The history of the development of the game. DotA. The history of the development of the game Dota 2 year of release

The genre of Dota 2 is MOBA, which can be deciphered as Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. It can be translated as "multiplayer online fighting arena". MOBA is a separate genre of games that combine the key principles of role-playing games (RPG) and real-time strategy (RTS). A feature of the MOBA genre is that the location is usually a balanced arena in which any team does not have any advantages. And Dota 2 is exactly like that, because it has only one card.

Actually, Dota itself (still the first) is the ancestor of the MOBA genre, it was after its appearance that developers from different companies began to produce analogues. It is not surprising that the MOBA genre in general and Dota 2 in particular are very popular. These games have all the ingredients to be successful:

• Game balance, the one who plays better and has more extensive knowledge wins (this can be applied to the draft of heroes in Dota2);
• A variety of strategies, tactics and game situations. Thanks to this, MOBA games do not get bored;
• Playing as a team is always more interesting than playing solo.

Any game in the MOBA genre has exactly the same basic elements as Dota 2. This is the presence of heroes that can be pumped, the presence of neutral or allied units that are controlled by the computer (creeps in Dota 2), the lines along which they run, and also symmetrical and balanced map. Although, there is some controversy regarding the latter, regarding Dota 2, since Roshan is formally located on the territory of the Forces of Darkness.

Also, the vast majority of these games are characterized by the fact that they are free and they do not have a donation. That is, there is no way to invest real money and get gaming advantages over your opponent. In fact, this method of monetization is very profitable, but in the case of massive MOBA games, this is abandoned simply because it is more profitable to have tens of millions of players than hundreds of thousands who will donate. After all, the majority plays because victory depends on real playing skills, and not on the thickness of the wallet.

If we assume that Dota 2 will introduce the ability to get a gaming advantage for real money, then it is quite obvious that a very large part of the audience will move to other games of this genre. After all, just the key feature of such projects lies in equal chances of winning and in a good game balance.

The MOBA genre remains one of the most popular, but it’s worth recognizing that it will be very difficult for new projects to win an audience, since it is already divided between several projects, which, in addition, are also esports disciplines with a large number of tournaments, which themselves contribute to the influx of a new audience and retention old.

Dota 2 is one of the brightest representatives of the MOBA genre, which, although inferior in the number of players to League of Legends, remains an unchanging classic, continuing the spirit of Dota All-Stars, the Warcraft 3 custom map.

MOBA(Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), which literally means "multiplayer online battle arena"- this is the name of the genre of computer games that combine elements of RTS (real-time strategy) and RPG role-playing games.

DotA is considered the mother of all MOBA games, which are often referred to as "DotA-like games" or "DotA-like games". The term ARTS (Action Real-time strategy) is also often used.

Gameplay in MOBA games

In MOBA games, players are divided into two teams that are at war with each other. As a rule, the number of players in each team is five, and each of them selects and controls one hero from a list of available characters, each of which has different abilities, and units under his control. As the game progresses, the heroes develop, gain experience and buy amplifying artifacts for the gold they earn for killing opponents and enemy, controlled by the computer.

The main goal of the game- destroy the enemy main building (in Dota it is Ancient or Throne).

In its classic form, the map of most MOBA games looks like this:

Light lines mean the so-called "lanes", along which a simultaneous attack on the enemy base is carried out: top, mid and bottom. Blue circles are towers blocking the path of attack. The orange circle is the enemy base, within the boundaries of which are the main buildings that must be destroyed. You can compare the schematic map above with the one below.

DotA is a deep and even bottomless game that is addictive. That's why fans of this game spend all their free time on it. All kinds of guides, tips and advice from Dota masters are littered with the entire Internet. But all this information, again, is only for the fans. All other players are more interested not in the internal subtleties of the game, but in the history of its phenomenal success. From a simple but unusual modification, it has grown to the title of the most popular esports discipline in the world. A very unusual case that draws attention to itself. At a minimum, it should be of interest to developers who want to replicate at least part of this success.

Quite a few historical articles about Dota have already been created in English and Chinese. But Russian-language articles about this can be counted on the fingers. The information is very scarce, inaccurate, and looks more like folk legends than a collection of historical facts, although not much more than 10 years have passed since the events that took place. Here is what I could find on the Internet about the history of Dota:

1. "Wikipedia page". The story is described in a few lines, and does not contain anything interesting. (Even initially, I knew more about the game than that, although I was not a fan of it, but only hung around in the circles of the creators of maps for Warcraft and watched the success of DotA from the side).

2. “History of Dota. Part 1". The most informative article (before this one appeared). Interestingly, the article was originally written by a Chinese with the nickname CtChocula, then it was translated into English, and later in 2011 one of the Belarusians translated it into Russian. This article was gradually spread across all the Russian-language Dota fan sites, of which there are already hundreds and thousands.

Let's talk about this article now. The words of the Belarusian were all copied exactly, without adding anything from themselves, although in the comments many users boasted that they knew much more. At the same time, many do not see the copied images in the article, and no one does anything about it. And in the text right in the title it is written that this is only the 1st part of the story, but for some reason no one had a desire to find and publish the 2nd part (and there were seven of these parts in total!).

I personally took on this case. It was very easy to find a copy of this article, and after that it took a long time to find out where the original translation was. As I said, the original was found on the Belarusian site:

In subsequent copies of the article, negligent copy-pasters cut off links to the original source, and in the original translation the link to the English version remained, but ... a foreign article on gosugamers.net and playdota.com (playdota.com/forums/329512/dota/) by that time had already been removed. And yet, I managed to find a saved copy of the English-language article on one of the fan wiki systems:

It turned out that it was in the 1st part of the article that there were the main milestones in the development of the game, and in the next 6 parts only specific championships, best players, leagues, preferred tactics, minor changes were described. That's why no one translated them. If you are interested in this information, read it in the original source in full.

I made a concentrated extract from the cycle of these articles, moreover, in the author's translation and with the addition of some facts and clarifications from me personally. The result was the history of the formation of almost a whole genre, and not a single game. So, let's move on to the article itself, enjoy!

1. Aeon of Strife (Prototype)
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2002. For the game "Starcraft: Brood War", released back in 1999, a fan-made addition was released - the map "Aeon of Strife" (AoS). The author of the modification was a player with the nickname "Aeon64" (according to other information - the nickname "Gunner_4_ever").

In this map, the standard strategic rules of the game have been changed. It had to manage only one unit. The map was designed for 8 players - 2 teams of 4 heroes. There were four corridors on the territory, along which ordinary units constantly walked from both sides under the control of a computer. By killing creep units, or rather, by inflicting the last blow on them, the heroes received minerals for development. To win, it was necessary to kill all 4 enemy hero units or get through the defense towers and destroy the main headquarters. Later, a version was released for a smaller number of players - 2v2.

As you can see, the main game mechanics were invented in AoS. But Starcraft did not yet have an extensive system of heroic abilities and development by levels.

July 3, 2002. The legendary game "Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos" from the company "Blizzard Entertainment" has been released. Included with the game was a convenient, affordable and very effective map editor "World Editor". Soon after the release, enthusiasts created the Aeon of Strife map already on the Warcraft engine, which allowed the heroes to have 4 abilities each, carry items, level up from 1 to 10. Thanks to new features, the idea of ​​the map has developed significantly. AoS gained its first popularity, and many mapmakers began to copy its mechanics. Among Russian players, AoS maps were usually called "Three Corridors".

2. DotA by Eul (Name)
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2002, autumn-winter. The user with the nickname Eul created the map "Defense of the Ancients" (DotA). Translated into Russian - "Protection of the Ancients." Eul copied mechanics from AoS, and borrowed a lot of work from other clones of this map. The initial version had 32 heroes to choose from and 39 items to purchase. But so far this card has not stood out from dozens of others.

2003 July 1. Blizzard Entertainment has released the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne expansion. The plot in the game has 4 new companies, neutral heroes, new textures, units, items. But the main thing is that the World Editor has new features that were previously blocked for ordinary players: it was possible to change the maximum number of hero levels, rework any ordinary unit into a hero, there were functions for displaying high score tables on the screen, and hundreds of smaller changes.

2003, autumn-winter. Eul redesigned his map for the new expansion and named it "DotA 2: Thirst for Gamma in TFT". The ported version of the map was less successful than the original, and Eul soon abandoned the development of the map.

Leaving the mapmaking community, Eul made the source code of his map open source. And based on the original Dota, players began to make many of their own versions of this wonderful map. Here are some map names that have been more popular than others: "DotA DX Series", "DotA Unforgiven", "DotA Outland".

3. DotA Allstars (Version 0.95)
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February 3, 2004. Two mapmakers Meian and Ragn0r put together the best of many mods and named their brainchild "DotA Allstars". The authors posted a beta version of v0.95, but never brought it to a full release. The most difficult thing turned out to be to correct the balance between heroes that are completely different from each other (by the way, the balance in Dota is still subject to numerous edits and changes).

4. Guinsoo era (Version 2.0 – 5.84)
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March 2004. Another map maker, Steve Feak, under the nickname Guinsoo, took up the balance polishing of the best Dota compilation. He began to actively clean up the mistakes of previous authors. Initially, Guinsoo did this to create a more comfortable version for himself and his friends, but soon got the hang of it and started developing the map further. In a short time, DotA turned from a folk hodgepodge with a lot of gameplay distortions into a full-fledged high-quality project. Versions of the game changed at lightning speed. The first version from Guinsoo was v.2.0. By the end of March, v.3.0d was already released.

It was Guinsoo who created the modern item system in Dota. Already in the initial versions, there were items of various levels and price categories, but players usually made purchases only in the final stages of the game. This was due to the fact that in Warcraft, heroes have only 6 slots for items, and in order to take more powerful items, it was necessary to lay out and sell the old ones at half price. Nobody wanted to spend gold on temporary bonuses, everyone immediately saved up for top things. Guinsoo solved this problem by introducing a recipe system - stronger items were collected from several weak ones, and now there was no need to sell them and lose gold.

Another of his ideas is constantly appearing runes in the center of the map. This feature gives an advantage to those players who manage to control the entire map. This significantly increased the mobility of the players, just standing on the same line became unprofitable.

But the main merit of Guinsoo is that he understood Dota's genre affiliation better than others, skillfully emphasized it and developed it. Early versions of AoS and DotA were like fast-paced hero leveling competitions. The main emphasis was on the destruction of creeps, and the battles of heroes and intrigues against each other were only a tool in this struggle for experience. Guinsoo shifted his focus from PvE to PvP. For this he:

1) increased the reward for killing enemy heroes (part of the gold of the killed began to pass to the one who dealt the last blow),

2) introduced a delay before the rebirth of heroes depending on the level (death became a very unpleasant event, players began to value their hero more),

3) added sounds and a rating system from the network shooter Unreal Tournament (after that, killing enemy heroes became much more profitable, more fun and more honorable, because every player wants to hear titles from Anrial in his honor: First Blood, Tiple Kill, Rampage, Godlike, unstoppable).

The gameplay has become much sharper, more dangerous and more emotional than in other AoS clones. The map moved from the "Strategy with RPG elements" genre to the "Deathmatch RPG" genre. It was this change that led DotA Allstars to take the lead in its genre direction.

April 26, 2004. DotA Allstars v.4.0a has been released. In this version, in addition to the usual monsters, a huge boss appeared in the adjacent forests - Roshan. The boss was named after a bowling ball owned by Guinsoo. The idea was taken from online games where team raids on especially dangerous bosses took place. An attack on Roshan requires the efforts of several players at once, defeating him can bring a powerful artifact, but during an attack on the boss, the entire team is in a vulnerable position, leaving allied towers and exposing their backs to the blows of opponents.

Guinsoo impressed the gaming community with its uptime and high quality of the project. On the wave of success, co-authors began to help the talented mapmaker - Neichus, Abdul Ismail "IceFrog", Steave Mescon "Pendragon", and the lesser known Syl-la-ble, Zetta, Mortred & About 11. Together they organized the clan "Team Dota Allstars" ( TDA).

The first semi-official DotA forum was formed on 9nid, where players could discuss DotA issues.

2004 October 14. The TDA creator clan now has its own website, DotA-Allstars.com. Site management was taken over by Pendragon. Here they began to upload new versions of the map, here the authors began to receive full feedback from the players, listening to comments and suggestions. With the popularity of DotA, the forum has grown to over 1 million visitors each month, 1-10 million page views each day, and a staff of over 100 volunteers.

The development of the game went on as usual. In version 5.74, Tidehunter was added. In version 5.75 Ursa Warrior and Atropos were introduced. Version 5.76 introduced Ezalor, Tinker, Ogre Magi, Pudge 2.0 and Sand King, fixed most of the old heroes.

November 2004. The final 5.xx version has been released - "DotA Allstars v.5.84c v2". With this version, Dota received stability. This version was of extreme historical significance, the number of players increased several dozen times. Official competitions began on this version. Even after the release of the 6.xx line, this card remained popular.

Participated in the creation of the legendary map and our compatriot. The Russian mapmaker True.Rus added its own fast loading algorithm to the standard 5.84b map, renaming the map to 5.84c, as a result, the loading time of the map decreased from 3 minutes to 20 seconds. It was this optimized map that began to be used around the world.

Then, in November, the first serious competition on the Dota map took place. The competition was hosted by the International Gaming Syndicate (IGS). The battle took place between the House of Zed and 4DTA teams.

For training, special versions of Dota began to appear, the so-called AI cards, where bots were installed instead of real players.

5. Guinsoo Legacy (Version 6.01)
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February 28, 2005. Guinsoo releases the map DotA Allstars v.6.01 and soon announces that this is the final version, he is no longer going to be engaged in the further development of Dota. (According to the rumors of the gaming community, Guinsoo was invited to the staff of the developers of "World of Warcraft"). The remaining co-authors - IceFrog and Neichus took over the support of the map.

March 2005. After Guinsoo, there are 69 perfectly balanced heroes left. Neichus actively took up the expansion of the game, adding more and more playable characters. During the first versions of 6.xx, he created: Earthshaker, Tiny, Chen 2.0, Stealth Assassin 2.0, Phantom Lancer, Enchantress, Enigma, Ax, Shadow Fiend, Visage 2.0, Nerubian Weaver, Bloodseeker and Dazzle. In addition, Neichus came up with the idea of ​​creating a courier that delivers things to the heroes, thereby saving the players from having to return to the base.

But with such amazing performance, Neichus forgot about the main component of the game - about balance. The players were dissatisfied with the creativity of the new leaders of Dota, and continued to use the old version of the map (in March, a professional Dota tournament from World Cyber ​​Games was announced, and it was held according to the 5.84c version of the map). Neichus was never able to bring his innovations to mind, he soon left, leaving one IceFrog at the helm of Dota.

6. Ice Frog. First trial and error (Version 6.1x)
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June 2005. Icefrog got everything that Neichus broke in a burst of free creativity. Although IceFrog himself started with serious mistakes. He released DotA Allstars v.6.10, adding his first custom hero, Invoker, with 31 spells - the most egregious example of imbalance in Dota history. Invoker was not used in official tournaments for a long time, and only much later his power was reduced, and the number of spells was reduced to 10, so that he could compete on equal terms. But still, IceFrog better learned the principles of work of the Guinsoo guru, and over time began to correct the mistakes made.

To overcome the popularity of the 5.xx series, IceFrog took a course on improved map support, and on further expanding the gaming audience. To do this, they began to release localized versions of maps. In June 2005, Dota v.6.12 was released, for the first time it was not only in English, but also in Chinese. As a result, the popularity of the game in China has increased greatly.

7. IceFrog comes to the fore (Version 6.2x)
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In version 6.20, Icefrog fixed most of the gameplay bugs, and also replaced the unpopular winter landscape from The Frozen Throne with the old evergreen texture set from version 5.84, which to this day has not undergone drastic changes. A new hero has been added - Prince Arthas from the Warcraft 3 story company.

October 23, 2005. The Clanbase and Electronic Sports League organization has included Dota in the list of official esports disciplines.

November 2005. IceFrog releases map version DotA Allstars v.6.27b. Only with the release of this version Icefrog managed to get out of the shadow of the 5.xx series released by Guinsoo a year ago. This version featured a finely tuned balance, and the number of innovations it made could no longer be ignored. Map 6.27b has been announced as the official version for use in leagues and championships. One of the first tournaments held on this map was the Singapore World Cyber ​​Games 2005.

In version 6.28, the Witch Doctor and Specter heroes were added, the -cs command (monster killing statistics screen) was added, the loading screen was changed.

Version 6.29 was released with critical bugs. Version 6.30 fixed some things, but it was released in a hurry, due to the great interest of the community in new versions, and therefore also contained errors. Therefore, players have been using versions 6.27 and 6.28 for a long time.

8. Development of eSports (Version 6.3x)
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April 2006. DotA Allstars 6.30 has been released. Starting with this version, it became possible to participate in the game as an outside observer. Warcraft 3 maps have a maximum limit on the number of players. In total, 12 seats are available to players, 10 of them were originally used for players in Dota, the remaining 2 seats were previously blocked, and now they have been turned into spectator seats. This increased the convenience of recording matches of the game, and brought Dota one step closer to the title of a full-fledged esports discipline.

May 2006. Released version 6.32. Chinese version 6.32 was released only in August. This was caused by the fact that the translator Heintje decided to add a small tutorial in the format of questions and answers (FAQ) to the map in order to lower the threshold for entering the game. The tutorial explained how to properly farm gold, where secret stores are located, and what rules apply to the effects of orbs.

Popular teams and star players

The appearance of the first team with a sponsor. It was the clan PluG (coL) team from North America. Thus, the first "stars" appeared among Dota players. The most famous players are coL.Fear and coL.ezy.

coL.Fear had a high level of micromanagement and the ability to play all of the game's many heroes equally well. He quickly rose to the status of a legend, replays of matches with his participation were reviewed by a huge number of players.

coL.ezy became a very famous farmer and popularized this direction in the game. For a while he was even the best at it, but later lost this title to player JMC.Merlini. Currently, a lot of DotA players are looking to land the last hits on monsters in time to get more gold. Previously, almost no one paid attention to this, although this mechanic was basic, and was laid down in Aeon of Strife. The replays featuring coL.ezy clearly showed what a great advantage a competent farming of monsters gives.

Following the status of "star" teams received: Fang and Gang (FAG), later changed to Apex; team ADA (Arrogant DotA Arseholes) – tPD.

Basic tactics and selectable heroes

In version 6.32, the main strategy was to use abilities that affect the entire area (Area of ​​Effect, AoE), for which many players nicknamed this version the “AoE Age”.

All 5 team members chose heroes with AoE abilities, or the 4-protect-1 tactic was chosen, when all possible experience and gold were given to one player, and as a result, such a superhero gave an advantage over the other team. Such tactics required great cohesion, and the teams of that era were distinguished by high quality teamwork.

A fairly common item "Mekansm" had no limit on the number, and they could be collected by 6 pieces in the inventory, this allowed the whole team to constantly heal and push enemies more actively.

Gradually, the 4-protect-1 tactic became dominant, for example, it was used by almost all Chinese players. Also at that time there was a tactic of ganking (helping a hero from another lane to quickly destroy enemy heroes), but it was not very popular.

September 10, 2006. IceFrog releases map version DotA Allstars v.6.37. Due to the widespread use of AoE effects, their usefulness has been reduced in the new version. In 6.37, the popular base items "Vanguard" and "Bottle" (an empty bottle that allows you to collect and store runes) first appeared. Standard treatment "Tango" has become more effective. Destruction of towers, which were previously not rewarded in any way, began to bring 200 gold to each team member. All these small changes have greatly changed the tactics of the players' behavior. The most popular was the "quick push" strategy - supporting your monsters for an earlier destruction of enemy towers.

September 2006. Dota became so popular that professional developers noticed its success. Riot Games has announced the development of a new game "League of Legends" with game mechanics from DotA. This is how the first potential rival games began to appear. But the game itself came out only 2 years after that.

2006 October. China hosted a major Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) championship.

November 6, 2006. The MyM PriDe #1 (Prime Defending) tournament was held. It was this event that later significantly increased the popularity of the game as an esports discipline.

At this tournament, for the first time, viewers saw a new tactic for controlling the entire map. Specifically, this was done with the help of the Tinker hero with the Boots of Travel item, which allowed him to gank in all lanes in time. But seeing this, the players began to look for new ways of such global control, and IceFrog added several new heroes in the following parts, sharpened precisely for such tactics: Clockwerk Goblin, Ancient Apparition, Gyrocopter.

The Russian team "Say Plz" began a successful ascent to their triumph, after a while they already competed on equal terms with the star team "coL".

In version 6.38, the items "Arcane Ring", "Mjollnir", "Vladmir's Offering" were added. A flying courier appeared. The hero "Priestess of the Moon" was added.

In version 6.39, the heroes "Geomancer" and "Dazzle" were added.

9. Entering the world stage (Version 6.4x)
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February 7, 2007. In the new version v.6.41, the standard All Pick (-AP) game mode has been replaced with League Mode (-LM). On February 28, the Chinese version of the map was released. Now localization delays were minimal.

February 28, 2007. The first major Dota tournament, the Russian ASUS Winter Open, was held in Russia. The 1st place was taken by the Russian team "MaGe" (Magic aGe). 2nd place - "DoTa", 3rd place - "Say Plz".

March 7, 2007. The MyM PriDe #4 (Prime Defending) tournament was held, in which 137 teams participated. The tournament was remembered for the fact that three Russian teams "Say Plz", "MaGe", "SD" were removed from the competition at once. Officially, the reason was that the player under the HoroN account was listed in all three teams at once. The coach of the champion team "Say Plz" admitted the mistake, but considered the punishment too harsh, and in response accused the organizers of corruption. But in the end, the little-known Russian team "DoTa" won anyway. After that, both the teams and the organizers began to be more demanding in respect of the rules.

March 2007. DotA Allstars v.6.43 has been released.

April 12, 2007. Time after time, the MyM event has grown in size. Already 200 teams from all over the world participated in the fifth tournament. The MyM PriDe #5 that took place was referred to as the “World Cup of the DotA”.

May 8, 2007. The famous Russian team "VP" (Virtus Pro) was organized. It included players from the old teams "MaGe" and "DoTa". They lost their debut tournament "ASUS Spring 2007 Tournament" to the more experienced team "Say Plz", but after that they began to dominate the esports world. Already in the summer tournament "ASUS Summer 2007", they took 1st place, removing "Say Plz" from the throne. Two gankers were especially singled out in the VR team: "ARS-ART" and "Vigoss". The team became so famous that it began to set the fashion for all other participants in the competition. It was VR who came up with and popularized the "Full Pressure Gank" tactics and the widespread use of the "Blink Dagger" item.

June 8, 2007. The organizers of MyM have accumulated experience over the five tournaments held, and as a result, they reformatted their event into the MyM Prime Nations international league. Only one team from each country could participate in the league. This is how the first real international Dota championship appeared. MYM Prime Nations #1 featured 18 national teams. The Russian team won.

September 29, 2007. Asia hosted its own big Asian DotA Championships (ADC) tournament on the Garena gaming platform.

November 4, 2007. The next tournament MYM PriDe #8 brought together 400 teams from all over the world. The finalists were MYM, VP, KS (Kingsurf) and SK.

December 20, 2007. The DotA discipline was added to the ESWC 2008 big esports event.

January 27, 2008. The second international tournament MYM Prime Nations #2 brought together 60 national teams. Again, prize-winning places were taken by Russian-speaking teams. The Russian team took 1st place, the Ukrainian team - 2nd place.

10. First games competitors (Demigod, LoL, HoN)
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2008. The first competitor of Dota came out - the game " Demigod from the developers of Gas Powered Games, better known for their Action RPG games. Demigod's launch failed despite a massive promotional campaign and the advantages of a full game format over an expansion pack. The success of DotA was due to the fact that it arose already on the ready-made fan base "WarCraft 3". "Demigod" had to develop from scratch, in an empty field. This genre of online game needs millions of players to play comfortably, and auto-match selects players of equal strength for you. The developers did not master such a scale, and the game faded very soon, without having time to blossom in full force.

October 7, 2008. Another game in the new Dota-like genre has been released - “ League of Legends» (LoL). The game was created by Riot Games under the leadership of Marc Merrill. It is worth noting that "Riot Games" is not exactly a professional development studio, initially it was a large group of game fans.

League of Legends very quickly became a real competitor to DotA in its genre. While having all the advantages of Dota, the new LoL also offered new advantages: 1) the whole game was easier to install, 2) the possibility of automatic updates appeared, 3) the game server began to automatically select participants for parties, and in Dota it was all done manually, 4) a single server allowed to collect statistics, show in real time the ratings of players, their effectiveness, successes, achievements, 5) the game became completely free for everyone (“Dota”, although it was free, but its installation required the purchase of a licensed copy of “WarCraft 3: TFT”) .

2010. The game is out Heroes of Newerth by S2 Games. This game did not receive much popularity, but it also took a small part of the Dota audience.

2010. At BlizzCon 2010, Blizzard showed off an early prototype of its Blizzard DOTA game powered by StarCraft II. In October 2013, it was renamed to " Heroes of the Storm". In March 2014, alpha testing began, and on June 2, 2015, the game became available to all players.

11. Rebirth (DotA 2)
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2010. There was a discord in the team of creators. Returning Guinsoo invited his co-authors to the development team of the game "League of Legends". Pendragon agreed, but IceFrog refused and continued to support the "DotA" map. Pendragon previously maintained the DotA-Allstars.com site properly, but after this event closed it. The new official site for Dota was PlayDota.com, and the term "Allstars" was dropped from the map's name.

With the advent of the first real competitors, Dota revealed serious technical shortcomings. What happened automatically in the new LoL, and once again did not strain the player, in Dota had to be done manually: look for allies for yourself, look for suitable opponents, set up the mode through the command line. If any of the players left, the match was not counted according to the standard rules of Warcraft. The Battle.net server counted the progress of players on standard maps, but completely ignored fan-made additions. It was convenient to play Dota in large gaming clubs and championships, it became convenient to play LoL on any computer connected to the Internet.

Technically, Dota is obsolete, and IceFrog decided to move the game to a new engine, independent of both WorldEditor and Battle.net. The role of the publisher was taken over by Valve.

October 13, 2010. Valve Software has officially announced DotA 2. But a year before that, IceFrog announced that he was going to work with Valve on a new project.

2011 August. At the GamesCom 2011 gaming exhibition, which was held in Cologne from August 17 to 21, Valve held a trial five-day Dota 2 tournament called "The International". At this competition, the game was first presented to the general public. The prize pool was $1.6 million. 16 strongest teams from Europe and Asia were invited. The Ukrainian team Natus Vincere (NaVi) became the champion of The International 2011.

November 3, 2011. The DotA 2 closed beta test has begun with the involvement of tens of thousands of ordinary players.

February 2012. There was a trial between the companies "Blizzard" and "Valve" for the rights to the trademark "DOTA". Oddly enough, Valve won the court, having no direct relation to the creation of the brand, while Blizzard retained the right to use the DOTA trademark only in custom modifications.

June 1, 2012. Paid decoration items and a premium shop for purchasing them have been added to the game. Now you can buy access to the closed beta version of the game.

2012 August. The International 2012 was held in Seattle from August 26 to September 2, 2012. The prize pool of the tournament was $1.6 million. The Chinese team Invictus Gaming became the champion of The International 2012.

2013 August. The International 2013 was held from 3 to 12 August 2013. The prize pool of the tournament was $2,874,407. At that time, it was the largest prize pool in the history of eSports. The Swedish team Alliance became the champion of The International 2013.

July 2014. The International 2014 was held from 8 to 21 July 2014. Thanks to the efforts of the community, the prize pool amounted to more than $10.9 million, thereby exceeding last year's record by several times. The main part of the tournament was held at the 17,000-seat Key Arena in Seattle. The Newbee team from China became the champion of The International 2014.

June 2015. A new beta version of "Dota 2: Reborn" has been released, created on the new Source 2 game engine.

2015 August. The International 2015 was held from 3 to 8 August 2015. The final prize pool consisted of a base fund of $1,600,000 and interest on ticket sales of $16,816,970, ending up at $18,416,970. The main part of the tournament, like last year, was held at the Key Arena in Seattle. The Evil Genuises team from the USA became the champion of The International 2015.

November 2015. In 2015, a series of The Major tournaments started, organized by Valve. The first one was held in November 2015 in Frankfurt.

March 2016. The second tournament of The Major in Shanghai.

June 2016. The third The Major in the city of Manila.

12. Current state of affairs (2016)
what is better dota 2 or lol

Now, under the wing of a large and experienced publisher, the game has been reborn into a completely new project of higher quality. Now "Dota 2" is more convenient, more accessible and more beautiful than its first part. But the ideal release time was missed, the previously released "League of Legends" had already managed to lure most of the audience of players who were not familiar with the original Dota.

"Dota 2" is super popular in Russia, in China, but in other countries the time of its dominance has passed. Now "LoL" occupies 66% of the global MOBA games market, and the share of "Dota 2" is only 14%. In addition, a new, but very dangerous competitor, HotS, is starting to come on its heels, gaining 7% of the world market of this genre in a couple of years.

Although, if you look from the other side, everything turned out right. League of Legends was created by Gunsioo, and DotA 2 was created by his former assistant IceFrog. It is logical that the game of the master turned out better than the game of his journeyman.

The increased popularity of DotA 2 in Russia is due to the fact that Russian cybersportsmen very often took first places in world tournaments in this game. Fans still hear famous Russian teams: DoTa, Say Plz, MaGe, NaVi, VP (Virtus Pro).

And so far, Dota tournaments (The International) are the largest-budget competitions in esports (table of esports budgets). "LoL" takes its popularity among ordinary players, and "DotA 2" continues to attract the most famous esportsmen.