Defense of The Ancients, Then and Now

Defense of The Ancients, Then and Now By Edgar Hokkanen Hey guys, i'm Edgar Hokkanen, on the net i'm more known as Wizzs. I'm just 17 years old, yet i have played hundreds of games in my life. If there is anything i enjoy more than gaming then it's creating stuff for others. I have wrote my own games, made my music, drawn my pictures and now i'm up for writing and sharing my opinion with others.

The Blizzard Entertainment is definitely one of the largest gaming companies in the world at the moment and it's not surprising as they are the guys behind such wonderful franchises as Starcraft, Diablo and of course Warcraft. Although World of Warcraft really made a breakthrough for them, we should mention a game without what it would have never been possible. I'm talking about Warcraft and its sequels, a legendary real time strategy game where humans keep fighting in the everlasting war against bloodthirsty orcs. The game is so simple in its nature, yet so perfect that it keeps gamers interested even in the year 2010, a whole 8 years after it was first released!

For more World of Warcraft videos

Most of its success has actually come from the custom maps made by active players. This is possible thanks to the warcraft 3 world editor tool which Blizzard added with every game copy. As the tool has the ability to change nearly everything in the game, import your own models and even create custom scripts, many players decided that instead of making traditional melee maps where you build building and troops, then fight each other they can make something more custom. And at that moment completely new games started to arrive. Among tower defense and maze games a new genre, if I may, was born. These were hero battle games, which had simpler rules than perhaps even most melee maps. The player had the ability to select a favorite hero of his choice, gather items and scrolls for him (or her) and well, fight other heroes. Killing other heroes was the main goal of the game as it was at first, only way to earn the money. Meanwhile you had to keep an eye on your own health bar, because dying in such game awarded your opponents with a nice load of gold. The most popular version of hero battles however was Defense of the Ancients, also known as simply DotA.

Full Size

Unlike most of the similar hero battle games, creators of DotA tried to balance the game as much as possible so there weren't any overpowered heroes, weapons or armor. Instead a skilled player, with a little luck could kill virtually anyone. There were also no scrolls for this matter and most of the bonus stats came from various items the player wore. Some items were so powerful that you had to "combine" few weaker weapons to form a stronger one. Such item assembling made even the most common part of the game once again interesting. Luckily you didn't lose your items once you died, however you did lose some of the gold which could ruin your plans about buying another expensive weapon. Nevertheless it was a fun experience and you probably went back just to get your payback or as player like to call it, for a "gank".