Friday 12 January, 2007

The second game session I choose the same hero as I had in the previous game, the Phantom Lancer. The rest of our team was more diverse in our heroes, and my own play was easier and productive I was able to level up and push the enemies tower in the beginning of the game. I remained useful throughout the game, defending and 'doppelwalking' to escape from trouble and on a couple occasions allowed my teammates to mob up on enemy heroes that I had fled from after engaging.
With more practice I have found his abilities very useful for deceiving enemy players, both for survival as well as a well-timed get away that leaves the enemy hero vulnerable to be pounced by my teammates.

As the game progressed, I went right for items that helped my skills and was able to defend against many attacks on our towers. The rest of the team was at a loss, and the enemy was ganking us in groups that would target down individual heroes. Mostly, our team was led to our defeat through unsuccessful grouping up for defense and lack of coordination in identifying / targeting the enemy on their attacks pushing towards our base. Not knowing who your teammates are is a difficult and sometimes frustrating part of dota allstars that often leads to miscommunication and confusion among strategy and working together. However, just in the parts of these two games I have had moments where the opposite did happen: my tactics were correctly executed and whether my chance or plan my teammates were there to finish an enemy after I had 'doppelwalked' out of a sticky situation. The game design and balance that the designers demonstrated with the characters attributes and abilities is tremendous. Heroes are not born overpowered but through the use of proper tactics as well as acquistion of the right items while going through the leveling process can lead to very powerful heroes. At times I am surprised by this fact in that while I have seen some heroes romp around the battlefield decimating others; another hero that had fell victim to the powerful hero in the previous game, now because of fast leveling and 'farming' gold, beats the same hero in this game who had before been more poweful.

Considering how large a percentage of battle-net frozen throne games that are DotA games, one might pose the argument that the map/mod DotA might be achieving a level of popularity the rivals the core game itself, similar to half-life and Counterstrike.

Why do you think DotA is doing so well? How might the dynamic be more fun than regular Warcraft 3? Do you think the engine may be better suited to DotA than the regular melee game? Are there any elements of DotA you would want to incorporate in the core WC3 engine? Are there any elements of WC3 you would want to incorporate in DotA?