Regarding that Valve Reveal of the new DotA coming in like 12 hours or so…
I wanted to share the following for entertainment reading. Two months ago, because I really went nuts for League of Legends (obvious to everyone here) I also wanted to know more about DotA and HoN and the whole genre. Guinsoo and Icefrog too… Anyways, what follows is what I interpretted from all the news with regards to the development of the new Valve DotA. It’s not much, but it’s a numbered list of the weird drama in DotA/MOBA land… and how excited I am about tomorrow’s news (and how much I still am nuts about LoL). Enjoy
About Valve’s DotA
Consider it DotA 2. It was confirmed earlier this year that Valve registered the trademark for “DotA.” Notice they used the acronym, not the full name. (Side Note: it was announced about a year ago now that Icefrog was hired by Valve and he said he had the resources he needed to push DotA forward).
Riot reacted by registering the name “Defense of the Ancients.”
Riot will not use this name, but Riot issued a statement that they believe Defense of the Ancients has always been a community made mod/map that belongs to the community and was always free. It was developed before even Guinsoo (designer for League of Legends) went ahead and updated it to DotA All-Stars before passing on the role to Icefrog. So they feel that Defense of the Ancients (and by that, they mean DotA) should always be kept as that special labor of love from and for the community.
Of course they wouldn’t like another game called DotA to be commercially made either But it’s gonna happen, and it’s happening.
I think whether you are a fan of DotA, HoN, or LoL–you will be looking forward to the new DotA game by Valve. Especially if you’re a fan or player of the first two games, since Icefrog is the designer for it and well… let’s say both DotA (in the last 2 years) and HoN were his babies.
To give HoN credit… some people didn’t like the idea of S2 making a commercial game DotA with much the same gameplay, and profiting on it. To give S2 credit, they put in competitive features such as rankings, replays, tournament/league structure, and still support the game with anouncers and highlights, etc… They’ve done good on that. Also, Icefrog pretty much told the community he’s cool with HoN.
In crazyland MOBA news… though the HoN detractors feel S2 ripped off the work done by Icefrog in the latest versions of DotA… it turns out that Icefrog secretly worked on HoN on conditions of a good pay and anonymity. Now this was first rumored and sort of leaked by an insider… and then it was blast-open outed by Penndragon (now community manager at Riot, formerly DotA All-Stars site manager I think) which you can see if you go to the old DotA All-Stars site (dota-allstars.com). CRAZY DRAMA IN DOTA/MOBA LAND! So hey, Icefrog fans can appreciate HoN
Everyone knows I freaking love League of Legends. I still think it’s gonna be my main game of this type for years to come. That said, I am very excited to see what Valve’s DotA will be like and I am sure I will still be playing LoL a ton, even if I buy and play a lot of this new DotA game! (I think LoL hits a sweetspot in the genre that’s perfect for me).
LOOKING FORWARD TO TOMORROW’S REVEAL!
-Chanchai
Also, to celebrate the occasion… [media=youtube]qGO-becAB9Q[/media]
DotA 2’s gameplay is pretty much DotA. It’ll be updated, but consider this a port to a stronger engine and with added community features and stronger support by Valve and the DotA 2 team.
Same gameplay, same characters, same names, new engine and artwork.
Artwork will go for a cartoony style with contrast to make it easier to see what’s going on (like League of Legends).
Built-In In-Game Chat (this exists in HoN too).
Leavers will be replaced with “bots.” The bots won’t be super strong (DotA will not become a single player game) but they will keep up in gaining experience and reduce the disadvantage that way.
The big news about DotA 2 is community integration. You will unlock achievements, ranks, and skins not just from gameplay but your interaction with the community.
Valve’s big focus is on nurturing a positive experience because games in this genre usually suffer from hostile attitudes to beginners. Much of the innovations of DotA 2 will be aimed at community integration and management. As Gabe Newell puts it, allowing the community to better service the community.
Valve will provide tools for the community to make guides for the game. Details aren’t given about this, but it will tie with the game–sounds like guides will be a module attached to the game so items can be recommended as you play along with other build order information. Maybe this will happen when you play, maybe it will be a tutorial mode. We will see.
You will get achievements and probably visible status of some sort for how you conduct yourself on the forums. I’m guessing it’s all positive reinforcement, will be interesting if there is any identification of negative posting.
The big news is a Coaching Mode. Good coaches will likely get prestige and all pupils will be able to rate the coach. The coaching mode will allow the coach to watch the pupil’s game how they see it (I’m guessing the coach will have a cursor for guidance) and talk to them on a private channel.
-Chanchai
P.S. More Icefrog mystique/publicity/hate… The ever mysterious Icefrog continues to baffle the public with tales of being shady… No idea what is true but he definitely has overall good PR from it… “He’s a genius” according to Valve and his fans. “He’s a shady bastard” says some others… manufactured or true? No idea… but it’s fun. HE’S THE HIRONOBU ITAGAKI OF THE RTS WORLD!
Yeah but is it FREEEE? -mium?
Also they’d have to announce (but not necessarily release) a Mac version to be on par with LOL. ha.
If they can pare the games down to 30 minutes, though, count me in.
EDIT: Oh I guess they have announced a Mac version. Cool.
EDIT2: Wasn’t I talking to people about headsets? Are there any buying recommendations people would like to make?
That said, my friend is really liking his Astro A30s. The first impression with them usually seems to be weird, but second impressions are almost always good. Think it’s just getting used to the mixer. But I think they’re great headsets for gaming ^^
Mm. I don’t think I’ll be buying any headsets that cost $200.
Just ordered a different set, hopefully they’ll work well enough.
Man, I’m gonna look like a total douche-bag with a headset on.
The only kinds of games I can think of needing an expensive headset for is like… counter-strike. You need to hear footsteps and which side of you they’re on… LoL is just sound cues at best and obnoxious voices. I jokingly was saying riot needed to nerf Janna’s voice and guess what, they did! Ahahaha she has a new voice and I love it. I actually had to turn voices off to even play Janna before. Now I can handle it. I never thought they’d actually change something like that.
Also, free games never die. Just look at gunbound. People probably still play maple story too. lmao
Well I’m the one they did it for, so that’s all that matters. I also have not heard of anyone else who likes it, but honestly I think said people didn’t actually pay attention when they played Janna before. Her VA was trying soooo hard to like… make her voice sound like wind. Which just sounded fucking retarded.
BREATH… LESS… LY
Everything she said took like 30 fucking seconds to say, it was unbelievable. Now, I can understand not liking her new voice (why can’t she just talk normally? lmao) but I will never understand or approve of anyone who actually liked her voice before. Like, I have a hard time imagining she could even speak like that without ruining the lines with laughing most the time.
What are you using for a starting item? I’d also like to add that in mid-lane, runes are incredibly important. Going up against a guy with a decked out rune book is really difficult if you don’t have tier 3s.
Alof of that Blog is supposedly bullshit, but IceFrog is grimy especially how he makes it seem like he came up with DotA when he just picked it up after Guinsoo & them left. And so far all he’s done is X-Copy DotA instead of trying anything else really.
It´s about time that some serious publisher like valve gets behind a new dota and top of it its gonna be from icefrog. HoN and LoL gonna be dead when this hcomeso ut.
To be fair Icefrog is the big reason Dota is successful he was the one who fine tuned it and promoted it if you remember the old dota is was not balanced at all and had a lot of issues. This was back during the RoC days. He also promoted it really well and made a good website to download it. Also I was always partial to Tides of Blood over Dota in the old days until Icefrog got a hold of it and took the game to another level.
HoN will be dead I believe but the fact LoL is free and quite different in a lot of ways may keep it going and who is to say Dota 2.0 isnt a piece of shit? It’s not like Blizzard is making it so there are no guarantees and these days who knows with Blizzard either.
Well there seems to be a winning formula with DotA 2, even if it’s a straight port. And we haven’t even heard what the release/pricing strategy of the game will be either. But yeah, as much as Icefrog has drama around him (and as much as I admit that I have no clue about DotA), there’s no denying he had a real contribution in shaping DotA All-Stars into a very refined game that has won over people all around the world (though like many things that have done that, you don’t feel that’s the case in the U.S.).
While Blizzard doesn’t seem to be working on their own variation of DotA, there’s still a community of modders trying to do it on Starcraft 2.
Though technically, with how staff moves in and out of studios you never know what defines which part of a staff like Blizzard even. You could technically argue that Riot has some good people from Blizzard and other companies, one in particular. While Guinsoo is a lead designer on LoL and he was the one who reshaped DotA into DotA All-Stars… The big Lead Designer on League of Legends is Tom “Zileas” Cadwell (not the rock climber or the politician). He was one of the first name Starcraft players and the guy in charge of game balance design on Warcraft 3 (yeah I know, DotA has outshined TFT) and a designer on World of Warcraft.
Lot of good people working on all three of these games. Though HoN is going to suffer from DotA 2 launch most likely (and some of the HoN community doesn’t seem to care about that in terms of HoN, many seem ready to jump–but I don’t see why people can’t play both and they probably will, and they did put their money in the game already).
I don’t think League of Legends has to worry much at all, I believe it’s going to be doing fine for itself actually and has carved out its own piece of the pie. HoN might be able to weather the storm because I think S2 has been aiming more at the hardcore than Valve might even go for. But it’s a longshot and Valve is no stranger to the competitive gaming scene and the resources to pump it. On top of that, the DotA name should be big enough to get DotA 2 rolling strong–especially in Europe and Asia.
Either way, I’m glad this style of game is getting more traction in the US and I’m so glad I’m playing them now
Yeah, free games never die. I’m pretty sure people still play fucking gunbound.
EDIT: How 'bout dat Lux? @_@ Good god. A line move that buffs MR then stealths her, along with blinds and stuns and an ult that blinds and shit? Gnarly. They really go all out on these new champs. :lol:
I like Shurelia, but… sheesh, Lux is so Shurelia (it was her design with the design team, and you can see she squeezed a ton of anime and other references into the character, which she admits).
That said, one of the things League of Legends has always had fun with is creating a wide variety of wacky characters… So I have to admit, you’ll get your Lux characters for some people, and then the more dark characters for others, etc… They’ve always said they enjoy doing that from the start and not feel constrained by everything looking like Warcraft 3 etc…
Ability wise, she seems awesome. First impression is super Ez, but it seems like they’re still retweaking her abilities in testing. We’ll see how she turns out when she’s released but a lot of people are going to play her.
Funnest part of the game for me: Tanking turrets.
Late game tank, just saying FUCK IT, GOOOO
Having your teammates come up behind you and it’s like uNFF take that TOWER yessss
But it’s gonna happen, and it’s happening.
