njoos

It played trough fine for me.

Read some guides then jump into dota2, don't play LoL. http://www.purgegamers.com/welcome-to-dota-you-suck sums is up pretty nicely.

Thinking in Java or Thinking in C++ by Bruce Eckel are supposed to be good. I borrowed the Thinking in Java book from my Uni library and found it quite useful to get started, I assume the C++ book(s) are equally good. http://www.amazon.com/Bruce-Eckel/e/B000AQ1SS2/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3?qid=1334762325&sr=1-3 Steal some ISBNs from here and check them out at your library.

My steam username is nj00s, europe.

They probably want to do a quick and cheap copy paste from xbox live, that is what GFWL is made for it seems. GFWL has never worked for me. Last time I attempted to log in was last week and it took 10minutes, and it managed to keep me logged in for 30minutes.

Sadly, and unsurprisingly, the PC port will use GFWL. That's me out at least.

The metagame is very different because of the limited hero pool, so WD is not picked up much outside of public matchmaking as far as I'm aware. Speaking of metagame there are quite a lot of tournaments going on now if people want to see some serious dota2. There is a stream going live in 4 hours over here http://www.joindota.com/en/start. Normally something going on there every day. For players stream you could watch dendi (although don't copy any item builds from him), moonmeander, LINK, Rexi, Trixi, Loda, Demon, Fogged, wagamama, etc. Both Joindota and teamliquid has a list of live streams. Dendi is really entertaining to watch (see: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=315942 for more info) and his stream has up to 10k viewers most days.

It's an extremely situational item. If you want to push their base really fast then sure get it, and especially if they have some invis hero you can shut down with it. If you can't get some barracks down by 30 minutes you are pretty much stuck with a 'bad' item on one of the most item dependent heroes there is. Lone druid is a very strong pusher even if you just go for the normal carry or tank items. Pressing tab will cycle trough your creatures. You can create control groups, like you can in other RTS games (WC3, AoE, SC2), CTRL + 1 some selection then pressing 1 will re-select that selection. For summoned creatures I think the control groups stick around even if you re-summon your pets. Also go into the game options and enable Unified Unit Orders or whatever they call it. Then you can CTRL + do stuff and all the units you control will do it. If I have more than one unit I usually just ctrl + right click to get them all to attack the same thing.

I much prefer the gridview shop in dota2 over HoN and LoL shops. I have quite a lot of games played though, so I usually know what I'm going to buy before I do. I don't "browse" the shop for items to buy. Enable unified unit orders in the Game -> General settings if you haven't. Then you can just CTRL + click with Lycan, and win the game. Also, pressing Spacebar will move the camera to the previous ping on the minimap.

e6xoCSUEedU Finally they made a DoTA mod for starcraft 2.