Diablo 3 probably makes it into many peoples top 3 most anticipated games currently in development, and is a game personally I am really looking forward to. The hack and slash click-em-up is a genre that is at its core so simple yet satisfying, and when matched with the promise of some shiney phat loot - it simply seems to be some form of addiction. The game currently draws closer and closer to the BETA stage everyone is waiting for, but before we get there Blizzard decided to announce quite possibly the most bizzare feature anyone could have possibly thought of - a "real cash" auction house build into the game along side the gold based one?

Thats right, come the launch of Diablo 3 -currently confirmed as "when its ready" - you can walk up to a boss, slay it, get some phat loot, go to the auction house, and sell it for IRL money. Wow....who saw that coming? Now there are some crappy little free-to-play games floating about that claim to do this sort of thing, but each and every one of them utterly fails, and the only other cash auctions I know about were in EVE, and they were sucesful due to heavy community and developer management. Blizzard I feel are the people to do this, and to do it right, and overal it's going to be a good thing for many people.

Gamescon, August 17th-21st, Valve has put possibly the biggest e-sports prize up for grabs for 16 hand picked Dota teams to battle over in the very first Dota 2 tournament. A massive $1million is the prize for the winner, and for everyone outside of those top 16 teams we have the pleasure of seeing Dota 2 in action for the very first time, with the whole tournament being casted in multiple languages for us all to enjoy.

So in less than 3 weeks time, possibly a landmark e-sports game will be born via the brute force of Valve's wallet - it's certainly a good way to wash aside the competition in the MOBA scene (the game type Dota falls into) such as Heroe's of Newarth, the original Dota, and League of Legends. LoL and HoN have struggled to gain a place in e-sports, with LoL being the more successful of the two, and have never really drawn in much money - definitely no where near $1million. Valve plans to change this, and force Dota 2 into the e-sports scene by dangling a large bag of cash for all the MOBA players to see....quite a good plan actually!

So will Dota 2 be able to keep up with the pace Valve are setting? Only time will tell. The game certainly has a talented development team behind it, and is not to mention the one true sequel to Dota and has promised to stay true to the original, where as games like LoL seem to have watered down the Dota experience and made a new game completely. Hopefully Valve will be willing to support Dota 2 and its venture into the e-sports arena, as failure to have anyone follow up this simply massive tournament could result in 'just another MOBA' floating around the wannabe e-sports scene.

Fingers crossed Dota 2 amazes us all, and best of luck to the 16 teams competing at Gamescon...no pressure on them at all I'm sure :) All eyes on http://www.dota2.com/ for more info!

With the ESL Brink Championship entering a decisive phase, ESL TV has prepared something special for all the supporters. Both semi-final matches will be broadcasted live in the exclusive Brink TV show featuring no other than Joe Miller. The person to join him in the studio will be mousesports' Brink player - Josh 'Josh' Lee.

Brink Championship Semi Finals

There will be two shows presenting one of the two semi-finals each. Apart from the live streams of the matches the shows will also include a short introduction and review of the tournament, an analysis of the played matches so far and an overall summary of the tournament.

Mon, 25/07/11 21:30 CEST

Rush-Zone wOoHoOdY vs. sGs Gaming

Tue, 26/07/11 21:00 CEST

Team Hardware4u vs. Epsilon eSports
All the Brink fans will be able to enjoy the show on ESL TV. The winners of the semi-finals will face at gamescom to compete in the ESL Brink Championship grand final, where a share of 15,000 Euro is at stake.

Today marks the beginning of IGN's Pro SC2 league, the IPL - cunningly named the IPL2. The second season looks to follow the high production value of the original season, and during the qualifying phase IGN has been trying to expand the amount of casters available to give viewers or more varied commentary when they are watching games. The second season, and possibly the biggest aspect of it, marks the opening of the IPL to players in Europe. IPL 1 was North American only, but for season 2 we get to see some of the European grandmasters go over and show the Americans how it is done. Fan favourites such as White-Ra, Bratok and LaLush, line up against the Americans along with Fury, Merz, and many more European qualifiers.

Back in 2003 I was pretty hooked with a bunch of mates on a game called Planetside. It was the first full on attempt to do the dirty work of merging the terms "MMO" and "FPS" together, and what a cracking game it was. Over the last few years SOE have been working on the follow up, cunningly named Planestside 2, and over on www.planetside2.com there has been a little counter going ever so slowly down to zero...and this is what we got when it reached the end.

Recently TF2 has been hitting the headlines with the announcment of its new "Meet The Medic" patch. The patch has the usual host of guns, hats, sticks, knives, swords, bundles, boxes...you name it, the patch has it. Big news of the patch though is you can now login to Steam and find you can download TF2 - for free!