DotA is on the rise online and on-LAN. With the promise of a large scale DotA LAN comes another prize, DotA's largest online tournament yet! Total Gaming League along with DXD present Battle of the Throne with the highest prize pool for an online DotA tournament yet.

DXD has recently expanded it's league to East battle.net aside from their home on West. They wish to widen their participation on an international scale with DotA, bringing together their divisions for this tournament!

Interview with Hunter_

Hunter! First off can you tell us about TGL and their sponsorship with DXD?

My goal with DXD is to bring DotA to the highest level possible. I strive every day to push DotA as a mainstream game with serious competitive gaming possibilities. Total Gaming League has the same objective, but in the gaming community in general. In the recent years professional gaming has taken off to monumental heights and TGL shares the same enthusiasm as DXD. Total Gaming League has a LARGE number of sponsors that happen to be gaming GIANTS. To pursue our goal to expand DotA Total Gaming League owned and sponsored by MyInternetServices.com is the option that DXD has been waiting for.

How did you convince TGL to sponsor DXD? How do they feel about the tournament and league?

I didn't have to convince them much. Greg, the owner of My Internet Services and Total Gaming League was working with a friend of mine from my past relationship with Check 6 about working with TGL to head up the World in Conflict division when he mentioned that he might be interested in picking up a Warcraft 3 division and World of Warcraft division, both of which I am heavily involved in. Once I was introduced to Greg from TGL and MyIS it was magic. We had a mutual appreciation for the gaming industry and he believed in the vision DXD provides in the DotA community. We've been working out details for over three weeks.

For the Battle of the Throne tournament, can everyone sign up? Do you have to be in one of the DXD inhouse leagues?

No, there is no requirement to play in the DXD Inhouse leagues. This tournament is to reach out to the community and show sponsors, and multi-gaming corporations and the media that DotA is serious game and has some serious followers. DotA has flooded the battle net servers for over 3 years so our sponsors have a plan to make DotA one of the biggest E-Sports to stand today.

What are the dates of the tournament? Is there an official site for the tournament and what is the schedule/format for it?

We are going to launch Sign-ups tomorrow September 20th, the tournament will start in Mid-October to allow for signups. The website for the tournament sign-ups is http://www.totalgamingleague.com/battleforthethrone. There will be a large qualifier round with single elimination, followed by a very intense bracket system. The Total Gaming League will be hosting the DXD Tournament 'Battle for the Throne' Defense of the Ancients, with the Sign-ups ending in October. Up to 512 five person teams will compete through eight rounds of intense single elimination play over a period of four weeks to determine one final Champion! Prizes will include $3000 cash, computer hardware, and other great give away items from the sponsors of TGL & DXD.

You said if a lot of people signup prizes can increase? Please explain.

Our sponsors have never seen DotA as a competitive sport before and were not sure exactly how to judge the size of this tournament. Being a CAL administrator I can tell you that we have had over 400 players sign up for a non-prize tournament, When I told them that I would like to cut off the teams at 512 they we astonished to think that DotA was big enough to produce that size of a tournament. When coming up with prizes for the tournament they had no idea DotA was THAT big. I have word that as size of tournaments increase they will be expanding prizes out past 3rd place. With a DXD tournament this size more places are usually rewarded by MyInternetServices.com.

Is this a one time tournament or will it be a series of tournaments?

This is just the first in a series of bi-monthly tournaments. We are going to be kicking this one off and our partners at MyIS are using this tournament as a guide for the future tournaments in DotA for DXD.

Is there anything else you would like to add about the tournament/DXD?

Yes, one thing that will set this tournament apart from anything you've ever seen is the cooperation of the DotA community. IceFrog and I have been working very hard getting the word spread to the DotA community about this giant leap for DotA. He has even helped me revise the rules for the tournament as well as CAL|Kittle who is helping DXD out with the tournament along with HollywoodAdam who has devised an anti-hack system for the Battle for the Throne. It's state of the art anti-hack technology using our database to log not only who is hacking in games, but also essential statistics about each player in the game, like creep kills, creep denies, hero kills, and more useful information. It stores all of this information on our servers which can easily be accessed through the web to keep tabs on what seperates teams. A lot of preparation has gone into the DXD/TGL "Battle for the Throne" tournament.

Thanks for the interview! Any shoutouts?

Pink, I know your team was recently sponsored by PMS Clan, I would like to congratulate you on yet another huge step for DotA being nationally recognized by such a large gaming organization. In conclusion, I would like to thank my partner Tritran10 for having a dream to make DXD what it is today. DXD has the most incredible staff, without them, none of this would be possible. The Admins who have stepped up to help out with the tournaments, I thank you. We at DXD would like to invite you and all of your teammates to join us for a very competitive stop-watch tournament. This will be the very first official DXD DotA online tournament of this size and it's absolutely free for your team to register and participate. Our generous sponsors look forward to awarding thousands of dollars worth of cash and prizes to the competitive DotA players!