Dota 2 Open To All As Valve Strips Away Limitations

Those who have been waiting to play Dota 2 have reason to rejoice: Valve has stripped away all the restrictions, opening up the game anyone who wants to play. This follows months of queuing in order to gain access, which served a solid purpose — allowing the playerbase to expand in a controlled fashion while tweaks were made — but was frustrating nonetheless.

The queuing system was a necessary evil, so to speak, creating a natural limitation to keep the game from being flooded beyond its means. By requiring a wait, Dota 2 had its playerbase expanded in an even, measured fashion that allowed the folks behind Dota 2 to make improvements in both experience and infrastructure over the last half a year or so. Point being, it was worth the wait.

Recently, Dota 2 had a grand number of upgrades and enhancements take place, namely to the experience new users get, which makes this a good time for the queue to be done away with. There are currently 6.5 million active users every month, so while the queuing system was limiting, the playerbase was still substantial. For those who already play, there's a new recruitment functionality that will get you bonuses if someone signs up under it.

Said the developer: "For the past several months, access to Dota 2 has been granted through a queue system that gated entry into the community. We've used this system to gradually increase the size of our playerbase, as we ramped up our infrastructure and improved the experience for new players. As we have recently completed a set of server management upgrades as well as released a huge number of enhancements to the new user experience, we're going to remove all restrictions to playing Dota 2."

SOURCE: IGN