Defense of the Ancients: Why aren't these guys getting paid?

What is DoTA:

For those of you who have never played this little gem, I suggest you look it up. DoTA, or Defense of the Ancients is a custom map for Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. You play as a single, unique, hero (either randomly generated, picked by you, or chosen via draft variant), and you and your team (up to four other players) attempt to take on an enemy team of equal number. There are three lanes that constantly spawn NPC "Creeps" for each team, as well as neutral creeps placed around the map. There is also one "Super" Creep placed roughly halfway between both teams. His name is Roshan, and he drops an item that pretty much gives you a free life.

The objective of the game is to drive your forces into the enemy base and ultimately destroy their "Ancient", killing enemy heroes, buildings, and creeps along the way. Overcoming these obstacles awards you with experience and higher levels (and thus more and better abilities) as well as gold which you use to purchase a wide variety of items to customize your character, and make him/her especially powerful.

I can honestly say no other "mod" has kept me entertained for so long, far longer, in fact, than Warcraft III itself did. All I can say is, wow... if you've never played, and have a copy of Warcraft III: Frozen Throne, go download it: here.

Why is DoTA so Amazing:

First of all, it's incredibly fun, and it's reminicent of of MMO PvP without the hassle of leveling a character over several weeks/months. So if you've only got 30-60 minutes, you can play a game of DoTA, and get out the door.

Secondly, for a custom map (indeed for most any game) it is incredibly well balanced. Some people might disagree with me here and that's fine. I've been playing a long time, but I don't play in the Pro Leagues (Yeah... they have those. Heck DoTA even has its own song), so, by all means, take what I say with a grain of salt.

Yes, there are some bad match-ups, but when you're playing 5v5 a lot of those discrepancies disappear. Yeah sometimes your team is lucky and you have characters that do well against your enemies, but if the other team is better than you, chances are they're going to win.

Why, you ask? Because skill (or should I say knowledge?) in this game is huge, and there's a lot to know and understand before you become truly skilled (please don't think I'm calling myself "truly skilled", really, there are some nasty players lurking out in cyberspace). First of all, every character has some means to overcome any enemy strategy. For example if your opponent is spamming you pretty hard with nukes and dots (generally being annoying as crap), you can level up stats instead of one of your core abilities (which increases your HP, amongst other things), or buy HP regeneration items to counter them.

That's something that's very interesting about DoTA. Items are, all at once, the great equalizer and the great divide. If you're going up against a lot of magic users, you can buy an item that reduces magic damage on you by 30% (That's huge!), and their magic attacks will be much less effective. If you're going up against a melee dps (High dmg, low hp) you can get an item which reflects melee damage back at the attacker. There are literally items for every situation. There's always something good to get, either to make you better, or to make your enemies less effective. VERY COOL!

The other side to items is, if a character is getting lots of money and his opponents aren't, he can become very broken, very quickly. A character can literally never take part in a huge fight the whole game, but just be killing neutral creeps in the woods, and come out a monstrous powerhouse towards the middle of the game. It's just something else to keep in mind. If a player is doing really well, you should try to kill him to slow his flow of money, it's a trade-off. Do I level in the woods and try to get broken, hoping my team can fend them off 4v5 or do I go and help out. It's all part of the strategy, and all part of what makes it fun.

Teamwork in DoTA is huge, another reason why I love to play. My roommates and I play together as often as we can, and you'd be amazed what even two co-ordinated people can do to the randos (legitimate word, I swear) on Battle.net. Get five of us in a game, on the same side, you'd better hope the other team is in vent together...

In my opinion, DoTA should be looked at as a model for all future PvP MMO's. Take whatever you can from this incredible game and turn it into something we all want to see. So far, I can see a pretty interesting correlation between DoTA and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and I use it a lot to explain to people how I think (and hope) WAR will be. Every time I use the DoTA example people seem to nod their heads and say, "Wow, that sounds like a lot of fun."

I can't help but agree.

Stormcrow