It's never late to play PC games. They are fun, enterntaining and a great way to relax in your free time. If for you're interested in joining the DotA community, here are some main places you might want to consider visiting:
1. http://www.playdota.com/ - the blog IceFrog uses to be in touch with the community.
2. http://www.getdota.com/ - the official webpage for downloading DotA
3. http://www.youtube.com/user/WoDotA - the biggest youtube channel devoted to DotA (you can see some pro moves in the videos)
4.http://intl.garena.com/ - Garena's website, from which you can get the installer that would allow you to play online even if you don't posses an original copy of Warcraft 3.
As mentioned in the previous post you will definately need Warcraft 3 ROC and its expansion - The Frozen Throne in order to be able to launch DotA. You can get it from the official site of Blizzard or from you favorite torrent tracker (note that if you don't posses an original copy of the game, you cannot play on Blizzards severs).
That's from me! You won't hear more from me in this blog, but maybe some day we can stay shoulder by shoulder, waiting for the enemy team to come!
Friday, December 9, 2011
DotA in the world of computer games
In this post I'll talk a bit about the history of DotA, the impact of its emergence and it's future.
There's a dispute when and where exactly DotA originated. I don't intend to take sides, so the only person I'm going to give credit is the current developer - a person known as IceFrog. There are a whole bunch of people before him, but IceFrog is not only the one who have worked most on the development (he's an author of approximately 70 versions), but he's the one under who DotA emerged as the most successful Warcraft 3 mode. That's right - DotA is not a separate game, but a modification of Blizzard's famous Warcraft 3 (the predecessor of World of Warcraft). If a person want's to play DotA he has to install Warcraft 3 and load DotA through it. There exists thousands modifications of Warcraft 3, created by different developers, but is the last years 95% of the people who play Warcraft 3 do it to play DotA. Currently DotA is the only reason Warcraft hasn't fallen in oblivion and still receives support from Blizzard (like Blizzard is still maintaining the servers that people use to play online with each other, instead of using them for World of Warcraft for example).
Just for a few years DotA has turned from "just another weird game, played by the geeks" into a worldwide phenomenon. It's by far the most popular modification of any game in the world. It has millions of fans, the majority of which play from China, The Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and Russia but there are also substantial amount of players from Europe and the US. It is played locally (the people who play with each other, sit next to each-other), nationally (for example China has huge domestic servers due to the large amount of Chinese DotA fans) and internationally. Blizzard's system of servers called Battle.net is only one of the options you can choose from if you want to play a game with people from Timbuktu, Vietnam, Canada and Norway at the same time; the servers of Garena (another online gaming platform) are currently used by the majority of international DotA players, due to overall better gaming experience (plus the fact that Garena is for free).
The popularity of the DotA and the originality of the gameplay make some people claim that DotA is an establisher of a new ganre of PC games. The idea of DotA has inspired the emergence of a couple of games, the most successful one of which is League of Legends, which won a lot of prices, including the best free-to-play game of the year in 2011. Also, Valve (major video game producer) contacted IceFrog in 2010 and hired him to lead a team that would produce an entire separate game called Dota 2. In this way DotA will become independent from Warcraft and Blizzard and will have the chance to evolve in more freely. It is a big moment for the whole DotA community - Dota 2 might lead into the world of the games of this ganre, but it can also be it's epic and ridicilously expensive downfall. Nobody knows weather DotA will contunie to grow, or weather it has reaceh its peak and will finally step down from the PC gaming scene, leaving the future of the ganre in the hands of Riot Games (the developer of League of Legends).
There's a dispute when and where exactly DotA originated. I don't intend to take sides, so the only person I'm going to give credit is the current developer - a person known as IceFrog. There are a whole bunch of people before him, but IceFrog is not only the one who have worked most on the development (he's an author of approximately 70 versions), but he's the one under who DotA emerged as the most successful Warcraft 3 mode. That's right - DotA is not a separate game, but a modification of Blizzard's famous Warcraft 3 (the predecessor of World of Warcraft). If a person want's to play DotA he has to install Warcraft 3 and load DotA through it. There exists thousands modifications of Warcraft 3, created by different developers, but is the last years 95% of the people who play Warcraft 3 do it to play DotA. Currently DotA is the only reason Warcraft hasn't fallen in oblivion and still receives support from Blizzard (like Blizzard is still maintaining the servers that people use to play online with each other, instead of using them for World of Warcraft for example).
Just for a few years DotA has turned from "just another weird game, played by the geeks" into a worldwide phenomenon. It's by far the most popular modification of any game in the world. It has millions of fans, the majority of which play from China, The Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and Russia but there are also substantial amount of players from Europe and the US. It is played locally (the people who play with each other, sit next to each-other), nationally (for example China has huge domestic servers due to the large amount of Chinese DotA fans) and internationally. Blizzard's system of servers called Battle.net is only one of the options you can choose from if you want to play a game with people from Timbuktu, Vietnam, Canada and Norway at the same time; the servers of Garena (another online gaming platform) are currently used by the majority of international DotA players, due to overall better gaming experience (plus the fact that Garena is for free).
The popularity of the DotA and the originality of the gameplay make some people claim that DotA is an establisher of a new ganre of PC games. The idea of DotA has inspired the emergence of a couple of games, the most successful one of which is League of Legends, which won a lot of prices, including the best free-to-play game of the year in 2011. Also, Valve (major video game producer) contacted IceFrog in 2010 and hired him to lead a team that would produce an entire separate game called Dota 2. In this way DotA will become independent from Warcraft and Blizzard and will have the chance to evolve in more freely. It is a big moment for the whole DotA community - Dota 2 might lead into the world of the games of this ganre, but it can also be it's epic and ridicilously expensive downfall. Nobody knows weather DotA will contunie to grow, or weather it has reaceh its peak and will finally step down from the PC gaming scene, leaving the future of the ganre in the hands of Riot Games (the developer of League of Legends).
Thursday, December 8, 2011
The Art of Ruining Games: Leavers
As I was thinking about what a good DotA game really is, I realized that every game is a good game by default, unless someone spoils it. It's true that some games are more interesting than others, but overall DotA is entertaining all by itself, so I don't usually need anything special to happen in the game in order to have fun playing it. However, there's this group of people, who are sad and miserable in real life and whos only emotional outlet are computer games. These people are known as leavers and without me introducing them, you just won't get a complete picture of the gaming environment.
As the name suggests and as you have probably figgured out, a leaver is just a person who leaves the game before its end. Since in DotA reconnection to the game is impossible once it has started, any premature quit means that one of the teams is left with fewer players than the other one. As I already mentioned earlier, DotA is a very team-oriented game and every player in the team has a role and thus functions in a specific way that contributes to the overall performance for the team. If one of the players leaves, each one of his ex teammates has to adopt some of his functions to fill the gap. With only one leaver and appropriate hero choice this is quite possible. (Note that some heroes are not that flexible and cannot play certain roles well) However, if the leavers become two or your teammates refuse to adapt to the new circumstances the game becomes disbalanced and the enemy team can easily crush you and win.
Now, I'm trying to be tolerant as much as I can. I completely understand that sometimes the game goes bad, and if the player has a bad day already, it's just too much to keep playing - it's neighter entertaining nor fun; it happens to everybody from time to time. In this situation you just apologize, leave and look for something else to do (maybe listening to some music). However, the people I'm refering to usually join another game after they leave the current one (perhaps just to ruin the 2nd one too?) They ruin game after game causing dosens of people to curse and don't even give a shit! This being said, I hope that it's pretty clear that the so called leaver attitude is the plague in DotA. It's observed in more than 50% of the public games and it often ruins the game. That's the greatest advantage of playing with friends - you know you can rely on each-other even if the things get hard.
Here's a short video made by a DotA fan that shows his personal attitude towards the leavers. Hope more leavers see it and realize that leaving might have real and scary consequances if done in the wrong game. ;)
As the name suggests and as you have probably figgured out, a leaver is just a person who leaves the game before its end. Since in DotA reconnection to the game is impossible once it has started, any premature quit means that one of the teams is left with fewer players than the other one. As I already mentioned earlier, DotA is a very team-oriented game and every player in the team has a role and thus functions in a specific way that contributes to the overall performance for the team. If one of the players leaves, each one of his ex teammates has to adopt some of his functions to fill the gap. With only one leaver and appropriate hero choice this is quite possible. (Note that some heroes are not that flexible and cannot play certain roles well) However, if the leavers become two or your teammates refuse to adapt to the new circumstances the game becomes disbalanced and the enemy team can easily crush you and win.
Now, I'm trying to be tolerant as much as I can. I completely understand that sometimes the game goes bad, and if the player has a bad day already, it's just too much to keep playing - it's neighter entertaining nor fun; it happens to everybody from time to time. In this situation you just apologize, leave and look for something else to do (maybe listening to some music). However, the people I'm refering to usually join another game after they leave the current one (perhaps just to ruin the 2nd one too?) They ruin game after game causing dosens of people to curse and don't even give a shit! This being said, I hope that it's pretty clear that the so called leaver attitude is the plague in DotA. It's observed in more than 50% of the public games and it often ruins the game. That's the greatest advantage of playing with friends - you know you can rely on each-other even if the things get hard.
Here's a short video made by a DotA fan that shows his personal attitude towards the leavers. Hope more leavers see it and realize that leaving might have real and scary consequances if done in the wrong game. ;)
An illustration of what I mean when using the term game inasanity.
I just couldn't resist but throw that in. For the ones who don't know what's actually going on in the game (I know you're there!), in this video, one of the players (the scorpion) was about to kill the entire enemy team, but his teammate (the Siren) made them all immortal, by using his ultimate spell. I personally rate the magnitude of this stupidity 9.4/10, but everyone's different.
P.S. Siren does that twise!
P.S. Siren does that twise!
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Do you have more brain than a raisin? You're in! (No buffalos allowed!)
Now it might sound a bit rude, but I believe that DotA is just not for everybody. Some people simply don't get how the game works even after playing it for a while. You might now say "Hey, this dude just needs more time than the average player to learn!", but that's not the case I'm refering to. I'm talking about the people who are ultimately incapable to improve. These people make the same mistakes over and over again in the same game and so no matter what happens they leave the game without taking any note of what happened. As Einstein puts it, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I'm not a specialist, but I really think that introducing the medical term gamer insanity is very appropriate and if anybody ever decides to scan the brain of a game insane person, I’m sure he’ll find significant structural anomalies.
Anyway, my point is that these people should be aware of their condition and just look for another hobby (perhaps one of the countless shooter games). Not doing so is just painful for the whole DotA society. Playing with someone that is not only not helping but is constantly in the way of the team can drive a lot of people crazy.
One last thing - if you're a buffalo and you're reading this PLEASE don't try to play without shaving your facial hair first. The lack of vision is a serious problem in the game! This video proves my point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O33xIhFPvlw
Sunday, October 30, 2011
The struggle for domination
Despite the fact I've spent most of the last month in doing boring stuff like homework or more exciting ones like going out with friends, I definately managed to spend a couple of hours eating chips and drinking soda with one hand and trying to play DotA with the other one. The first thing that hit me (if I don't count the yells of the type "What the f**k are you doing? Are you masturbating while playing?") is the willingness of over 90% of the players to do what it takes to get the maximum amount of kills and the lowest possible amount of deaths. The motto of the avarage DotA gamer today is "Stay alive as long as you can, and kill as many as you can."
While this is probably a good model of behaviour for a begginner player, DotA is a way more sophisticated game and this way of playing it just doesn't apply to higher levels of gameplay. A person with avarage intelligence needs to play just a few games to realize that cooperation between the players is far more important than competition. For optimal performance of the team, each player plays a certain role in the game and this role determines his playing style, the share of gold he gets, the share of XP points he gets, the type of items he buys and even the number of times he dies. I may get into detail about some of these roles in later posts, but what I want to emphasize here is that the avarage DotA player doesn't seem to care what his role is; on the contrary - everybody plays their own game with the idea that they're the most important person in the team and so they're obligated to kill as much as they can and thus gaining as much gold as they can.
That being said, it's no wonder that a regular DotA public game (i.e. non-professional) looks like a mishmash. Everybody's running around, trying to get one or more of the enemy players. Team fights do not serve any higher purpose, but are viewed as a whorehouse - you go, you get something that's easy to get and you leave, not caring what you leave behind. No wonder that i like eating while playing such a game. I just don't ruin anything good.
While this is probably a good model of behaviour for a begginner player, DotA is a way more sophisticated game and this way of playing it just doesn't apply to higher levels of gameplay. A person with avarage intelligence needs to play just a few games to realize that cooperation between the players is far more important than competition. For optimal performance of the team, each player plays a certain role in the game and this role determines his playing style, the share of gold he gets, the share of XP points he gets, the type of items he buys and even the number of times he dies. I may get into detail about some of these roles in later posts, but what I want to emphasize here is that the avarage DotA player doesn't seem to care what his role is; on the contrary - everybody plays their own game with the idea that they're the most important person in the team and so they're obligated to kill as much as they can and thus gaining as much gold as they can.
That being said, it's no wonder that a regular DotA public game (i.e. non-professional) looks like a mishmash. Everybody's running around, trying to get one or more of the enemy players. Team fights do not serve any higher purpose, but are viewed as a whorehouse - you go, you get something that's easy to get and you leave, not caring what you leave behind. No wonder that i like eating while playing such a game. I just don't ruin anything good.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Back to the good old DotA
Although some of you may say that simply there isn't an ex-dota player (and maybe they are right), it's a fact that it's been a while since the last time I played. There's just too much going on in college, so I don't have a few hours to spend in onwning noobs. However, no metter what my new priorities are, I can't help but smile while recalling precious memories of hundreds of hours spent with my friends, playing this remarkable game. The upset groans of the team that just got owned; the happy yells of the people who are winning an impossible game; the angry shouts of some blamers, passionately explaining the noobs what did they do wrong and most of all the huge amount of laughter which inevitably followed every ridicilous situation. Whoever said that good memories are worth more than gold, he was right.
So how did I end up giving up such a favorite game? One reason, as I said above, is just the lack of time. Some of you may be satisfied with an hour or two playing, but if I decide to play I usually end up spending 4+ hours in Garena. The main reason for that is that I almost never leave the server after a loss (imagine how worse the situation is in a bad gaming day, when I get my ass kicked almost every game). Thus, playing DotA means less time studying and less time with real life friends, which will damage my GPA and social life. (Good enough reasons for me huh?) Guess what? THEY ARE NOT! The main reason I don't play is that I currently don't have a mouse for my laptop and so it's just impossible to play and be anything more than the most pathetic player online.
Anyway, why did I title this post "Back to the good old DotA" if I don't intend to play it anyomore? You guessd right. I will play! As soon as I can, I'll go to the nearest tech center and I'll buy the best gaming mouse with all those extra buttons and fancy lights! Now I hear half of you saying "Hell yeah!" and the other half "This boy's gonna fail in life...". To the first half I'm gonna say "Keep it up boys! Soon I'll be back and the we're gonna kick some ass!", for the rest of you I can say this: "My comeback is not for the own sake of wasting my time online. Actually my time in the servers of Garena will not be just a fun time, but it will also be a time for making observations and gathering information. This information will be the material that's going to feed this blog, which is a part of my English 105 class. My goal is to examine the online DotA world and share my observations with you."
P.S. Last time I bought a mouse, I couldn't plug it in because it had different plug. :/ Hope I won't do anything similar again.
So how did I end up giving up such a favorite game? One reason, as I said above, is just the lack of time. Some of you may be satisfied with an hour or two playing, but if I decide to play I usually end up spending 4+ hours in Garena. The main reason for that is that I almost never leave the server after a loss (imagine how worse the situation is in a bad gaming day, when I get my ass kicked almost every game). Thus, playing DotA means less time studying and less time with real life friends, which will damage my GPA and social life. (Good enough reasons for me huh?) Guess what? THEY ARE NOT! The main reason I don't play is that I currently don't have a mouse for my laptop and so it's just impossible to play and be anything more than the most pathetic player online.
Anyway, why did I title this post "Back to the good old DotA" if I don't intend to play it anyomore? You guessd right. I will play! As soon as I can, I'll go to the nearest tech center and I'll buy the best gaming mouse with all those extra buttons and fancy lights! Now I hear half of you saying "Hell yeah!" and the other half "This boy's gonna fail in life...". To the first half I'm gonna say "Keep it up boys! Soon I'll be back and the we're gonna kick some ass!", for the rest of you I can say this: "My comeback is not for the own sake of wasting my time online. Actually my time in the servers of Garena will not be just a fun time, but it will also be a time for making observations and gathering information. This information will be the material that's going to feed this blog, which is a part of my English 105 class. My goal is to examine the online DotA world and share my observations with you."
P.S. Last time I bought a mouse, I couldn't plug it in because it had different plug. :/ Hope I won't do anything similar again.
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