Dota 2

Closed beta has started!
DotA2 Official Website
Steam Page
Dev forums



What is DotA/2?
DotA, or Defense of the Ancients, is a Warcraft III mod that involves two teams of five players competing against each other to take down their opponents' bases. While the base engine of DotA may have been an RTS, the game plays more like a hourlong RPG; each team's army units (known as "creeps") simply attack move to the enemy base in three lanes (bottom, middle, and top) and each player in DotA controls one of 100+ heroes, and gains gold and experience to buy items that can drastically boost their powers. As a single game takes around 40-60 minutes and every individual member is integral in the team's success, the game is highly competitive and is associated with a rabid community and fanbase that takes some skin-hardening to get used to.

DotA2, is a direct port of DotA to Steam and has a full team at Valve working on it. Most importantly, Icefrog, the developer of DotA AllStars (the current and most popular iteration of DotA) is working on DotA2.

Who plays DotA?
Today, almost a decade after its inception, DotA has an estimated 10 million players on battle.net, Garena, and other international servers. A patch can get up to six million downloads in a day.

The competitive scene is ridiculously large and alive as well; from the Chinese dynasties CCM and LGD frought with succession drama to the old-school European dominators like MYM, OK, and Na'Vi, competitors are drawn from all over the world. This large playerbase contributes to a diversity of playstyles and strategies, and the large hero pool and monthly patches ensure that the game never gets stale.

Gosugamers has all the competitive news and streams you could want.

Valve also sponsored a one million dollar preview tournament at Gamescon, with free broadcasts in 3 languages. Yes, you read that correctly. $1,000,000.

Here's a youtube of the winners:

This sounds awfully similar to...
Yes, all those games that seem familiar (LoL, HoN, Demigod, Bloodline Champions, Realm of the Titans) are all DotA-likes (or Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas if you wish to stay neutral). Make no mistake though, DotA2 may be prettier and have some new tricks, but in terms of mechanics and gameplay, it is the direct reincarnation of DotA.

Sounds good, how do I play?

There are beta sign-ups on the main DotA2 page, and playdota is giving out 80 keys a day here. Currently, we're at 11,000 players [11-27-11]. Gabe has also confirmed that no payment model for the final release has currently been determined yet.

What else do we know so far?

• "DotA2 is DotA Allstars with new technology. The entire roster of 100+ heroes is being brought over in its entirety. The single map games take place on is functionally identical to the one that you can download for free today in the Warcraft III mod. Items, skills, and upgrade paths are unchanged. Some hero skills work slightly better due to being freed from the now-ancient Warcraft III engine, but Dota 2 will be instantly familiar to any DotA player."
• DotA2 uses Valve's Source engine: global lighting, cloth simulation, and integrated voice chat will be part of the game.
• AI bots will eventually take over for disconnected players, and will be available to play against in unranked training matches as well.
• Some hero skills work slightly better with the replacement of the Warcraft III engine with the Source engine.
• Valve is upgrading Steamworks (the company's backend technologies for matchmaking and other gameplay and community-related things) for DotA2, and apparently is developing some new mechanism to reward players in-game for participating in the Dota 2 community.
• This will involve:
  Skill-based matchmaking for both individuals and teams.
  Interactive guides - highlighting suggested item purchases or displaying useful information during a match have been mentioned.
  A coaching system where veteran players can help out new players. "The coach sees the pupil's screen, and gets private voice and chat channels to communicate with them. The coach probably won't be able to take control of anything directly (once again, the details are currently under discussion)."

What does this game even look like?

You can watch some streams!



Trailer:




Links

• Valve's DotA2 Page
• The DotA2 Devblog
• Playdota, DotA's Official Site
• Icefrog's Devblog for DotA
• Gosugamers for the Competitive Scene
• Tobi, big-name English dota caster streaming some gamescon here.
• Text dump of everything in the beta client so far (even some stuff that's not in the beta at the moment).

In-Game Stuff

• dota_health_per_vertical_marker 200 - Changes how much health each of those bars is; by default it's 200, you might want to change it to 100 if you play League or want more accurate health bars.
• dota_minimap_misclick_time 0 - you can up the time on this to set how long your mouse has to be on the minimap to click on it, if you constantly click on the minimap by accident.
• dota_force_right_click_attack 0 - Right click deny Change the 0 to a 1 to enable it.
• dota_disable_range_finder 1 - Range indicators If you set this to 0, you'll see a small red/green bar from your character to your mouse pointer that makes spell ranges much more visible than looking at the mouse cursor changing alone.

Sadly I am out of invites, but I am sure there is at least 1 person on these forums that are participating in this beta.

inbefore/after bandwagon hate

 

I want to play the beta as well :-)

Playing League of Legends at the moment. (yes, no Dota2, but still fun)

 

Never played DOTA but love league of legends is there a crossover and are there many differences. IT does look pretty but thats about all i can tell

 

Never played any games like this before, anyone got a video or something that explains how it all works as it confuses the fuck out of me atm, and i don't want to fork out like 40 quid for this when it comes out to end up hating it and the pro community calling me a noob(i've heard this happens alot and that it's like 49.5% noobs, 1% normal players and 49.5% pros)

 

Waiting for playdota to give me a betakey.

 

I thought it was going to be free to play but you only got like a couple of modes compared to buying it in full or something along those lines, still suppose it'd allow me to try it before buying

 

this, the email was worded in such a way that it almost implied I'd never need to pay for it I may be wrong though

 

And using micro transactions, just like LoL?
Fine for me, but I'd also be happy to pay for it (~25 eur max).

 

Got a dota2 key from a friend. Looking forward to trying it later today.

 

YES

 

Have 2 steam gifts for you guys pm me if you want em

(And no arrk you are not getting one to sell)

 

I also have 2 gifts I'll gladly be rid of

 

Gift me one please Baggy? <33333333

 

i also have 2 to give away who wants one?

 

Where the hell do all the keys come from all of a sudden?

 

Bagman gave me a Dota2 key yesterday, so I installed it this morning. I'm absolutely hopeless in MOBA games, but I'll try to learn this shit. I started 2 games against medium bots, never finished either...
Melee is not my cup of tea, as I'm pretty shit in microing, but maybe ranged gives me some breathing space so I'll stick with that. Any tips what should I REALLY pay attention to? Apart from staying alive and not attacking towers alone.

 

I'd say the most important in any moba/rts is getting resources (in this case money). The ambient gold earn is not enough for you to get strong so you will need to earn extra money by killing creeps and enemies.
I believe denying is also a really important feature in DOTA. You will want to keep your enemies as weak as possible and with denying creeps and towers you will make sure the enemy doesnt get gold from the creep and that the creep also gives less experience. Level differences are really important to increase your odds of winning a fight (especially 1v1 or 2v2 fights). Having your ultimate earlier than the enemy will indeed make a huge difference.
You'd also want to fulfill your role properly. That means that if you play as a tank you should not be afraid to get hurt and protect the squishies.

There are a lot of tutorial videos on the internet which explain everything you will need to know about the game and how to play the game properly

 

On the note of game keys: Valve keep throwing these at me, I've received an extra three over the past few weeks, so if anybody wants one, give me a poke on Steam.