http://www.alienwarearena.com/giveaway/dota-2-closed-beta-ke…
This is the second giveaway
More than 9000 keys left
Apparently it will be free to play but it will require you to buy a "basic" bundle via steam which cost 25 dollar to play.
Not sure if the bundle will be removed in the future but your best bet of making an account that is 100% free is now
Allow me to hate on DOTA2 for a minute.
I got a key for this the other week, played about 20 matches in the last few weeks. It looks and sounds gorgeous, absolutely stunning graphics and such nice sound, but I can't get in to it in the way I can League of Legends.
The game is riddled with problems, no tutorials, terribly uncomunicative character selection process, awful UI, key bindings that don't make sense (TAB to disply scoreboard, every other game does it!), horrendously long wait times for a match any match please let me find a match, awful and abusive community (and that's coming from a LoL player), and the leavers, oh god the leavers are absolutely game breaking.
Other MOBAs severly punish players who leave mid game. DOTA2 does not as far as I can tell, I have never played (in the 20 games I've played) a full game without at least 1 player leaving and hence causing that team to lose.
Maybe once it gets a bit more fleshed out with content, tutorials, bigger community so the wait times aren't so long, it will be a better game. But for now, ugh, I'm done with it.
EDIT:
I'll give a +1 anyway since its still $25 worth of content for free
Also, if anyone can let me know, when I installed DOTA2 I also got DOTA2 Test on my steam list, is this just a pre-beta build of the game to test new features? It's hard to figure out what's what.
No this is not $25 worth of content for free. $25 bundle give you ingame item, this does not.
You can play with computer to get use to the game. There are a lot of tutorial on youtube.
Leaver do get punish, they get put in a low priority match making pool, in which you get longer wait time, no exp(battle point), no item drop, and they only get match with other leaver. At low level, there are a lot of new leaver who are not in low priority yet as it's their first few game. As you lvl up you get match with better player.
It funny how Letrico said asian are bad player when the dota2 world champion are asian.
For what it's worth, I've told all my friends and family to move to China immediately or risk being killed in the 2020 global takeover.
@Spacenoodle
The DOTA beta is a marketed towards existing DOTA players who do not need a second introduction to the game.
If you have never played DOTA before, then it's likely the fanbase with which you are playing with are also much, much better than you, so it's often better to play single player against bots and get some familiarisation with the controls, items and heroes.
They have another 958 free keys up for grab at the time of this post. ^_^
Not really a bargain any more, the game is free, it was free and will always be free. All people who actually want to play it would probably have it by now.