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[Foadon]

DOTAPICKUP, AN ONLINE GAMING COMMUNITY
So you have decided you want to be part of the community that is DotaPickup. You got tired of games with people flaming, showing poor manners, and when things dind't go their way, simply quit. So you wanted something more. DotaPickup is just the thing you need.
Dotapickup is a friendly,open and supervised community built around the Warcraft III : TFT custom map Defense of the Ancients, or in short, DotA. You can find the map to play DotA here.
It brings people together as a gateway of playing a game at any time in the day or night, without having to look for proper players yourself. In here, if you want to play, you will get to play.

THE VISION OF DOTAPICKUP

"What is DotaPickup"

At DotaPickup we attempt to create a friendly, mannered, open yet somewhat competitive atmosphere where those interested in a more sophisticated experience can play their beloved game without the downsides of public games.
We offer a mix of gameplay styles ranging from casual playing with friends on the popular gamemodes, to taking it a step further and bringing balanced teamplay-focused games and climbing the charts at becoming a better player. On occasion there are even tournaments created to make things even more special as you play your favorite game.

"Admincrew of DotaPickup"

Maintaining this community is not an easy task, and as such a team of dedicated volunteers tries to uphold the high standards of communication and sportsmanship by enforcing rules, improving ideas, and listening to the people. They are known as the admins and tech crew. You can find a list of our past and current team at the Staff page.
When you have a problem, these people will do their best to help you.

"Trusted Players of DotaPickup"

Next to the admincrew are also a number of players who have desired a wish to involve more into the development of DotaPickup, while still keeping their distance from completely taking on the responsibilities of admins.
These players are categorized as Trusted Players, a concept developed by DotaPickup to further improve the quality of play, to help users inside games, and outside, ready to assist in matters and questions.
To see who these players are you can look at the TP list or in our new DP utility, along with reading their threads how and why they wanted to become Trusted Players.

THE CHANNELS OF DP

• #dotapickup.euro
  
  Info

  • Our main channel. This is where the DotaPickup idea was born. A channel full of players adding to games with the help of a bot to facilitate the process. When you join our community, this will be the first stop for you to play at.

• #dotapickup.xp
  
  Info

  • After experiencing how things work at dotapickup, you may or may not want to take it up a notch. For those players seeking a higher level of gameplay, we created a different channel, where players reside who have already proven that they follow the rules laid down and show motivation to get the best playing experience possible. This channel houses a ranking system along with a more advanced balancing system for even closer games.
• #dotapickup.help
  
  Info

  • A channel made to help people who are having trouble finding their way around DotaPickup. If you have a problem, you can join this channel at any time and ask around to see if other users may have an answer for it. Remember that it is not just admins that are able to help you, but that a community always consists of people wanting to help others, so you will find that anyone being in the channel can have the answer you need, and that asking your question there is your best bet at fixing your problem.
  • DO NOT join the channel to query admins unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary, reasons such as pasting your forumthread url are not valid reasons for queries. Post them in the channel and any admin that has time will see it. Querying multiple admins with the same link can cause irritation and is to be avoided.

ENTERING THE COMMUNITY OF DPBefore you are able to enjoy the qualities and advantages of DotaPickup, there are certain steps that must be gone through to ensure both the quality for you and for every other player.
These steps involve registering on the forum, creating a unique account on IRC ( a program used to set up our games), and validating yourself as a unique user in our community.
These steps are also explained in our new utility ZeTool,so if something is not clear, you will find additional information there.
Follow the steps on the link to install the tool and view them there.

As long as you have not validated your account, you cannot be accepted into DotaPickup. You can find the information on how to validate yourself in this post. If you don't know whether you have been correctly validated or not, you can check your profile and look for a "Validated:" field, if you have a green checkmark, you are set.

STEPS FROM START TO FINISH

"Visual Representation of how things will work"

"Step 0.Rules"

• Before you start anything, realise that not everyone may want to obide by the rules set by admins and the community about playing, acting and interacting with others. If you want to play here, closely read our rules and make sure you understand them.
  You can find them on the Rules page.

"Step 1.IRC & Qauth creation, joining channel"

• For a basic guide on how to use irc, read http://www.dotapickup.com/forum/index.php?page=32
• When you fill in the details for your IRC client, please make sure you take some time on them, full name and email adress do not need to be real, but please fill in something that will be somewhat unique (for example like your nick +some numbers if u dont have a unique nick already). Not having unique settings will cause problems for you somewhere down the road and by making sure it is set up properly from the start it will save you time in the end.
• Don't choose a nickname you will regret later on. We also do not allow any form of offensive or racism-related nicknames. Your nickname is the first impression we get from you, you want to make it a good instead of a bad one.

• Use IRC to connect to the quakenet server. Register your nickname with their service and receive your unique Qauth.
  Once you have a Qauth, authenticate yourself on the server. To check if you did this correctly, you can /whois <yournickname> and look for the “<yournick> is authed as <yourauth>”.
  When you have authed, join the dp euro channel by typing /join #dotapickup.euro.
  You will notice that you will be kicked by the bot with a message stating you are not accepted yet or you are not a member yet.
  This is completely normal and is required in order to register on the forum.
  MAKE SURE that you do not use any kind of service that masks your hostname and prevents us from seeing your hostname.
  This includes the quakenet hidden host feature, any bnc provider, and some webIRC clients.
  ALSO MAKE SURE you save the information of your Qauth because you will need to use this information every time you wish to join our channel.

"Step 2.Forum registration"

• Go to the site and choose to register on the forum.Fill in the fields and click register. Afterwards, click on the Forum button.You will be asked what your Qauth is. Type your exact Qauth into the box. If there is a problem, you have likely not joined the channel yet or typed in the wrong Qauth name.

"Step 3.Profile & DPAuthkey"

• Go to your profile on the forum by clicking on the menu tab on top of the site and look for an Authkey field, this will look like a set of randomly uniquely generated letters and digits. You will need this to fill into ZeTool later, so make sure you can copy and paste it.

"Step 4.ZeTool & Validation"

• Open ZeTool and choose to start the Validate Account Window. Fill in all the fields correctly, and read the information noted down beside them. When all the information is filled in, press Validate.
  You will see a progress window come up stating the parts of the validation being processed.
  If you have a problem during the validation, double-check your info, or go to our help channel on IRC called #dotapickup.help .
  When you get a message saying your account has been validated, you are one step closer to the finish.

"Step 5.Making a New User Request Thread"

• Go back to the forum, and enter the New User Request section (where you read this post). Click the button “new topic” on the top right corner to create your new user request. You have to name your thread "New User <Day>/<Month>", so if you are making your thread on the 1st of January, your thread should be named "New User 01/01"
  The correct syntax for making a new user request is as follows (you can copy this format to make it easier for us and for yourself).
  
  • 1. Your IRC & INGAME NICK - Stick to the one you write here! As long as you play on pickup! Or keep it very similar in the future. This nick should be very similar to the name you use INGAME, so people can see who you are.Changing nick = more problems = less games for you.
  • 2. Your QAUTH (Q account NAME - don't include your password and do not give your password to anyone if you want your account to remain secure.)
  • 3. People you know that play here – If you have friends playing here, you may ask them to vouch for you to speed up the acceptation process.
• Note: If you have friends and they do vouch for you, they should do so by clicking the green up-arrow next to your post, they will be asked to provide a reason and afterwards you will see the amount of vouches you have. Tell them they should not post in your thread unless it is absolutely necessary as this can confuse things for the handling admin.
• After all this is done, simply Wait until an admin approves your request, you may bump your thread once a day by posting into it to bring it to the front of the list. To make sure you find your thread easily among the other threads, bookmark it so you can directly go to it.
  This also shows us that you are serious about wanting an account here and that you can follow simple steps.
• DO NOT join the help channel to query admins unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary, reasons such as pasting your forumthread url are not valid reasons for queries. Post them in the channel and any admin that has time will see it. Querying multiple admins with the same link can cause irritation and is to be avoided.

"Step 6.Joining channel & Bot manuals"

• Once your request has been approved, your thread will be moved to the Accepted section and you are ready to join our channel. Remember that you will always be required to use your Qauth so log in to it before you join.
  Now you should read through our bot manual to see how you can add to games, and to make sure you do it correctly. You can find out how our signup bots work by reading the threads of Sena(our main bot) and Roshan(our backup bot).
  Once you know how to add/remove/standin to games, you are set to go for your first game.

"Step 7.Joining the game & moving to spot"

• After adding, wait until enough players are added for the current game. The bot will present the gamelist and state the name used for the game .
  From this point you have a timeperiod of 5minutes to get into the game, but to reduce waiting time for you and other players, it is best you join the game as soon as possible.
  In battle.net you can go to CUSTOM GAMES, and type in the gamename. If the game has been created, you will join the game lobby and if needed, move to your correct spot (the bot creates teams randomly to make sure there are no imbalanced formings of player combinations that did not add as a stack.

USEFUL LINKS

• Banrequests section
  
  • If you see a player breaking the rules or leaving a game, you have the right to banrequest him for his actions. For most standard bans the system used on IRC is greatly preferred, the forum can be used to make banrequests that require more information, or to sum up multiple actions by the player. For more info on how to use correct evidence, consult the rules page.
• Unbanrequests section
  
  • If you at any time get banned for disconnecting from a game or breaking a rule, this is the place to create a thread and present your case to request an unban. If we see you put effort into proving your disconnect was not intended, we will look at the situation and act accordingly, it's important to remember to always take the most evidence to support your unbanrequest, like a screenshot of your disconnect message. This allows us to see you did not simply quit the game. If you wish to notify admins of the new thread on the forums you are allowed to post the link of your thread on #dotapickup.help, but DO NOT query admins for it as it is likely to not help in any way towards a quicker unban.
• Making suggestions to DotaPickup
  
  • We always want to evolve in DotaPickup and one way to do that is by listening to the community. If you have a nice idea or suggestion on what things can be improved around here, post your idea for others to read and perhaps agree with and maybe some day you will see your idea put together by the team behind DotaPickup.
• ZeTool
  
  • Our specifically made utility to improve everything involving DotaPickup and DotA, has multiple uses such as replay parsing, screenshot conversion & uploading, and most important of all, increased security for your account to protect you. This utility will become a bigger part of DotaPickup as time passes, allowing for a much more interesting experience.
• Hero & Gameplay Guides
  
  • If you are unsure how a hero is played or how you should build a hero to function properly you can look through some guides posted by members sharing their views, the Gold Guide section offers quality guides with a nice presentation and explenation of everything.
• The XP Channel
  
  • If at some point you feel like you have gained enough knowledge of DotA and want to take it a level up, you can take a look at the XP channel. This channel is used for a more serious approach to the game, with maintaining your own xp points and a ranking ladder to see how well you do compared to the rest. This channel is open to players with over 500 games, or if you want to join earlier you can apply for an early XP invite. Remember that since this channel is at a higher level that the rules will also differ from the normal .euro games.

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[Foadon]

For those who might not see it (first of all, get new glasses then) the main thing that has been added as a step is the ZeTool validation, 90% of the chance you were told to follow new sticky = you forgot to do this step