I didn’t see a thread on this major event. Is anybody else watching it?
Grand finals is on right now!
Any other fans of eSports in general?
Did I see that the winner was going to get $5 million?
Yeah. Amazing. Over $10 million in total prize. That’s huge! ESPN is covering too. I think eSports is going to get bigger over time. I certainly don’t think it is going to go away. I don’t think it can quite go mainstream yet. We need a game that can appeal to non-gamers. Maybe some kind of 1st person shooter might.
I was a bit disappointed by the final. I think it was a combination of being content with either team winning (since they both had the same “rejected players” story) and the actual games being rather straightward and stompy.
Great tournament overall though.
The tournament was great but the final was very disappointing. I like what one host said “Take a losing strategy and keep trying it until it works.” LOL This is not the way to win games.
I missed some of this weekend due to a RL trip, but I saw most of the good stuff last weekend and caught the important stuff this weekend, including most of the Grand Finals today. It helps that I’m familiar enough with DotA that I can follow and understand everything that’s going on; I also appreciated that the meta wasn’t the same as it’s been in the past.
The two big disappointments of the tournament were the one-sidedness of the Grand Finals, and the Chinese domination of the later rounds. So many of the top Chinese teams tend to play similar styles, there was a lot more in the way of variety and entertaining narratives last weekend, it seemed.
If you watch one game, go for game 2 of Cloud9 vs Vici, from Sunday.
Great stuff. The inclusion of the “newbie feeds” was a really smart idea for making the game more accessible.
The crazy thing about the prize pool is that Valve only kicked in the first million bucks. The rest of it was 25% of tournament-based purchases from the playerbase (with Valve getting the other 75%, of course).
Craziness.
Asia certainly seems to dominate eSports at the moment, including DotA. Europe has some competitive teams. It seems that in general NA lags in competitiveness which is a shame since if it were to get big in the US this would be good for eSports in general. Still, I find it very encouraging that this tournament had such a top prize. It is good sign for the future.
You say that, but the final Western teams in the tournament were EG and Cloud9, both of which were essentially NA teams.
That’s true, but it still does seem that in general Asia teams dominate eSports. It is good to see more NA teams doing well. I just hope that eSports continues to grow because as a gamer, even if it is a game I don’t play I enjoy watching it. I find it very exciting!
Was too busy to watch any of the streams.
Anyone have recommendations on the best games to watch? And can I find them in the game client with noob commentary on? Watching the game on the client is sooo much better 
Watched all of it, every single stage. The grand finals were short and sweet. VG deserved to lose for not adapting. If available, I would love to go in person next year!
There were a lot of great matches however I would recommend Evil Geniuses vs Vici from the Upper Bracket playoffs was a great match. I also enjoyed DK vs LGD. and Cloud 9 vs Vici lower bracket games.
So, basically everything from the Upper Bracket playoffs on to the finals.
All of the matches are available in the client with all the commentary available for that match. Only about 1/4th of matches from the group stages have new player commentary though.
I saw most of the tournament(youtube, the live thing is a bit inconvenient for me) and I think the awesomest match was an LGD vs DK one, did not see that coming! Never played a single minute of dota in my life btw.