DotA Touch That Dial

God damn that is a lame title name.

So for the past few weeks I have been playing Defence of the Ancients, or DotA Allstars. It is a cool Warcraft 3 map that spring up a few years ago and has gained massive popularity since. I remember seeing version 1 of it waaaay back and being disinterested. It is now at version 6.49b. Quit a few upgrades.

So what it is about? Two teams, Sentinels and Scourge, fight each other to destroy and objective; for the Scourge it is the World Tree and for the Sentinels it is the Frozen Throne. The map consists of three 'lanes' where AI creeps (monsters) for both sides run up and down them killing each other while each player, up to 10 for a 5v5, controls one unique hero. The player picks a hero or gets assigned one, depending on the mode of the map. The modes most used are '-ap', or All Pick, where each side can pick any hero they want, '-ar', All Random, where each side is given random heroes from either faction, and -em, Easy Mode, which is usually tagged onto the other two making money easier to get, towers easier to kill and leveling your hero is faster. The map has more room to move around in, but the AI creeps are confined to the lanes. It sounds very simple but is really hard. As a player, you need to level up your hero, get him items, not die from creeps and especially not get killed by other heroes while you move up the lanes and kill enemy creeps and heroes. There is a lot of techniques to play DotA that are outlined pretty well in this guide on the DotA forums. Yeah, it's a bit. I don't even have it all down.

DotA is also really competitive. They have leagues all the time, and even have a 'public private'...um...I'm going to call it 'club' for the lack of a better word...that anyone can get into, but it has a few requirements, thus I call is public private. Even at Blizzcon, they had a ton of computers set up to play DotA and had a competition for it. I think it's impressive how much popularity a single WC3 map has gotten.

I don't think I have done enough bitching in my last entries so I am going to try to do more complaining from now on, or at least a little bit so it doesn't seem like I am sucking a lot of cock for every game that comes out.

The gameplay is solid, the heroes are great and the community is big. Awesome. So what is bad? A lot of heroes are downright cheap as fuck. A game of DotA can last anywhere between 30 minutes and over and hour. This gives a lot of time for hero development but some heroes are so retarded that if you give them long enough they become perpetual gods. Some you cant catch, some you cant hurt, some you cant out damage, and some you cant do all three too. It can feel retarded. Another thing is, altho a big community is a plus, everyone in it can be a prick. Everyone. Even me. Especially me. And not in a good way. When I first started DotA I tried to play online and got yelled at because I was spending too long looking at heroes to pick and then I spent too much time looking for items to get and trying to figure out how to get the big badass one that I liked even tho it didn't fit my hero and it was generally a lot of yelling and run on sentiences. If it was not for my friend Jesus, yes Jesus, last year in college when me, him, and about 6-8 other people learned it over many fun LAN games in the college computer lab, then would not be playing at all. If you are going to start DotA, please get ready to be ripped in to.

Something I am trying as a social experiment is acting like a newbie, but not sounding dumb. If I get a hero, I ask what items the hero gets and sometimes what they can do, but I do it in a non-spastic manner that most newbies seem to get caught up in because they thing they are going to get help by yelling "OMG WHAT DO I DO NEYOW!?" You just cant do that. Generally I have been getting help. I have also been improving my game and lowing my blood pressure. Not only have I been asking like a newbie but I have been trying to think like one too thus setting my expectation for each game low. If I get killed too much "Hey, I'm new." If I get a double kill "Wow! Awesome!" and the team pats me on the back. If I do so-so, no one notices. I have also been yelling at the computer less. It has been working. Take the above as advice.

Oh, one more thing. There is a program out there called WC3Banlist. This little program is general used by everyone that plays DotA, including me. If someone leaves in the middle of a game or acts like a big baby, they are put on a ban list, BUT(!!!) the thing you should not fear is never being able to play again. In fact, don't think about it at all. The ban list's really big list comes from TDA, that public private club I talked about earlier. Only people who play TDA get on the 'global' ban list. If you don't know what TDA is, you are not playing it so don't worry. If you are banned in game then don't worry. 100% of the time it is someone making a flase threat and simply putting you on a list stored on that persons computer. You will probably never see them again. I know for every time I have gotten baned I have never seen that host again. I don't worry about it.

So why do we have ban list then? Well, if I ever get an internet connection that will let me host WC3 games, I will use it to keep the assholes out of my games. It also has a ping checker for other players to keep people who are going to lag and drop out and an IP checker so you don't get screwed because Jim, Joe, and Johnny are all playing in the same room, rigging the game so you get stomped. I say get WC3Banlist, look at it and figure it out.

Well, that all. I play on the BNet US East realm as TheDeath_Jester. Maybe I'll see you sometime.