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!!!