14 DAY TRIAL // We already know that Blizzard is aiming to launch its own version of DOTA for the Starcraft II real time strategy game at some point during 2012, close to the launch date for the Heart of the Swarm expansion, but we know little about the experience that the mod will be offering.
Two leading developers at Blizzard have offered some indirect details on it, saying that players should expect something very different from the mechanics that they have seen when DOTA was initially revealed during the 2010 edition of the Blizzcon event.
Jonny Ebbert, who is a senior game designer working at Blizzard, has said, “Getting it right and just meeting the Blizzard quality bar, and questioning a lot of the assumptions behind the genre, which is what we do at Blizzard. What we showed at the original BlizzCon, we’ve completely flattened it since then and completely rebooted it because we just thought, there’s more we can question on this.”
Frank Pearce, who is one of the co-founders of Blizzard, added, “One of the important things to note with that space is the DOTA everyone plays on Warcraft 3 is not particularly accessible to the novice. One of the game development philosophies we have at Blizzard is, easy to learn and difficult to master. That mod for Warcraft 3 doesn’t really fit that description.”
Blizzard DOTA will probably keep the main mechanics of the massive online battle arena genre, with heroes battling each other while the Artificial Intelligence directs mobs of troops around them, but the company will also be looking to put its own spin on the core concepts.
Also in 2012, Valve is aiming to launch its own Dota 2, a game which is being created by the original developer of the concepts for Warcraft III.
The game was unveiled at Gamescom 2011 and it could be the first free-to-play title from Valve.