The International

The International has been going on for the past week. For those of you who didn't know, The International is an annual e-sports tournament, but only contesting the game dota. No, dota is not Dunia Orang Tanpa Awek, but Defence Of the Ancient. Basically it is a multiplayer game where team fights 5 on 5 in trying to destroy their opposition throne. E-sports has been growing ever since the dot.com bubble especially in the early 2000s when internet is getting faster and faster.

The International is like the biggest and the most prestigous dota tournament there is. First, because it is organised by Valve, the video game company that produced dota itself. Second, the winner of this tournament is going to walk away with 1.4 million US Dollar. And third, the teams that participated in TI is the top 16 team in the whole wide world. This year, TI is held in Seattle, USA. It's really cool I tell you. It's like a comic-con. Variety of programmes and events are being carried out there apart from the main tournament, like pubstomp, autograph session, selling booths and many more.

I've been watching the tournament via live streaming and through the dota platform, and I can tell you it is an awesome experience. Watching these professional gamers play competitively is really fun which reminds me why I've been playing it since 2005, albeit I never played competitively. There's a few teams that I root for particularly Na'Vi, iG and Orange. iG was last year's champion and they walked away with a million dollar prize money. They're a team from China, but one of the players is Malaysian. Goes by the name Chuan. You could watch Chuan's pre-game introduction at 4:59.

Naik limo tuh. Tiba-tiba teringin nak jadi professional gamer jugak. Anyway also lots of crazy things happened during the tournament. Ada satu game tu, the game was dragged until the 90 minutes mark, which is overly long for a dota game, and the Korean commentator goes crazy. 

And of course, there's Orange. Our very own Malaysian team. Orange has one of the best dota solo player in the world, Mushi. Last year they finished third. Hope this year they could finish better. Orange also has one Malay player in the form of Fadil 'Kecik Imba' Raziff. But he hasn't play thus far as he's like the sixth player and an understudy. But I'm not worried. He's only 17 years old and Im sure he has a bright future ahead of him. 

Jom dota.