Defending The Ancients – The History Of DotA

Disclaimer: this article isn’t about DotA’s gameplay. It’s an examination of a remarkable history.

Pudge. The Faceless Void. Razor, the lightening revenant. They hail from what is unquestionably one of the greatest mods in the entire gaming world. Free, and as indie as it gets, DotA has long since transcended being an almost-unknown, little played mod for Warcraft 3.

Over the course of many years, avid fans and multiple authors working under gaming handles forged an experience that spawned an entire worldwide community of professional competitive gamers battling it out under the watchful eyes of thousands.

Where and how did all this begin?

Way back in the Starcraft era, a modder named Aeon64 created a map called Aeon of Strife. Four heroes faced off against endless waves of computer-controlled minions, or creeps. Think of it as a zombie invasion in RTS view.

With the release of Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, Aeon of Strife was brought over. The Warcraft engine opened up tons of possibilities. A modder called Karukef was the first to release a map with custom spells and abilities, and a few cycles of experiments later, a map called Defense of the Ancients (DotA) emerged on Battle.net. It was created by Eul. As DotA picked up popularity, it was ported from Reign of Chaos (ROC) to The Frozen Throne (TFT). Eul disappeared after officially shutting down the project, but the modding did not stop: people began deriving and releasing more and more versions of DotA. The DotA DX Series and DotA Unforgiven all arose from this era

DotA Allstars begins: Guinsoo steps in

The DotA-Allstars map, which was so successful that subsequent MOBA’s (League of Legends, HoN, DotA 2) have retained the layout.

Here the history gets murky and controversial. Some sources say DotA Allstars was started by two modders called Meian and Ragn0r, who compiled the most fun heroes from all the different versions and put them into one map. Others say it was Steve Feak, aka Guinsoo. Guinsoo was certainly the first steady developer to introduce major changes to the DotA formula, starting with a number of heroes and an item-crafting system.

Guinsoo drove DotA Allstars to unexpected levels of success. In version 4.0a, a hulking neutral boss monster called Roshan was brought to life. He also created TDA, one of the first DotA clans. Steve Mescon, aka Pendragon from TDA create www.dota-allstars.com, DotA’s first official community site.

Until the 5.xx versions of the map, DotA was played mostly for fun. Some great sportsmanship was emerging, but there were too many imbalances and bugs for the game to be viable for competitive play. The 5.xx series saw the introduction of more new heroes and balances across the board. It was also the time when the first AI maps began appearing, pitting players against AI-controlled heroes. This was in 2004, around the time that Neichus and IceFrog joined the development. Arguably the greatest product of this collaboration was 5.84, a massively popular map which outlasted quite a few future versions.

The Era of IceFrog

Towards the end of the 5.xx series, Guinsoo focused on balancing out bugs. After 6.01 he left the DotA Allstars project, leaving IceFrog and Neichus to take up the reigns.

Neichus took over the project leadership for a while, but didn’t last: Neichus took over the project after delivering a host of heroes such as Earthshaker, Phantom Lancer, Enchantress, Enigma, Axe, Shadow Fiend and Bloodseeker, Neichus grew disenchanted with the project and left.

DotA Allstars came to the reclusive IceFrog. The community was still expanding, and IceFrog streamlined DotA towards competitive gaming, delivering new heroes with every map release and balancing bugs and expanding upon the foundations of 5.xx. Newcomers to the DotA scene grew up knowing the name “IceFrog”. After taking over the project, IceFrog did large amounts of bug fixes and hero balancing, driving DotA into the competitive gaming scene. While the development of new items and heroes was slower than under Guinsoo’s command, the overall gameplay became more balanced, refined and focused.

DotA had already “taken off”, but with the 6.xx series, things really grew. Grand intercontinental DotA tournaments became the norm. Dedicated DotA players, who did nothing else but play and practice the game, honed their art to near-perfection and rose to the forefront. Clans merged, fought each other across the world, and made their mark in gaming. As the old generation of DotA players fell away, new players rose to claim their places, and the wheel turned.

Reqiuem

With time and patience, almost everything is possible, including the rise and fall of DotA. 2009 -2010 marked the first nails in DotA’s coffin, with Gas Powered Games’ DotA-inspired DemiGod, and later Riot’s League of Legends arriving on the scene. League of Legends made it obvious how split the old and new DotA communities had become. Most of the new DotA players had never heard of any developer other than IceFrog: it was as if an entirely new generation of gamers had been spawned, most of them competitive and foul-mouthed. IceFrog and the www.dota-allstars.com community fell out, with the oldest members of the former joining the League of Legends team. Guinsoo, the legend of DotA’s past, was working on the League: Pendragon and joined as well. (LoL would rise to become “The most played PC game in the world” as reported by Forbes.)

League of Legends: Hekarim

Nevertheless, DotA still kept going strong. Playdota.com was created. Another similar game arose: Heroes of Newerth, with rumors of IceFrog’s involvement. Although it didn’t supplant DotA, it drove another blow to its playerbase. The aged Warcraft 3 engine hadn’t aged that well: almost a decade old, it was now a barrier to DotA’s development.

DotA 2: every aspect of DotA re-implemented in a more capable engine.

And then IceFrog joined Valve, and announced DotA 2.

Of course, when your favourite game is being remade as-is with brand-new graphics (and when Valve is involved), there’s no logical reason to stick to the original. So is DotA-Allstars dead? NO. DotA 2 has yet to arrive, after all. Head over to http://www.playdota.com/ and you’ll see hat DOTA is still alive – IceFrog recently released version 6.75b.

However, this venerable indie mod is not expected to last for long. As big-name competitions switch to DotA 2, the competitive gaming scene will slowly but inevitably shift to DotA 2 as well. DotA might still live on (definite possibility) but if it does, it’ll exist as the aged, venerable and incredible mod that brought millions of gamers together and spawned an entire genre of gaming. Cheers, DotA!

League of Legends dev on LoL vs. Dota 2: “we wanted to find ways to evolve that genre” (pcgamer.com)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Yudhanjaya Wijeratne (@yudhanjaya) is the founder of IndependentGaming.net. After some lengthy and unpleasant exams, he’s returned to the world of indies. In real life he’s a journalist/writer for the Sri Lankan tech-mag Readme.lk. His personal blog is at 4250.