Defense of the Ancients: Past and Present

The recent rise of the DotA community is an interesting example of how a mod can become more popular than the game from which it mutated. Think of DotA as the next Counter-Strike. DotA never erupted into popularity, but rather  infected vast swathes of the gamer populace in something like a zombie attack, without anyone really noticing, until their family members dined on their bodily fluids. But the numerous gamers who haven’t played Warcraft III (and subsequently haven’t heard of DotA) are probably wondering, “What’s the big deal, and why should I care?”

Even artistic painters enjoy DotA. Clearly, DotA is enjoyed by people from all walks of life.

Well, Defense of the Ancients (you need a copy of Warcraft III and its expansion: The Frozen Throne to play it) and its newly emerged spawn reveal a compelling and unique style of gameplay that lies somewhere between a team-oriented FPS and a strategy game, both jumbled up with some of those oh-so-wonderful RPG elements served as a sumptuous side-dish. Some, desperate for a name, have dubbed the gameplay MOBA, for Massive Online Battle Arena, which is something of a misnomer. Massive is hyperbole, and while DotA may have online battles in arenas, what online competitive game doesn’t? I prefer to utilize the term DotA to associate the games that are DotA-esque.

So where did this style of game come from? Is it a gift from omniscient aliens who feel the best way to disrupt the planets’ productivity is to turn us all into cursing idiots who can’t go a single sentence without calling someone a noob? If so, they’re brilliant, and I eagerly await my servitude with my new xenomorph overlords.

It started here, sorta.

On the other hand, if we thought DotA up ourselves (which is more likely), than we should probably look at its history, and exactly what it does so right, and where its filthy dirty offspring are going to differentiate themselves from dear ol’ pop. When something new appears and grabs a sizable portion of the gaming community (DotA estimates several million players with its competitive scene, outstripping Warcraft III’s), it’s in our best interests to give it a healthy and proper once-over.

DotA, when it sprouted wings, wasn’t a new style of gameplay. Rather, it was simply a variation on a theme that Warcraft III churned out for quite some time. The original gameplay type is loosely derived from a custom map in StarCraft, specifically: Aeon of Strife. AoS featured something pretty radical for StarCraft’s day— it gave you the choice of a few select units, told you an army was coming, and that you had to kill them all, with all the other players on your side. 3 to 5 humans against an unrelenting horde of Starcraft units.

You’d get cash for killing the hordes, and use it to power up your units. Pretty simple, but the thing is, it was brutally tough; you’d be lucky to last 5 minutes your first try. Push too fast and stronger units would spawn and kill you, go too slow and you’d be overwhelmed by little weak guys. But it was addictive getting your guy beefier (I favored the Zergling myself) only to have the poor sod dashed over and over again.

Then something happened; a precedent. Rather than fighting a faceless horde, you now fought other player’s special units, and both sides had armies that clashed. When Warcraft III came out, most of the StarCraft mapmakers shifted over to the new engine and its new possibilities. Warcraft III offered a substantially different opportunity, because Warcraft III had Heroes, units with attributes and skills that would increase as they gained experience.

Getting warmer…

Further, it had a rudimentary skill and unit editor so more variety was theoretically possible, although much of this was locked until the expansion came out, and removed most limits on custom maps/units/skins. As such before the launch of The Frozen Throne, we simply saw lots of recycled default heroes and skills in the competitive AoS template.

One of my early favorites was Rival Nations, which made 3 rival sides rather than merely 2. However, it only used Warcraft III’s basic hero units. There was another that let you choose a deity to play, where you began as a little peasant guy who transformed into a bigger more dangerous entity every 10 levels (with more skills and better stats), eventually turning into the God you originally chose.

As time progressed, some young gun who went by the name of Eul (real name unknown), released a map called Defense of the Ancients.  There wasn’t too much customization in it: pre-expansion custom map editing was quite limited. The original form bears little semblance to its current incarnation, beyond the basic map layout and objective. The heroes have all been replaced or extensively redesigned. The original game was best described as a clone, and there isn’t any good reason why it gained stature while other AoS clones didn’t. As luck often dictates, it just caught on with the right people who later changed everything about it.

We’re technically very cold. I blame Arthas for that.

Then came Frozen Throne, and sometime in 2003, following approximately 3000 crap-tastic tower defense maps released, Defense of the Ancients: Allstars emerged. Various other versions of DotA also surfaced around that time period, but Allstars, with its emphasis on overpowering heroes to counter other overpowered heroes, came out the victor. Perhaps the game that came closest to usurping Allstars was a totally separate map called Tides of Blood. It had awesome custom character skins, custom skills, unique items and no recipe system. But DotA eventually felled it like any other tree in the forest.

DotA: Allstars was developed by Steve “Guinsoo” Feak (remember that name), who promoted the idea that the Heroes should be all-powerful ethereal figures capable of crushing everything and everyone around them. At least the first versions took this stance. Roughly 2 years later, around the launch  of World of Warcraft, the same Allstars advanced to roughly the 6.xx era, with the appearance of Icefrog, the map’s current “developer” who took a stance that the game was good, but clearly lacked balance. And, in his mind, that balance meant the need to weaken heroes rather than just buffing up opponents.

Icefrog is an interesting figure. He’s never publicly revealed anything about himself, or how he was granted control of the map’s development. The best thing that can be said about him is that he listened to criticisms from all sides. Mostly,  he did this by following threads in the official forums at dota-allstars.com and currently at playdota.com. Through the ancillary advice of others, he patched the game accordingly by slowly updating the code for efficiencies, adding stabilities, and somehow bringing balance to a game that was widely considered to have far too many possible heroes.

These are the objectives, lose yours and you lose the game.
Sounds so simple.

In truth, the balance issue was a widely known fault against Allstars. The game was hilariously fun, but certain heroes were vastly more useful then others. Through Icefrog the map slowly transformed into a finely-tweaked and ever-evolving beast that began to play more to the strengths of teamwork and skill above simply using the best heroes in the game at that moment in time.

Fast-forward to today. The map is currently at version 6.67c, although it’s been patched literally 6 times since I started writing this. Icefrog still manages it, with numerous retail “clones” that copy the style to varying degrees.

In DotA, the objective is destroying “The Ancient” in the opposing teams’ base. Barring this are 3 groups of barracks that produce new units every 30 seconds, called creeps. Over time, more and more units spawn, and their strength increases chronologically as matches progress. Every 2 ½ minutes a siege unit is spawned. Each group of creeps follows a path that leads to an opposing team’s barracks. Along the path there are 3 friendly towers and 3 enemy towers to push through.

The map of DotA. Green = Ancients, Black = Barracks, Blue Lines are the 3 lanes, white are main tributaries through the neutral creeps and yellow and red lines are for hiding/“juking”

The map is roughly symmetrical, although each route has differing nooks and crannies. Think of it like your limbs: they’re basically the same, but you can pick out dozens of differences if you really examine them. The game is typically played in matches of 5v5, although smaller matches can occur (but much less frequently). DotA has many different modes, from “all pick” (anyone can pick any hero, sans duplicate choices), or “all random” (everyone gets a random hero). There’s also random draft, small draft, captain’s draft, mirror match, and short mode. Switching between the different modes, in concert with the 90+ heroes available, keeps everything from growing stale.

DotA:Allstars‘ heroes are largely divided into roughly 3 categories: strength, agility, and intelligence. These are the primary attributes of your hero. Strength heroes are usually tanks, since strength boosts health points. Agility typically goes to the hero killers since agility boosts attack speed and armor. Intelligence mongers are usually casters, since intelligence increases mana points. Of course, you can even further categorize all that into many more divisions, such as stealth, nuke, disabler, support, pusher, ganker etc. Heroes may have melee or ranged attacks (possibly both), and may learn 4 skills or invest in stat points as they level up.

Early game is a lot of jockeying for position. You’ll want to keep moving, and choose your attacks carefully, and go for those denies (Find the exclamation point in screenshot).

One of the most unique parts of DotA is that actively pushing forward in the early game is discouraged. Not following this tactic leaves you open to ganks – when enemy heroes surprise you, killing your own hero off for some valuable money and experience. This is where “denying” comes into play. “Denying” entails killing your own units to slow your advance, and thus “denying” the enemy heroes experience and gold.

A solid mid-game gank, bolstered by a little luck. Yeah the screen gets cluttered pretty easily.

Successfully denying is tricky, but really just comes down to understanding how to land the killing blow, because you only get gold when you make the lethal strike on a creep. On heroes, any damage dealt before their death will net you some coin for an assist.

But what does all that “DotA-talk” actually mean? It’s not complicated: you really just have to pay attention and be proactive about your clashes with the opposing team.

This is bad. You should not let your barracks be attacked. Ever.

Perhaps the greatest indicator of DotA’s success is that it’s actually spawning retail clones developed by professional studios. The first retail carbon-copy of DotA to land upon our fertile hard drives was Demigod, developed by Chris Taylor’s Gas Powered Games. The next clone to step up was League of Legends – the brain child of Allstars’ creator Steve “Guinsoo” Feak, developed at Riot Games. It’s free to play, with the option to purchase the ability to play a hero whenever you want. Perhaps the largest of the bunch is Heroes of Newerth, created by S2 games, best known for their Savage series. Last to the party is Icefrog’s unannounced game in development at Valve.

Demigod kept the idea of teams facing each other, but focused intensely on balance and highly strategic team play. With only 8 demigods available at launch, it’s added a few more as well as a veritable plethora of maps to choose from. It didn’t leave the docks well: at launch, Demigod was unplayable in anything past 3v3 due to networking issues and a general failure of the player base to actually play the game online.

“Abstract floating battlefields and godly figures battling over… something? Well its gotta be important, why else would they have built floating battlefields?”

The general lack of acumen required to play Demigod, in comparison to DotA, likely hurt the game’s re-playability (there’s no denying, most of Demigod’s skills don’t require predictive movements, and the maps are at best simplistic). It nevertheless had surprisingly decent consumption numbers. It broke 100,000 sales, and landed at #3 in NPD’s figures for April 12-18^th in 2009. Demigod revealed that the DotA audience was out there, waiting to throw their precious cash at DotA titles whenever the games materialized from the mists of the developer’s mountains.

While initial impressions might give the illusion that League of Legends is merely a straight DotA xerox, the game plays more like a logical branching point from the roots of DotA, with every hero—or champion, as they’re dubbed here—serving a few vital roles. League of Legends‘ careful, strategic, and skilled use of champions has produced a game that, while obvious in its connection to DotA, truly is a unique entry. A large number of the skills require good timing and precision to have an impact on battles, and teamwork is paramount to success. They also added matchmaking, increasing frustration among much of the player-base due the system often building lopsided teams. Riot also greatly simplified the item purchasing system to make it far easier to understand for new players.

I don’t even know what’s going on here, and I was playing the game at the time. League of Legends is just like DotA in that regard.

Heroes of Newerth is DotA. You can’t get around it – it’s a direct rip-off. The items are identical (barring name changes), the heroes are mostly exact copies (again barring name changes and the occasional slight skill alteration), and the map is a perfect replica of DotA’s. That said, the game adds a much-needed back-end that DotA lacks. Built-in stat tracking, reconnecting if you lose your data line, built in voice chat, and updated graphics (with true wide-screen support). If all you want is a contemporary DotA, then Heroes of Newerth is perfect, because it’s just that. Not surprisingly, because of this, Newerth appears the current heir-apparent to the original DotA, with at least 45,000 players online at anytime in its existing beta status.

And Icefrog’s project? All we know is that he’s got a dev team at Valve and he’s working on something that DotA fans will “allegedly” enjoy. That’s all, and given that it’s Valve, I doubt we’ll be hearing anything else until they’ve got something to show us.

So that’s it, everything you never wanted to know about DotA and its ilk. Now get it there and try it; you’ll only get insulted out of every match and berated for your every action in those you don’t.