Defense of the Ancients (Dota) is widely regarded as one of the most popular game mod in the world. Its popularity is ever-increasing and is a very popular game across the world especially around South-East Asia. But what is Dota all about?
For starters, Dota as stated is not a game, it’s a modification or more precisely a custom scenario in a real-time, multi strategy game War craft III: The Frozen Throne and its predecessor War craft III: Reign of Chaos. The game is available on the web as a freeware here. (another reason accounting for its bulging popularity).
The essence of the game for any team is to destroy one’s opponents secured establishments at divergent corners of the map. These establishment or structures that need to be destroyed are called as Ancients (hence the name).
Three different sets of entities – the dota heroes, dota allied heroes and dota creeps help the players in their task, heroes being the most powerful of the three. Gold acts as the medium for commodity exchange and is used for buying equipment (also called dota items and spells) and other things during the errand.
The scenario has undergone many mutations since inception and continues to do so. At the time of this article update, the map is at version 6.74c. At present, ‘IceFrog’ is the authoritative developer of this scenario per se.
The game play confronts two teams with each trying to destroy each others’ ancients. The teams are known as the Sentinels (South west corner) and the Scourge (North East corner). Obviously the ancient is heavily guarded and players have to fight to reach the enemy base and destroy all enemy Ancients.
Each human player represents a virtual a hero (already mentioned). The hero is vested with extra ordinary powers that help him in his task. Choosing a hero is a tactical decision as one hero’s weakness is another hero’s strength. As such it is a team game but sometimes one hero can change the whole scenario of the game single-handedly.
The game mostly revolves around strengthening your heroes. This can be done by neutralizing soft targets and the likes. This lets a hero achieve experience which in turn increases the efficiency of the hero. Killing of enemies heroes does precisely the same. Also another important commodity in the game, gold plays a vital part overall. With gold a hero is able to buy stuff that ultimately leads to increase in level.
The game has versatile options and especially all heroes can be customized suiting one’s needs and using different dota strategies.