I play Dota2 and has never bought or traded any item. Agreed Dota2 will be free to play, but compared to TF2 - it brings another aspect which is professional game play and ability to watch it within Dota client.
I am not sure, how much money valve will be making eventually but they are already selling tickets for watching professional games within Dota client. I think once it comes out of beta, selling tickets of professional games is a element we can't ignore. remember nearly 40-50K people turn up to watch any competitive dota2 game.
> remember nearly 40-50K people turn up to watch any competitive dota2 game.
Only while it's free. I doubt that they will start charging money for professional games, simply because no one does that. The only actual advantage of DotA 2 against other MOBA games (LoL, HoN, DotA1) are tournaments with huge prizes ("the International", $1M for first place lots of lesser ones). It's not like DotA2 is so much more interesting to watch than HoN/LoL.
I am not sure, how much money valve will be making eventually but they are already selling tickets for watching professional games within Dota client. I think once it comes out of beta, selling tickets of professional games is a element we can't ignore. remember nearly 40-50K people turn up to watch any competitive dota2 game.