Happy Holidays!!

This blog post will be about Dota 2. Dota 2 (Defense of The Ancients 2) is a Massive Online Battle Arena (Moba) much like League of Legends, in fact the predecessor of Dota 2; Defense of The Ancients (Dota) is what spawned countless games such as Heroes of Newerth (HoN) and the extremely popular LoL (League of Legends). Dota was originally created as a Mod (custom map) for warcraft 2 where it was not hugely popular, however when a new team took over the creation of the Mod for warcraft 3 the popularity skyrocketed making it virtually the most played Mod on warcraft 3 with players playing the game specifically to play Dota over the initial purpose such as ladder matches.

In 2009, Valve hired one of the creators of Dota to start work on a sequel for steam. In 2011 Dota 2 was released to the public as a beta version where they gave out special keys who opted into the system to test the game and help fix bugs. I personally opted in and was one of the beta testers along with my friends until the day it officially released to the general public as a free-to-play game in 2013. In order to make money, they like many free-to-play games have special items and benefits from spending money.

In terms of the competitive scene, league of legends is played more due to the lower barrier to entry. But the prize pool for Dota 2 is the same if not better than that of league of legends. In the third year (2013) of “the international” a world championship series for Dota 2, the prize pool was 2.8 million dollars; which the Swedish team Alliance ended up winning 1.4 million dollars.

The game is played with two teams of five people, the radiant and the dire. The object of the game is to destroy the opposing team’s main building. Like League of Legends, creeps spawn which give gold and experience to the champions fighting it out. The main difference here is that the creeps in Dota 2 can be denied (attacked by allied team members) when their health is low, thus lowering the amount of experience gained by the other team as well as not giving them gold. Another major difference is the inclusion of a “secret” shop which is in the middle of the map for both sides and has special high end items and a “side” shop which has useful basic items. There are also scrolls in the main base to combine certain items.

This Post will talk about Diablo 3, essentially a sequel to Diablo 2. Diablo 3 came out on May 15th 2012 for the PC and Mac, a console version was also released for the playstation 3, xbox 360 on September 3 rd 2013. This game was a much awaited sequel that many were waiting for over 10 years, and needless to say when the game came out, it sold like hot cakes. In the first 24 hours of its release it sold 3.5 million, in seven months the game sold 12 million copies making it the best selling PC game of 2012.
The game unlike its predecessor, featured a account system which made it harder for people to make multiple accounts and made it so that purchasing the game was required (Diablo 2 allowed players to make multiple accounts and did not require purchase of the game as long as you had a CD key). Diablo 3 also made it so that an internet connection is required to play, while Diablo 2 had the option to play offline in single player mode. The game was also the first game to feature a “Real-Money” auction house, where people could buy or sell items obtained through the game using PayPal. The only downside to this is that it favored people who played the game a lot or got extremely lucky, and even then there was a service fee from both Blizzard (Parent Company) and PayPal.

There are five classes to choose from, each with their own skill tree that you can customize however you like. These five classes are the Witch Doctor, Barbarian, Wizard, Monk, and Demon Hunter. These five classes all use different mechanics which unlike the older game had all the classes using the same resource mechanic (called Rage). The Witch Doctor specializes in summoning minions, casting curses and poisons/explosives. The Barbarian focused on pure brute force with a lot of area of effect skills and skills that allow him to enter the fight as well as war cries which gave a beneficial buff to allies and negative buffs to enemies. The Wizard focuses on a wide range of magic and teleportation. The Monk uses martial arts to give themselves an edge against opponents; they also have auras which buff allies as well as the ability to heal and stop death for a few seconds. The Demon Hunter is an archer and uses bows as their main weapons to attack from far away; they also have defensive abilities to trap/allow movement away from enemies.

Look forward to the expansion “Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls” coming out in 2014!!!

In the spirit of competition in E-sports, because there will be a world championship this weekend on 11/9. I will be introducing a game by the name of Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 is a real time strategy (RTS) game released by blizzard, maker of popular games like Warcraft and Diablo, Which I will most likely talk about at a future time. Starcraft 2 is a expansion of the game to Starcraft which was created in 1998. Starcraft in general is one of the most played game in the world, with an extremely huge following in Korea where the original game is still played despite the expansion coming out. The fan base is so large that there are tournaments weekly with some of the best players making over $350,000 per year. These players also belong to teams, which they play under the name of, according to liquidpedia, a page sponsored and updated by a professional team called team Liquid; the currently highest paid team for the year has earnings of $740,000.

There are three factions in Starcraft 2 which a player can choose to play as with each faction specializing in different things. These factions are terran, protoss, and zerg. Terrans are a humanoid faction with superior mechanized troops such as planes and tanks. Protoss are a alien faction with a extremely devout and religious view, they specialize in psionic (psychic) abilities such as shields and special powers. Zergs are an alien faction with an emphasis on swarming the enemy by creating a lot of cheap troops to ultimately overpower your opponent.

The game starts with a small base and five workers which you use to harvest minerals and gas, which you then use to build buildings to unlock the ability to build and upgrade troops. A basic understanding of the game is that once you build your army you can attack each other, more advanced players use special tactics to get ahead such as worker denying (killing workers before they can build troops) or even hit and run tactics. Ultimately the game is a strategy game to put yourself ahead of the opponent. The game can also be played in a team such as 2 v 2, 3 v 3, and 4 v 4. The game play in a team game is almost the same as 1 v 1 except that there is more room for modification and strategies to throw off your opponent.

This game is a little harder to learn to play by using advanced strategies, but once you do I am sure you will like it. The game also has an extremely well built story line and the cinematics are on par if not better than that of movies. Below I will include a tutorial video posted to YouTube by a shout caster of the game, who mind you makes a living just from examining players playing against each other.

ALL COPY RIGHTS GO TO HUSKYSTARCRAFT who created and uploaded these videos.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOoCTp0Mvwk&list=PLA1476C41A02D8E8D&index=9

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D54SvRYhSZs&list=PLA1476C41A02D8E8D&index=8

This times post will be about Puzzles and Dragons, Puzzles and Dragons is a free to play game that originated in Japan in 2012. February for the IOS and in September for the android OS, the first time Puzzles and Dragons came to America shortly after due to the immense popularity and how well received it was in Japan. Puzzles and Dragons had 13 million downloads in the middle of 2013 however currently there has been 20 million worldwide downloads in a period of 1 year.

Puzzles and Dragons is cross between popular titles such as candy crush saga / bejeweled and popular collection games such as Pokémon. In the game you move orbs of 5 colors or hearts to either heal or allow your cards / monsters to attack the enemies. Doing dungeons / stages using stamina upon completion of the dungeon will reward you with gold, experience, and eggs. Eggs are basically the babies of the monsters you kill in the dungeon; if an egg drops you will receive it upon completion of the dungeon. However if you leave or die in the dungeon all the rewards will be lost and you must attempt it again. Cards / Monsters can be leveled and evolved through fusion to make dungeons easier, or to attempt harder dungeons.

Alternatively there is a machine called a gacha (those machines that pop out bubbles that kids frequently spin to get toys / candy, essentially it is a slot machine). If you spend magic stones (the in game currency that you receive for spending real money) you can pull the gacha arm and out pops a rare card; from a random series (the current series in the game include – Japanese gods, norse gods, Chinese gods, ninjas, dragons, angels etc.)

The game is fundamentally different from candy crush saga and bejeweled because while you use stamina to enter dungeons, you can move one orb over the entire play area instead of only once. A play through I recorded of one of the dungeons will be posted below, to show the movement of the orbs and the attacking.

Personally I find this game extremely fun because I like collecting things, and this game is full of cards / monsters that I can collect. The game play is also not stale because they frequently add new content to the game in forms of rare cards or harder dungeons; they also have collaboration events with other mobile games which drop special cards / monsters from that game (recent collaborations include Clash of Clans and Emil Chronicle Online). The game also pulls you in by giving you something to strive for; an example of this would be putting something in the game such as gods that you really like, in my case the Chinese gods are based of zodiacs and one of them is my zodiac so I collected it and leveled it for my team.

League of Legends is a free to play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). Following the tradition of free to play games, you start off with a rotation of ten heroes that you are allowed to play. However you have the option to purchase new heroes using influence points(IP) which you get for playing in matchmaking games, or you can purchase them using riot points(RP) which is the conversion of real money into game currency. You can also purchase skins for the heroes which has the properties of alter the appearance of the hero you are playing on the loading screen as well as in game, skins however are only purchasable with riot points.

The game has a three player and a five player team battle options as well as a five person single lane all random option, there is also a map featuring five capture points which accumulate points based on the amount of capture points your team currently controls.

The three player map has two lanes and a unique system which upon controlling gives a buff that benefits your team.

The five player map has three lanes and is the most played match making option that league of legends has, this is the map that most tournaments are held on with prize pools in the millions.

The five person single lane all random option has one lane; however every player gets a random hero out of their pool of champions they own. This is primarily used as a fun and fast way to kill some time.

The map featuring five capture points is played with five players per team and the teams must fight over the capture points to accumulate points, the more capture points your team controls the more points you get at a time.

This game is an extremely new user friendly game, as it is very forgiving for mistakes compared to other games. if you want to try a new game, I highly suggest trying this game out before moving on to harder to play MOBAs. All you have to do is sign up Try it here: http://bit.ly/16hJk6X