Eric Van Allen's saved articles

ericvanallen
Eric Van Allen
ericvanallen
Freelance writer, Dota enthusiast, Texan.

In my decidedly piss-poor attempts at playing Smash Bros. (no matter which version), Kirby is always my pick. Which tells you just how bad I am at Smash. Read more

I just hit 70 hours at Vesperia and I’m right at the end and I didn’t really grind or do too many side quests so I’ll have to see that for sure Read more

Also while a recorded run for say Speed Demos Archive may involve “luck manipulation” through frequent resets for strategies that only work rarely (rare item drops, repeat critical hits, avoiding random encounters, etc.), a live run attempt streamed over Twitch is more likely to push through to the finish using backup Read more

Man, I miss the height of SC2 eSports. I was lucky enough to work for MLG for a single competition in 2014 before I saw the massive decline of it’s eSports scene. It’s not hard to see why. There wasn’t enough consistent change to keep it interesting. Most of the matches had similar strategies, poking, and then Read more

Eeee Rubick! I don’t play as much lately because of study (such discipline), but Rubick is hands down my favourite hero to play! Not always suitable, almost always fun. Read more

The cat saying “Hey Teens” to a bunch of teens is me. Read more

I remember during the last shuffle I was so scared when I heard Cr1t was leaving, as I feel like he is a top 3 player in his position. Who could they possibly get to replace him? Oh wait, it’s Jerax? Never mind, don’t panic, this is fine. Continue the streak! Read more

The norm for most top-tier international tournaments these days to have dedicated observers for each stream team. However, it seems like the english team didn’t get to bring an observer and were stuck using the video feed from the Chinese obs. It’s moments like this where I really miss Skrff, Weppas, and/or Pimpmuckl. Read more

I always love seeing more Dota coverage here, so keep up the good work! Read more

RAMZES666's keyboard is going to get lost or destroyed at least four times during the event. Read more

The venue is also another issue that people are upset about. It’s capacity is only 3k and it hasn’t been renovated in 20 years. Apparently the other two large venues have been booked since mid 2016, which begs the question, what was Valve thinking? Considering the immense popularity of Dota in the CIS region, this Read more

I don’t know where this compete channel came from, but if this type of reporting is going to be common, I will be very happy. Kotaku has long had a big blind spot with esports. Glad to see the background with SKT and spectate faker brought up. The sourcing and response from Riot was also on point. Read more

Now no need to be so cynical. It’s just one small oversight. Read more

Never underestimate the stupidity of pro sports front offices. Read more

The reason that top FIFA players use XBOX has nothing to do with hardware, system performance, or anything of the like. The reason is that the XBOX version of FIFA 17 has the license to FIFA Legends. Some of the best players in the competitive scene (Ruud Gullit, Patrick Vieira) are only available on XBOX. This leads Read more

I think the camera is in specator mode so it’s able to see all players. Read more

Two goals in minute with Messi and Ronaldo on the attack? What, he couldn’t get Pele’ and Maradona on his team, too? Slacker. Read more