The popular Warcraft 3 mod is turning into a real game, LoL.
Defense of the Ancients is a whole other level of hardcore gaming. Which is why a whole load of people have never heard of it. Known affectionately as DotA, it is a map for Warcraft 3 that has become one of the biggest online PVP phenomena.
While ‘map’ is technically true, calling DotA as such is a huge injustice. It is a highly replayable scenario in which physical terrain matters little and play style matters a whole lot. In essence, a game of DotA involves your team pushing across a map against waves of incoming enemies. Your opponent is trying to get to your corner in a similar manner. You don’t control your minions, per se – instead, you choose one of over 100 heroes and use them to influence the tide of the battle.
These heroes play out much like in an RPG. Your aim is to level up, equip the right items, and then push for the win. It sounds simple, but knowing how to play the hero is one of the sources of ruthlessness that the DotA community has become known for. In essence, the gap between an experienced player and a noob has become intransigent.
In fact, for a perfect example of just how dickish the DotA community can be is this wonderful comments thread from Brad Wardell’s blog (Wardell is the CEO of Stardock software). Well worth a read, but in essence, players recount their experiences playing DotA building until a response from a DotA player that completely reinforces all the negative stereotypes outlined so far in the thread. Here is but a snippet of “dota player’s” unedited prose, in reference to why another poster was kicked from a game after attacking an enemy.
“in ur third game, the enemy gets money or gold from killing an opponent so probably having committed so much stupid decisions that ended in ur death caused the enemy to gain there proper item so quickly that ur teammates couldn’t no longer fight with the slightest chance of winning.”
Despite the obvious shortcomings of its player base, DotA is one of those rare mods that brings a unique twist to gameplay. So much so that game developers are starting to take notice. It feels very much like the early days of Counter-Strike, and the mind numbing proliferation of special forces-based multiplayer shooters that followed.
Most prominent is the Gas Powered Games and Stardock Software collaboration Demigod. This is unashamedly inspired by DotA (the blog post above was in reference to that very thing), and is in very rudimentary beta at the moment. It is penciled in for next year, and will come with a robust set of online community features thanks to Stardock’s online distribution system.
However, in that Counter-Strike analogy the only really successful title was Counter-Strike. Nobody could seem to capture the magic of the original, except the original developers. The fact that the game is still outrageously popular nearly ten years later is testament to that.
Which is why League of Legends (wonderfully shortened to LoL) is so damn intriguing. Developer Riot Games is the team responsible for DotA Allstars, the current version of the mod. Announced overnight, it is a standalone game that appears to take the essence of DotA and wrap it in a fuzzy cocoon of online persistence.
Riot is doing this by having each player control a ‘summoner’ character. This character doesn’t actually fight on-screen, rather, it controls champions (these are analogues of the heroes from DotA). Think of it as the summoner being the player’s way of progressing between games – the champions still only last as long as your current match.
A very interesting concept, and one that would be good to watch as it develops. If anything, the levelling of summoners and integrated online features will hopefully lead to a matchmaking system where noobs can play noobs and learn, while teh uber can pwn it up with their peers.
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