Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mod for the video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002) and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. The objective of the game is for each team to destroy their opponents' Ancient, a heavily guarded structure at the opposing corner of the map. Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied teammates and AI-controlled fighters. As in role-playing games, players level up their heroes and use gold to buy equipment during the game.
Evil Geniuses (EG) is an American esports organization based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1999, the organization has fielded players in various fighting games, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, Fortnite Battle Royale, Halo,League of Legends, Valorant, StarCraft II, Rocket League, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, and World of Warcraft.
Dota 2 is a 2013 multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game by Valve. The game is a sequel to Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a community-created mod for Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Dota 2 is played in matches between two teams of five players, with each team occupying and defending their own separate base on the map. Each of the ten players independently controls a powerful character known as a "hero" that all have unique abilities and differing styles of play. During a match players collect experience points and items for their heroes to defeat the opposing team's heroes in player versus player combat. A team wins by being the first to destroy the other team's "Ancient", a large structure located within their base.
Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) is a subgenre of strategy video games in which two teams of players compete against each other on a predefined battlefield. Each player controls a single character with a set of distinctive abilities that improve over the course of a game and which contribute to the team's overall strategy. The typical objective is for each team to destroy their opponents' main structure, located at the opposite corner of the battlefield. In some MOBA games, the objective can be defeating every player on the enemy team. Players are assisted by computer-controlled units that periodically spawn in groups and march forward along set paths toward their enemy's base, which is heavily guarded by defensive structures. This type of multiplayer online video games originated as a subgenre of real-time strategy, though MOBA players usually do not construct buildings or units. Moreover, there are examples of MOBA games that are not considered real-time strategy games, such as Smite (2014), and Paragon. The genre is seen as a fusion of real-time strategy, role-playing and action games.
The International (TI) is an annual esports world championship for the five-on-five video game Dota 2. Produced by the game's developer Valve, the International is the final event of the Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) and consists of 20 teams: 12 based on final results from the DPC; six from North America, South America, Southeast Asia, China, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe regional leagues; and two from last-chance qualifiers. The International was first held at Gamescom in 2011 to promote the game's release. It was then held annually in Seattle, where Valve is headquartered, until it began to be hosted internationally again starting with The International 2018.
Invictus Gaming is a Chinese multi-game esports organization founded in 2011 by businessman Wang Sicong. They are primarily known for their Dota 2, League of Legends, and StarCraft II teams. IG's Dota team won The International 2012, and its League of Legends team won the 2018 World Championship.
Danil Ishutin, better known as Dendi, is a Ukrainian professional Dota 2 player. He is best known for his time with Natus Vincere (Na'Vi) in the 2010s, where he was a member of the team that won The International 2011. He left Na'Vi in 2018 and formed his own Dota 2 organization in 2020, B8.
Luo Feichi, known by the gamer tag Ferrari_430, is a Chinese professional Dota 2 player from Hubei. He won The International 2012 with Invictus Gaming (iG).
Alliance is a professional gaming and esports organization based in Sweden that was formed in April 2013. They have teams in TrackMania, Dota 2, Hearthstone, the Super Smash Bros. series, Fortnite, Apex Legends and VALORANT, and previously had teams in League of Legends and StarCraft II.
Vici Gaming (VG) is a Chinese professional esports organization based in Shanghai. It has teams competing in Dota 2, League of Legends, StarCraft II, WarCraft III, FIFA, Hearthstone and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Vici Gaming's Dota 2 team has been a top contender in numerous tournaments, most notably as runners-up of The International 2014.
PSG.LGD was a professional Dota 2 team based in China. They were formed as a partnership between PSG Esports and LGD Gaming in April 2018 until the end of the partnership in September 2023. PSG.LGD has finished as the runner-up in The International 2018 and 2021.
Clinton Loomis, better known as Fear, is an American professional Dota 2 caster, former player and former coach. With a career spanning a decade, Fear is one of the oldest Dota players in the scene. He was featured alongside Danil "Dendi" Ishutin and Benedict Lim "hyhy" Han Yong in the documentary Free to Play. With Evil Geniuses, he won over a million dollars as the winners of The International 2015.
Virtus.pro (VP) was an international esports organization founded in 2003 in Russia and acquired by Armenian investors in 2022. The organization has had players competing in such games as Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Rainbow Six Siege, Warface and EFT: Arena.
Henrik Ahnberg, better known as AdmiralBulldog, is a Swedish streamer and former professional Dota 2 player for Alliance, with whom he won The International 2013.
ESL One Hamburg 2017 was a Dota 2 esports championship tournament hosted by ESL. It took place in Hamburg, Germany in October 2017. This is the first ESL One event held in Hamburg, after three previous ESL One events in Germany were held in Frankfurt. In accordance with the new Dota 2 competitive season format set by Valve, the game's developer, the tournament will be the first Dota 2 Major tournament of the 2017 Dota Pro Circuit season.
Chen Yao, also known as Zhou, is a retired Chinese professional Defense of the Ancients (DotA) and Dota 2 player who won The International 2 as the team captain. His Id appeared in the loading screen of Defense of the Ancients 7 times. He won 27 champions during his professional career.
List of events in 2018 in esports.
Vega Squadron is a Russian professional esports organization based in Moscow. It was originally formed as a StarCraft II team on 10 July 2012. Currently, the organization has players competing in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, FIFA, and League of Legends.
Dota is a series of strategy video games. The series began in 2003 with the release of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a fan-developed multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mod for the video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. The original mod features gameplay centered around two teams of up to five players who assume control of individual characters called "heroes", which must coordinate to destroy the enemy's central base structure called an "Ancient", to win the game. Ownership and development of DotA were passed on multiple times since its initial release until Valve hired the mod's lead designer IceFrog and after an ongoing legal dispute with Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of Warcraft III, brokered a deal that allowed for Valve to inherit the trademark to the Dota name.
Dota: Dragon's Blood is an adult animated epic fantasy streaming television series. It is based on Dota 2, a 2013 video game by Valve. The show is produced by Studio Mir in association with Ashley Edward Miller's company Kaiju Boulevard. The series premiered on Netflix on March 25, 2021. and concluded on August 11, 2022.
