridge.
Mt Rainer Volcano from Tacoma
Pikaaaaaaaa
Microsoft store in Bellevue square
Sadly I miss this place.
London Sounds Exposed Borealis