The history of DotA is a long and tragic (not really) tale involving spin-offs of spin-offs and other such intrigue. It all began with Aeon of Strife, a custom map for Starcraft where units would march down three lanes towards each other's bases, aided/hindered by player-controlled heroes on each side. When Warcraft 3 came out, a chap named Eul brought the AoS experience to WC3, and named it Defense of the Ancients (DotA). It caught on, and tons of DotA spin-offs with different heroes began to surface on Battlenet. To unite the madness, Guinsoo (now best known as the creator of LoL) created a map called DotA Allstars, which brought together everyone's favorite heroes in a single map. The bad part of this is that Guinsoo isn't/wasn't exactly the brightest when it came to balance, and the map was riddled with problems. Enter Icefrog, the man credited with creating DotA as we know it today. Icefrog took Guinsoo's map and toiled away at it for ages, eventually spawning a competitvely balanced map that caught on like wildfire, eventually easily surpassing WC3 itself in popularity, and establishing tournament scenes that live on to this day. Icefrog was later picked up by Valve, and they all eventually began work on DotA2, which we're about to see for the first time this week. DotA, and all of its spin-offs, feature a large variety of heroes to choose from. Two teams of 5 players each face off with eachother on a map with a base in the upper-right and lower-left corners. There are three lanes leading from base to base, each guarded by towers that attack the computer controller enemies (and heroes too!) that get too close. The goal of the game is to destroy the opposing team's base. What sounds like a simple goal is complicated by how radically different each of the 100+ heroes are. There's far too much to get in to here, but a basic idea of each hero (all of whom will be in DotA2) can be found here: http://www.playdota.com/heroes
What's going on, again?
This Wednesday, August the 17th, Valve is hosting a huge tournament at Gamescom. The prize is the largest for a single tournament in esports history, $1 million to the winning team alone. This tournament will be the first time the public sees DotA2, and all the best teams from the original DotA have been invited to compete. The tournament will run the length of Gamescom, beginning on Wednesday and running through Sunday the 21st.
Fantasy strategy game Dota 2 won't ship until 2012, Valve boss Gabe Newell has revealed.
Valve plans to launch an invitation beta after the Gamescom tournament ends. After that a public beta will launch. "And then we'll probably start worrying about how we'll monetise it," Newell told Eurogamer.
"We'll just go into progressively wider and wider distribution. I don't think it'll be shipped until next year."
Dota 2 was penned for launch this year.
"But then," Newell continued, "with a game like this, you just keep shipping. You add new heroes. You try out new game modes. You are constantly tweaking item and hero balance. It's very much an ongoing thing."
Dota 2 is the sequel to Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients, and is being developed by the reclusive IceFrog, one of a number of of modders who helped make Dota what it is.
While Dota 2 will be distributed through Valve's own platform, Steam, the firm is yet to decide on a business model.
"We don't have a plan," Newell said. "IceFrog has a bunch of testers he's worked with as long as he's been doing development. The first thing we've been working with is addressing their concerns. We've been through four or five different versions of the user interface, getting it to the point where we've addressed the feedback we've got from those guys.
"For us now, this tournament is a really good step. A bunch of the features we're building in the design of Dota 2 related to being able to put on a tournament like this. There's a bunch of stat stuff. There's a bunch of website development, support for simultaneous, four-language broadcasting.
"This was the next step."
Could Dota 2 end up going free-to-play, like Team Fortress 2? "We don't know. We don't have plans yet," Newell said. "The problem isn't to figure out what your monetisation strategy is. If you have something with a super careful monetisation strategy and it sucks, it doesn't matter.
"The most important thing is to do something that resonates well with the existing Dota players and creates a vehicle for new players to join into the community. That's the hard problem. That's the interesting one to solve."
-- GameFAQs isn't going to be merged in with GameSpot or any other site. We're not going to strip out the soul of the site. -CJayC
Oh yeah MYM got owned pretty bad Lack of carry (well Slardar was supposed to be) and Furion a carry wannabe was bad Also Tidehunter blinking away from Slardar just to stop to fight neutral creeps then Slardar catching up to him was so stupid
Gabe being cool as always. Doesn't really matter if the game's launch is delayed, the beta's still starting this year. Once the game's in public beta it might as well be out for all we care, and it might even be more fun to see it reach its final level of polish over the months.
UltimaterializerX posted... Furion is the worst or second worst hero in Dota. He does nothing more than steal farm from the heroes that actually need it, his "stun" is fully countered by a 200 gold item, and the trees are free gold for any enemy hero with aoe.
So his only good move is the global teleport.
No way dude. Furion was nerfed big time by the introduction of the Quelling Blade yeah, but his teleport single-handedly makes him an amazing hero.
-- GameFAQs isn't going to be merged in with GameSpot or any other site. We're not going to strip out the soul of the site. -CJayC
Also, I seriously hope they've re-worked the creep AI. I remember when I used to use Sprout on creeps to block them, and they'd often get stuck in the lane. I also wonder how they'll address Earthshaker using Fissue to block creeps at the start of the game.
-- GameFAQs isn't going to be merged in with GameSpot or any other site. We're not going to strip out the soul of the site. -CJayC
Replays went up pretty darn fast today! Glad to see the very first match of the tournament still hasn't been hosted, I'd hate for anyone to watch just that and get the wrong idea. This tourney's been pretty damn solid barring that one match. Very good first showing for the game, and we haven't even reached the semis yet!
I didn't know Zeus had been used! Would you happen to know which match it was? Need to watch that one. Pretty good hero spread, everyone's been used or banned at least once besides Axe and Pudge. Kinda sad we aren't seeing any Pudge action yet, but I guess the event is less than half over.
Top left in Dire Str...I think it is Axe anyway...
About Furion-I never was afraid of him before 6.72,he was pretty meh In 6.72 he was buffed to be the strongest pusher in the game - Wrath of Nature bounce count improved from 12/14/16 (14/16/18 w/Scepter) to 16 (18/Scepter) From level 6,he is 25% better farmer,25% better harrasser,25% better pusher This is just crazy,every game with Furion since 6.72 was my team fighting against 3 lanes that are endlessly pushing when the enemy team is only pushing from mid And Furion is already farmed like hell
About the farm stealing-KotL is worse in this regard,being able to kill an entire wave with a spammable nuke and he doesn't benefit much from items
*edit* I misread your post at first. The changes they made to him made him my favorite character in the game. I don't know how other people play KotL, but I feel like he's been played wrong what I've read. Everything about him is good. What I do is rush boots of travel and from there, it's whatever. If you do decide to steal all the farm with him, you can rush a Dagon 5 (yeah, I don't recommend this but it's hilarious and somewhat viable with him).
Every single skill KotL has is great. A great nuke. Mana Leak which stuns (seriously amazing), Chakra (level this and just follow Tiny around and watch everyone die, or feed ES Fissure), a solid teleport, and a great AOE blinding/push skill as well as a pretty good teleport for allies.
Try using his ult, setting up Illuminate in the woods, and distracting opponents. I absolutely love KotL.
-- GameFAQs isn't going to be merged in with GameSpot or any other site. We're not going to strip out the soul of the site. -CJayC
He also has really high movement speed. I love getting Boots of Travel + a Manta, or Euls, or both. Manta is good on him for pushing, defending, helping him escape, and giving him the extra MS from the Yasha. Euls is pretty much the same thing, with a bonus disable.
I realize I play much differently than most people. Typically I like to build certain ways. I have my max movement speed build, my max armor builds, my max DPS builds, max disable builds, etc.
-- GameFAQs isn't going to be merged in with GameSpot or any other site. We're not going to strip out the soul of the site. -CJayC
So the results aren't up for day 2 right? I just checked out the bracket and I see two teams from China, Singapore, and Ukraine are all in the Semifinals. The Ukraine team (Na'Vi) was the one that I thought played well (I only actually watched like 4 games, all the first day) excluding the PotM that really didn't do anything (I think it was the same game).
-- GameFAQs isn't going to be merged in with GameSpot or any other site. We're not going to strip out the soul of the site. -CJayC
Let's see, farmed and unkillable Morphling. No surprise... Pushed the **** out of lanes and just annoyed the hell out of the Dire.
Then Clockwork decides to steal the Aegis for **** and giggles or something because it was obvious when the two melee racks were down the loss was inevitable.
I wish more of the matches would happen at decent hours so that we could get some serious hype/discussion going. I guess replays are good too, just without the hype of something occurring live. >_>