Dota 2's prolonged beta period is expected to come to an end soon, with Valve reportedly finally signalling a narrowing launch window for when the free-to-play title will open up and shed it's "invite only" training wheels.

PC Gamer reports comments from Valve's Erik Johnson confirming the game "will be formally released later this summer, prior to the International tournament in August.", with an email exchange with ValveTime corroborating that window.

The International 3 is the Valve-hosted eSports tournament taking place in Seattle from August 7 - 11 2013 with another massive prize pool up for grabs for Dota players.

Valve had previously suggested that Dota 2 would be released when it's character selection had reach parity with classic DotA, but as PC Gamer notes, they're still six or so short of that mark. However, with Abaddon and Legion Commander due to launch soon, that gap becomes rather trivial.

Should be good, hopefully it'll bring new players to the game. Though I think anyone who wanted to play the game already has a copy.

Can't wait for TI3. Was up last night watching Dreamhack Summer finals. Was f***ing awesome. The competitive scene for Dota2 is amazingly good. Especially given the games balance and design for competitive play.

Though I think anyone who wanted to play the game already has a copy.

Yes and no. It is certainly not hard to get a key, but its a barrier to entry that lots of people probably don't bother with, but when its a mater of just clicking 's***'s free, install' in Steam they may bother to check out what this DOTA thing is about. Also the legions of LoL players who might be vaguelly interested in trying out the other game may not bother to hunt down a key because they can just hit play on LoL.

I reckon the wait is also to iron out issues in the community and making the tutorial and bot play more solid and helpful before letting casual players on board. All the dev we're seeing at the moment is in player-made build guides, tutorials, player behaviour modification and bot AI. People who WANT to play can, but people who are just curious don't likely bother. Which is a good thing for the game because up until recently they'd probably immediately bounce and never return from their first match.

The pub match scene is improving though. Its getting to the point now where its almost a bearable experience to lose a game because of the threat of abuse reports and ragey players being muted.

11 short by my count.
http://www.playdota.com/heroes
http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Heroes

Seems to agree:
http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Unreleased_Content

Speaking of new players. I played a game on my spare DOTA2 account with 0 games played. Took much longer than usual to find a noobs only game. Pretty much everybody picked carry. PL went jungle and leveled his passive and stats and didnt get spell 1 til about mid-late game. The game dragged on and on and on and ended up with PL carrying us FTW with heart, rad, BoT n fat stacks of cash.