14 DAY TRIAL // Valve surprised the gaming world when it announced that it was developing a fully commercial version of the popular Defense of the Ancients mod and long term players of the mod might feel a bit betrayed by the recent announcement that the core of the new game will be the same as that of the mod, with the gameplay mechanics all but untouched.
Erik Johnson, who is the senior project manager working on Defense of the Ancients 2, has told IGN that, “It’s going to be most of the heroes that you’re familiar with from Dota. Over time there’ll be new heroes that are added to it just like IceFrog’s adding to Dota all the time.”
He added that DoTA “is the game that people are used to, that all 20 million of those people are used to playing. There’s this big investment in your skill in Dota…and we don’t want to throw that away. We want them to be able to do all the fun things they could do before. It just doesn’t make any sense to us to start from somewhere new right now.”
The familiarity will extend to how spawns, items and equipment are handled, in an effort to make the game easy to pick up and play for those who already known the mod.
Johnson admitted that the initial product was so well put together that any gamer designer would be challenged to improve it in any significant way.
The designer has also said that the best experience for gamers will be in five on five video games but that the team is working hard to make the three versus three mode as well balanced.
He also confirmed that clear rewards will be offered to those veterans who take the time to guide new comers through the intricacies of the concept, creating a better balanced gaming community.
Defense of the Ancients 2 will be launched in 2011 on Valve time for both the PC and the Mac.