DireTide lasted for fourteen days, which is similar to the air time it had last year. The game mode was met with so much anticipation that there numerous outbursts and cries of disappointment from the community on the event, or lack thereof, on the days before and after Halloween. The Dota 2 blog has of course made an apology, and DireTide was patched last 14 November.
The DireTide version of this year's was slightly different than that of last year. While the delayed release of it caused a massive uproar, it also piqued the interest of many. During DireTide, a peak of 708,000 concurrent users of Dota 2 was reached - a record high on the game's young life.
DireTide was played on cycles, with the ten-man group killing Roshan the most being placed into the Hall of Fame and then being given a Platinum Baby Roshan. This has been very rewarding for those who were able to get it, as it is turning out to be a very valuable item. Rather than a reward for people's skill though, it has become more of a token of the ingenuity shown by many - looking for loopholes patch after patch.
There were a total of 14 cycles, one for each day of the DireTide event. However, there were a total of 150 cycle Platinum Baby Roshans, as a glitch on the level-recording had two sets of winners on Cycle 6. There were also a couple of non-cycle PBRs which were crafted on the first day of the event, but that specific crafting was disallowed after the succeeding patch. In comparison, there were seven cycles for the Golden Baby Roshan last year.
DireTide is a special seasonal game mode on the Dota 2 client introduced Halloween last year. It was patched back into the main client this year with the Three Spirits update. There is another event seasonal game mode introduced Christmas season last year, which is Frostivus.
Headline photo taken from: GlowingShutter
