It appears Dota 2 has officially been released so instead of continuing our rather lengthy beta thread I’ve taken sometime before hand to prepare a new one. Dota 2 is a Free to Play MOBA game developed by Valve Corporation & released through their popular Steam platform. It’s the stand-alone sequel to the Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. (check that wiki link for the extended background & history) Similar titles based on Dota's success include: League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, Dawngate, Smite, & Heroes of the Storm if you’ve heard of them. Dota 2 consists of session-based online multiplayer matches in which two teams of five players attempt to destroy the opponents' fortified strongholds. Each player controls a "Hero" character and, over the course of each game, will improve their hero's abilities, acquire items, and attack the enemy team whilst applying pressure on their base defenses. (would like to thank Wikipedia for that lovely description) Games generally take thirty to sixty minutes to complete but can be done in as little as twenty & as long as ninety. Dota features a number of game modes across casual or ranked competitive matches, bot controlled practice sessions, & educational training sections for beginners learning the curves. You can watch DotA 2 videos at here: DotA 2 Top 10 Weekly Like all MOBA games Dota 2 is extremely easy to pickup but insanely hard to master. Hundreds of hours can slip away before one feels comfortable in their knowledge of the game. At the time of writing there is one hundred and twelve (yes 112) characters you can pick from each with their own unique abilities, builds, & talents. These heroes are divided into three categories; strength, agility, & intelligence. There are further classifications for each depending on the general role they'll be playing during the match. This can change depending on how somebody builds their character & over time as each game progresses. For more information I highly recommend checking out the Roles Section of the Dota 2 Wiki as it does a wonderful job covering the general ten types of hero interactions. Dota 2 also features one hundred and twenty-eight (that's a big 128) items across three different shop types; the main bases, the side shops, & the secret shops which are divided into three broader categories. Basics featuring the; Consumables, Attributes, Armaments, & Arcane items. Upgrades featuring the; Common, Support, Caster, Weapons, Armor, & Artifacts items. Finally ending with the Secret items featuring all the wonderful & mysterious things found at the (not so) Secret shops. Many of these can be combine together over the course of a match to form the greater more expensive items. This allows characters to work towards end game goals while still gaining benefits along the way. Each player can only hold six items at any given time though there is storage in your base & a courier that can run items all over the map as well make purchases for you. Also an important side note: items can be sold back to vendors for a 100% refund within ten seconds after purchasing, but beyond this window items may only be sold back for 50% of its price tag. The currency of the game is gold, which is granted steadily at a slow rate. Gold can be accumulated at a much higher rate by killing enemy units known as creeps, destroying enemy towers, base infrastructure, or killing heroes. Killing units & base infrastructure grants gold solely to the player who killed it; killing heroes grants gold to the killer and any nearby allies; and destroying towers gives gold to all players on the team. Killing enemy creeps, heroes, and towers also provides experience, which allows the player's hero to level up, granting access to more powerful skills and abilities at the rate of one skill point per level. (maxing out at level twenty-five) Featured across the map are units referred to as "neutrals", which are not aligned to a faction, primarily located in the forests. (called the jungle) These camps can also be killed for additional gold/experience & respawn once a minute. Located on the southeast side of the river is a boss called "Roshan" who typically requires multiple team members to be killed. Following his death, Roshan will drop a powerful item known as the "Aegis of the Immortal" which allows for a hero to instantly respawn at the location of their death if they are killed. A neat feature of Dota 2 not found in other MOBA titles is "Denying" which allows players to inhibit the enemy's ability to accumulate gold and experience by killing an allied unit or destroying an allied structure before an enemy can do so. Denying reduces the amount of experience and gold the enemy faction can receive for the kill. Allied heroes may also be denied if they are on critically low health and have a fatal spell applied to them. (once again thanks to Wikipedia for a much more eloquent manner of wording most of that) You can watch DotA 2 videos at here: DotA 2 Top 10 Weekly The game features micro-transactions though Valve has formally announced on multiple occasions that the game will not contain additional costs for having the full roster of heroes and item inventory available. The income generated is being used for Dota 2's continued maintenance & development. The store consists of cosmetic changes, voice packs, event eTickets, & an entire range of other items like the Interactive Compendium for the International Tournament. The store is composed of custom creations developed by Valve, as well as products from the Steam Workshop, which is a system in which users may submit creations for review by Valve and if successful, be permanently incorporated into Dota 2. I have to say just as a personal note, my favorite hands down are the voice packs changing the announcers. These as well the different HUD designs are shared by other players who have purchased them in every match so that others can experience them cost free as well. (the button is in the top left hand of the screen if anyone is looking to check them out!) Dota 2 also features a system that allows people to use community constructed guides to learn different manners of utilizing characters while actually playing in-game. It will highlight the skills & items recommended as you progress as well give additional information on why the author feels these are of value or how to properly use them. These guides work on a voting system for ranking & are also selectable via the icons in the top left hand of the screen. Dota 2 is popular world wide & has servers spread across the globe. At the time of writing these consist of the; US West (Seattle, WA), US East (Sterling, VA), Europe West (Luxembourg), Europe East (Vienna, Austria), SE Asia (Singapore), China (Shanghai), South America (São Paulo, Brazil), Russia (Stockholm, Sweden) & Australia (Sydney) servers. For a representation of the worldwide distribution of players currently online check out the live global player overview map. The game is pretty much the same everywhere with only small changes for localization. The biggest differences being inside the Chinese client thanks to the state imposed rules forcing a "Low Violence" version of the game to be released free of blood, skulls, or overly aggressive depictions. A greater breakdown of these differences can be viewed on CyborgMatt's May 23rd, 2013 blog post. Sadly to many Chinese players chagrin the early remodeling & reworking made for some happy go lucky dopey looking changes that many compared to graphics found on the Nintendo 64. I have heard this has gotten better over time but a quick google search didn't yield me any more analyst on the subject. In May 2013 it was reported that Dota 2 while still in beta had reached almost 330,000 concurrent players and holds the record for the game with the most concurrent users in Steam history, breaking its own record set earlier the same year. Simultaneous with this benchmark, it was determined that the concurrent number of Dota 2 players in May of 2013 outweighed the number of players for the rest of Steam's top ten most-played games combined. Update: As of January 2014 it now appears to have over 800,000 concurrent players daily! (thanks to wikipedia for those cool stats & wording). You can watch DotA 2 videos at here: DotA 2 Top 10 Weekly
