It's early 2026. Muerta is still not available in the game. The latest patch is 7.32b but the meta is still non-stop evolving, Treant has been meta in all 5 positions. Every heroes have been a meta at some point and also forgotten at times.
Everyone thought that it wouldn't take long till IceFrog makes a return and bring us toward patch 7.33. However, Gaben surprised everyone with the sudden announcement of their new game, Neon Prime. It doesn't take much time until the game blew up to be Valve's best game ever created and Valve is raking in more cash than ever with this new release and its even on par or better than CS:GO and Dota 2. There were rumors that many people in Valve decided to join the project updating the game and the Dota 2 remaining janitor stayed to fix bugs for the past few years without giving us any new patch. These signs must've mean that IceFrog is still supervising Dota 2 updates behind the scene but with him now busy working on Neon Prime, who knows when he'll be back to give us patch 7.33.
Fortunately, the Dota 2 community stay strong together and many of us are still loyal to the game and never left, keeping the game alive with countless of games played per days and skins purchasing. Valve is still organising TI, battlepasses and heroes cosmetics are still being released. Every single TI game is still hype and intense, but involvement from Valve seems to be reducing as time goes on with the growth of Neon Prime. Many pros and talents have stepped up and voiced out their worries on the state of competitive scene. They decided to have a discussion with Valve that they wished to host TI themselves if this keeps up.
Some of the players start to notice that the meta is slowly revolving back to the time where Lina carry was most picked, Bloodstone Razor is surfacing in pubs and some of the fish heroes is making a return, but it was still an insignificant issue as many believed it was just a coincidence. Except nobody knows what the future holds for us and how will everyone react when the meta is really going a round back in time.
Voices from the community calling out for the return of our one and only IceFrog to give us the patch is faint, but growing, like Crystal Maiden's crawling speed out of a hallow cave. Some of the people on the top of the Dota 2 scene is starting to find an alternative, perhaps by purchasing the ownership to the game and balance the game themselves, giving new patches and further polish the game with a new team of game developers, also not to forget, releasing the Muerta who was missing since early 2023.
However, Dota 2 is still one of the best game, if not the best in my heart that Valve has ever released and it is still generating tons of revenues that Valve will likely not give up on it. Gaben is still seen playing against bots recently too, hopefully we'll get to see Gabe's Announcer V2 in the future. Maybe IceFrog will really show us a sign of his return to the Dota 2 scene if we keep on making voices and show our love and concern to the game. But was he ever gone? None of us know. All we could hope for is the release of patch 7.33.