Giant Bomb Presents: The Dota 2 The International 8 eSports Fantasy Dotacular II

Aww yeah! That game I love playing but am terrible at!

I don't like DOTA

I love these videos.

I loved the previous edition of this video, it was pretty hilarious even as a person who has no interest in e-sport or dota. It's just really funny see Jeff playing around with all the stuff, cards etc. that dota has and commenting.

@npcdi: All the more reason to watch this!

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Paris Saint-Germain has a DotA team?!

Bring back FriDota!

where's my chair referral code

Hey for the photos take in mind that the qualifiers just wrapped up with a bunch of unexpected teams, and Valve does add more photos over time.

YAAASSS/s

Kessler Got Out! He escaped!!!

This video is the best.

That chair looks fast

The promocode for the chair is 'BSJ'

This is perverse and beautiful

fuck yes

I'm so happy about that "gaming" chair skit.

Oh wow! Just noticed one of the players on the cards had Paris Saint Germain logo, a massive football (soccer) club. Seems DOTA and e-sports really are getting slowly more mainstream and there's insane money in it if even huge football clubs are investing in non-fifa e-sports!

The voice packs are hilarious even for someone who doesn't play DOTA, I hope Jeff gets some insanely good items and godly RNG. It'd be hilarious for those items to just stay there unused.

Love the Enthusiasm Jeff

The other day I had someone who was level 7 in the game on their account. Jeff hit level 4 and almost level 5 from this video and has never played a game of Dota.

The more I see of this player card, sound pack buying nonsense the more I hate DOTA with every fiber of my being. It might be the worst game ever made.

@mattgiersoni: Yeah multiple FCs have invested in DOTA teams but PSG is the highest profile one and they bought into one of the higher profile Chinese teams in LGD. Immediately after having PSG buy in they went on a tear and have become the top Chinese team and one of the favorites to win going into TI.

For all the Dota videos I've watched over the years from this site, I still haven't got a bloody clue what the hell is going on.

Hey everyone else at Valve, I just had a great idea! As you all know there is a qualifying event for the International coming up. How about we send a person with a camera there to get pictures of the qualifiers for our Battlepass card packs? And if a team wants to get fussy about us using their pictures we can just make the rules for the International say that a team is ineligible to win any prize money if they don't provide us with complete pictures of their roster to use in card packs. Man, we really dodged a bullet there, can you imagine how stupid our cards would look if the player pictures were blank?

Heartbroken that Jeff didn't open all his chests.

Solid Techies pick.

(why is this so funny I'm crying at a coffee shop)

doting? in 2018?

I mean I agree that probably would've been ideal, but there are a lot of factors that make your suggestion super impractical:

1.) These teams/players are scattered across the world, with a lot of teams having players scattered across multiple countries. As someone who has done some freelance photography in the past, coordinating shoots can be a total nightmare and even for someone as resource-rich as Valve I can't imagine that would be as simple as you imply.

2.) On top of that, as important as TI is it's not the only Dota tournament around; there are dozens of Majors/Minors/third-party tournaments/LANs throughout the year that these teams go to which can complicate scheduling.

3.) Most of these players aren't really "professionals," just teens/young adults chasing their dreams. They have lots of other responsibilities that don't revolve around their fledgling Dota careers, and it doesn't seem fair to restrict their prospects just because they might be too busy to meet with a Valve photographer.

So yeah, it's a minor annoyance that these cards are missing photos but in the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter. It's not like these cards are what Valve uses to represent TI to mainstream press, it's a super niche little feature for hardcore fans who probably already know what most of these players look like anyway.

I could listen to Jeff drag Dota character "designs" all day.

While taking in just how bizarre and lame this whole card system is, I took a drink of water just as Jeff flatly said "we'll definitely keep it then, because [the stats are] a big deal," which hit me just right to where I spit water everywhere. Love these videos.

I like dota. It's a great game. Probably one of the most difficult strategy games to play/master. I wish the site had content that really captured what makes dota a good game, rather than only highlighting the yearly TI compendium with disdain. Dota has a lot of bullshit to not like, like some of the hooks in the compendium and some of the community (toxic players, like any other competitive online community). But there's a reason that so many people keep playing the game, and it's not the gambling-lite hat system that valve puts in the compendium.

I hate Dota, but i'll always watch GB poke at it.

DOTA? More like Oh Nota!

Say No Ta Dota

@deejcello: That's why FriDota exists (existed?) Also that one series when Brad was SUPER deep into DOTA that you can find on this site.

Brad at 7:30 is the new white-guy blinking gif, minus the blinking.

This is the type of content I pay for! Also, bring back FriDota!

Thanks for the 100% correct guide Jeff! It's too bad you can't trade. I know how much you wanted those cards!

@boonsong: or the best..?

@dasakamov: Obviously from the comments here dota is a polarizing game for this site to cover. I'm sure there are people who love seeing dota, people who hate seeing dota, and a good chunk of people that don't care that it's there, but probably won't actively follow it. What I was trying to say with my last comment is that if they don't want to keep covering dota with any regularity, that's fine, it's not like they spend a lot of time on any other MOBA game either aside from maybe a quick look when they come out. But if they are going to put out like a yearly video, I feel like it represents the game a bit better to actually play the thing rather than just poking fun at the compendium freemium hooks. In the past year the biggest change to the game (outside of many balance patches) has been the addition of turbo mode, and there are two entertaining new game modes included with the compendium. Ben, from his compendium level, obviously still follows dota closely and plays it. A one-off stream with him and/or Brad playing a couple turbo mode matches, or a handful of battle royale matches, or a game or two of the new mutator mode would be entertaining. It would show off the new features of the game without having to be this long slog of content that took a lot of time away from other features for some small minority of the visitors here.

@revenantxenos:

In the past they've also had the photoshoot at the event, and filled in the cards at that point. A big reason there are ANY pictures on the cards is because those teams or players have been to TI in the past. It's really not a big deal, just like how the cards aren't exactly a huge deal in the grand scheme of the compendium.

Giant Bomb at 10 Years:

Wrestling

Anime

Dota

Dig the Jacques Cousteau look.

Hardcore dota fans unite.

@lyndbako: That will get me to resub, but they stopped last dota content in 2017 after 2 matches, brad will never beat allherochallange at this point! GOGOGO!

Wait is that the flea couch?

?

Yeah I think they update the cards to use the official photos from the event's press days as soon as they are available (usually a few days before TI).

nice job on the weight loss jeff. seeing you in the ten year old videos and seeing you now is crazy.