DotA – Beyond Godlike

I think most of those who call themselves gamers know this word or at least know someone who knows it. For those of you who have no idea what DotA means I will try to make a brief presentation. DotA is a map created for Warcraft 3, but based on the Aeon of Strife map for Starcraft. It is basically a RTS map, but it’s modified to be more like an RPG.

DotA (Defense of the Ancients – as it was first called) has come a very long way from version 0.95c Beta to the 6.57b (stable map). Its success started with the 5.84c iteration and gained more and more fans ever since. The one who started the project was Eul and his idea was elaborated by Guinsoo. The current author is IceFrog and he is the one who made the most breakthroughs on the map by fixing a lot of bugs as well as adding new heroes and items.

There are 2 teams, each with a max of 5 players, who can choose from a variety of heroes (each with special abilities). The object of the game is very simple: all you have to do is destroy the Frozen Throne or the World Tree – the enemy’s last building guarded by two powerful defense towers. But the fun of the game is getting from one point to another. The two teams have heavily guarded structures at opposing corners of the map, which spawn AI "creeps" (units controlled by the computer).
 
Every single hero on the map has the potential to become godlike. There are no villains. There are, of course, those who are harder to play compared to others. A strong early game is the most recommended tactic for any hero to become the best. The most important thing in a game is gold, which you can gain by slaying creeps or other monsters on the map and, of course, you earn the highest amount of the precious metal when you kill an opposite hero or destroy an opposite tower.
 
The gold is then used to buy powerful items that can increase the hero's abilities or even grant him new ones (Dominate creeps, Arctic Blast). Experience is also a very important part of a DotA game. You level up by gaining experience when an enemy creep/hero is killed or when you slay monsters. The more levels you have over your opponents, the more powerful your skills are and you can kill them faster. The runes that you will find in the river at the middle of the map are also a bonus that can sometimes be very helpful in killing or escaping enemies (invisibility, double damage, illusion, haste, regeneration).
 
The map has 93 heroes and 33 modes (-ap - allpick, -ar - allrandom, - rd - random draft, etc.) that make it a lot of fun plus you will basically never play the same game twice.
 
The number of DotA players is constantly increasing. No one really knows their real number, but IceFrog says that 5+ million people downloaded the 6.53 version of the map. So if we include another 2 million until this point forward and add the number of people who download it from other sources we can say that this is quite a popular map.

The popularity of Defense of the Ancients has risen very much, some have even dared to call it “the ultimate RTS” (real time strategy) game. The map enjoys the most critical acclaim in Northern European countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland – the Swedish musician Basshunter even released a song based on it: “Vi sitter I Ventrilo och spelar DotA.”

LAN Tournaments and Championships are a very important part of the worldwide play so countries like Sweden, Russia, USA, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Philippines constantly organize them.

You can play this map if you have installed on your computer the original Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, the add-on Frozen Throne and the Frozen Throne 1.22a Patch. In your Warcraft 3 folder find the Maps one and create a Downloads folder so it will look like Warcraft3\Maps\Downloads. Copy the DotA map there and you're ready to go.