I don’t know how many of you are on Twitter, but the Riot staff has been teasing its followers this week with the promise of amazing content. If Dark Shurelia is to be believed, we may see Magma Chamber as early as this week.

The forums have been abuzz as well. RiotMontag said the amazing content we’ve been waiting for his coming “Not Soon. This Week.” I’m curious what that means, though. Are we going to see another Friday patch day like we did with Leona? For the Rioters’ sakes I hope that’s not the case – I would imagine the servers are going to need some attention over the weekend and no one likes working on the weekend.

This is the most buzz we’ve had surrounding League of Legends since Dreamhack, which I take as a truly positive sign. It seems like good timing, too. Valve just announced the first public showing of DotA 2 at a Gamescom tournament later this month. Oh, did I not mention that the purse for first prize in the tourney is a million bucks, USD? Yeah, you read that right. One million dollars cash to the first place team. Dreamhack was cool, but Valve is definitely sending a message to competitive players in just about every strategy game on the market. Can Riot’s news this week keep up?

Valve quietly mentioned that DotA 2 was fast approaching just yesterday. The message appeared at the bottom of a press release about the Steam content delivery system. “Soon, Dota 2 will be delivered using [the new system]” was all it said, but there’s a little more info circulating the web. Apparently MYM, one of the most popular DotA teams in the world, is headed over to Germany during Gamescom along with several other European and Asian teams, supposedly to play in a promotional tournament at the event.

It’s no secret that Europe and Asia both have exploding esports scenes, particularly with regard to the MOBA genre. Gamescom seems like an excellent place to showcase the most anticipated entrant in the MOBA field. As for release dates, Valve hasn’t said anything, but Gamescom runs from August 17-21. I would imagine we won’t see the final product for at least another month, which puts us at late September, early November, just like roughly every other game you’ve been hearing about for the past three years.

Personally, I’m excited for DotA 2. I really enjoy Valve games and I have faith in what they can bring to the genre, especially with regard to multiplayer features. As much as I enjoy League of Legends, the game is way behind in terms of social features. If Valve can deliver core technical features players have come to expect, it could see incredible growth and visibility in this sector of the industry.

That said, I also think DotA 2 could miss the mark with a lot of casual players. The strength/agility/intellect system from those games feels opaque and archaic, even as someone closely familiar with the game. I could absolutely see people who are accustomed to the AP/AD system get frustrated with learning a whole new system for categorizing champions and choose to stick with LoL.

Will you be playing DotA 2?