What is this Dota you speak of?
Defense of the Ancents was originally created in Warcraft 3 by the mapmaker Eul, and was based off of the Starcraft custom game Aeon of Strife. When WC3: The Frozen Throne was released Eul stopped updating the map, which then caused a flood of different varients to appear across battle.net. Among them was DotA Allstars, which was created by Guinsoo, which became main version that we have today. During Guinsoos time, Pendragon came along and made dota-allstars.com in reponse to the need for a main dedicated website for the growing community. With version 6.01, Guinsoo passed authorship off to Icefrog, who started adding new heroes, items, mechanics and fixes, and still runs the game to this day.
Guinsoo and Pendragon would later go on to work at Riot and help create League of Legends, while Icefrog and Eul would go on to work at Valve and are now working on Dota 2.
Dota 2 is the sequel to that popular Warcraft 3 custom game that has since spawned an entire genre with the likes of League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. If you have played either of those games then you have a basic idea of how things work.
Gameplay remains true to the original Dota, but takes advantage of everything the source engine and Steam have to offer. Besides better graphics, this means things like reconnecting, being able to spectate any match currently in progress even while waiting in que for matchmaking, and no longer having this happen to you
New to the game and want to learn? The following links will get you started. Dota has a massive learning curve, so you wont learn everything here, but it should be enough to get you on your feet.
(Credit for this list actually goes to Gully State over on Gaf.)
First
Second (Warning, these are long.)
"Hey, I'm freaking amazing at LoL so I should be good at this too, right?"
Not exactly. While at their core they are similar, there are some some key differences that make the meta/feel/pace different. Some of these include things like the way carry heroes work, denying, gold loss on death, towers behaving differently, runes, a larger map, a str/agi/int based stat system, more active/useable items, and more.
Heroes & Items
There are currently 108 heroes in Dota, and while all of them will be coming over to Dota 2, only about 3/4s of the hero pool is available in the current beta build. Currently we get about one new heroes a week, with Valve sometimes surprising us with either more or none at all.
Current hero pool:
http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Heroes
Items:
http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Items
Curious what heroes are on their way?
http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Unreleased_ContentOther Useful Linkshttp://blog.dota2.comhttp://www.joindota.com/en/start
Announcement art (also in the valve store as posters)
(This OP is a work in progress, more info will be added as more people are able to get their hands on the game.)
Posts
my witty banter!
faynor was totally the reason for losing there
When in doubt, blame your team
that's the dota way
Early game we were having a hard time and one of them died while laning with me.
"where stun???? where stun? noob"
"I, uh, had just told you I was out of mana."
"oh I sorry then"
cue him apologizing to me for the next 20 minutes and then we started winning and their shit talked migrated to the opposing team.
"Hey man. you guys are badnoob"
"Why are you even play this game man?"
In the end, we won and many HUEHEHAEHEAHUEHAs were had.
WHY DONT YOU READ THE OP
NO ONE READS THE OP
YOU'RE ALL A BUNCH OF NON OP READING JERKS
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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That's not true. Well constructed OPs use colors and text size to highlight the most common questions people have, the Starcraft 2 and Steam threads are great examples of this. Sorry I skimmed over that helpful info Skab, I'm looking through the list of available heroes now.
Those that are in: http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Heroes
Those that are not in, yet: http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Unreleased_Content
the market is flooded w/ invites!!
also i probably dont look at pa enough or check my pms!!
If you're flooded with invites you could probably send one my way. Not sure how much I'll play but I'm curious to check it out.
3.9c necrolyte is the best hero ever
I liked cow since he had a skill where he could do a slow dmg channel on any building far from the eyes of anyone wanting to murder you. The phantom lancer was more fun too since his images were not random and it was just his ult but basically made him a tower killing machine whenever his ult was up. Dota RoC is much slower than Dota FT but still has a place in my heart.
Or at least they did last year when I checked.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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Also, is there a way to fix the fog in this game? It's really distracting.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
that feel when someone kills themselves on your ward
Heed my call, for I am the naysayer.
1)dark seer + clinkz = stupid invis running over me making me lose health and not realizing why
2)obsidian destroyer farming free becomes ridiculous.
IceFrog's favourites > GabeN's favourites > the janitor's favourites > the heroes you like.
Decripfy is absolutely amazing in a pewpew team. You are basically guaranteed to turn every fight into 4vs5. As long as you end the game by 30 you are a powerhouse.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
when really they need to port Ogre Magi, because he's the greatest hero ever and I'm sure his voicework will be as hilarious as Alchemist's