The main event of Dota 2’s premier tournament, The International, begins tonight with the grand final to be played early on Tuesday morning. The prizepool of over US$10.5 million might have piqued your interest, so why not watch some of it? Sure it starts at 2am AEST but it will continue into the late morning. Anyway, after the World Cup and Tour de France, staying up late should be second nature.
Watching the tournament has been made incredibly simple and, more importantly, is completely free. You can watch live streams of all the games through the official site or Twitch.tv. There will be an analysis desk, roving reporters talking to players and fans in between games and just an obscene amount of content.
Dota 2 also has an in-game spectator system which is, by far, the best way to watch the matches. You’ll be able to take control of the camera and see exactly what you want to see, while watching at the highest quality that your computer can play the game. You will also be able to readily swap between a whole host of commentary options, including a new player friendly commentary to help explain the basics of the game as they happen.
To watch in game: simply open Dota 2, click on the Watch tab up the top and select The International 2014 under the Premium Tournaments tab. Click on the drop down arrow on the right and there will be a list of live games you can load up.
Once the game has loaded, you will be given a choice of broadcasters. The new player stream will be highlighted with a scroll icon.
Don’t want to stay up? All past games are available to watch through the game’s replay system or through the official site. A full schedule of events and information about the format, prize distribution and the teams can also be found there.
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4 responses to “Dota 2 And How to Watch The International 4”
And if you’re looking for something to listen to between games, how about this old ditty.
I cannot stress how much better it is to watch in game.
You don’t have to download any image information (so hi def is actually possible for those with slower internet), you can see game details at your leisure, have your choice of broadcaster, and can win stuff just for watching.
The game client itself is 10gb. If you’re streaming at source quality on Twitch, you will easily download more than that over the next couple of days and still have a worse quality product.
Not to mention that Twitch is going to be absolutely hammered this weekend. It was getting obscene numbers during the round robin stage. Now that we’re on to the main event, there are going to be hundreds of thousands of people watching through each different viewing option. In-game is the only way to guarantee a lag-free environment.
Going to Ti4 Pubstomp event in Crown next week for the finals. Will be fun.