Tag: dota (Page 3 of 4)

MOBA competitors are gunning for LoL

August 3, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

This isn’t exactly fresh news, but I do think it’s interesting to see some of the tactics employed to unseat League of Legends as king of the MOBA world. As you probably heard, Heroes of Newerth went free-to-play over the weekend. The rollout included some interesting ads on various gaming sites. One such ad encourages players to “stop laughing” and “get serious.” I can only imagine that’s a dig at the LoL acronym everyone is using for League of Legends.

The more serious threat is obviously Valve and DotA 2. I wasn’t surprised to hear that the game would be unveiled at Gamescom – there had been rumors about the tournament for weeks – but the prize purse for the tournament shocked me. For those who aren’t up to speed, Valve is flying the top 16 DotA teams to Germany to compete for a $1 million prize purse. Yes, again, a million bucks. That’s not buy-a-new-computer-and-pay-for-college-supplies money. That is life-changing money, money that could support a professional gaming career into the forseeable future. The benefit to Valve for making that commitment is obvious – they want every competitive team to come play DotA 2.

Will it work? Absolutely. I cannot imagine any of the top teams in competitive strategy games not taking a crack at DotA 2 with that kind of prize purse available. As for HoN, well, I think the game has enough barriers to entry that players entrenched in other games are unlikely to leave.

DotA, league of legends, News

dota dota 2 dota 2 tournament gamescom gamescom dota 2 tourney hon hon f2p hon free to play mobas

DotA 2 coming “soon” – will you be playing?

July 16, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

Valve quietly mentioned that DotA 2 was fast approaching just yesterday. The message appeared at the bottom of a press release about the Steam content delivery system. “Soon, Dota 2 will be delivered using [the new system]” was all it said, but there’s a little more info circulating the web. Apparently MYM, one of the most popular DotA teams in the world, is headed over to Germany during Gamescom along with several other European and Asian teams, supposedly to play in a promotional tournament at the event.

It’s no secret that Europe and Asia both have exploding esports scenes, particularly with regard to the MOBA genre. Gamescom seems like an excellent place to showcase the most anticipated entrant in the MOBA field. As for release dates, Valve hasn’t said anything, but Gamescom runs from August 17-21. I would imagine we won’t see the final product for at least another month, which puts us at late September, early November, just like roughly every other game you’ve been hearing about for the past three years.

Personally, I’m excited for DotA 2. I really enjoy Valve games and I have faith in what they can bring to the genre, especially with regard to multiplayer features. As much as I enjoy League of Legends, the game is way behind in terms of social features. If Valve can deliver core technical features players have come to expect, it could see incredible growth and visibility in this sector of the industry.

That said, I also think DotA 2 could miss the mark with a lot of casual players. The strength/agility/intellect system from those games feels opaque and archaic, even as someone closely familiar with the game. I could absolutely see people who are accustomed to the AP/AD system get frustrated with learning a whole new system for categorizing champions and choose to stick with LoL.

Will you be playing DotA 2?

Development, DotA, News

dota dota 2 dota 2 launch dota 2 news dota 2 release dota 2 release date gamescom valve

HoN is free this week

May 17, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

This is just a heads up for all you MOBA fans. HoN is celebrating its one year anniversary by offering the game up as free-to-play for the week. If you’re interested in checking out the other mainstream modern MOBA, head over to the website and download the client.

I tried out a quick game this afternoon without much success. My team won, but I’m not entirely sure how or what exactly was going on during the match. I played a lot of Dota so I’ve always been surprised by my inability to make sense of HoN. I think there are a few issues. First, it’s totally unclear what skills do what in the game. One of the champions was puking black stuff all over the screen. Another was casting some sort of slow, which I only knew because I started moving more slowly, not because there was any sort of indicator, and another champion was somehow 3-shotting me at level 8. Remember, we were winning, so I’m not sure how that happened.

Then there’s the store. I had enough trouble with the Dota store, but this one is somehow worse. There’s more happening on the screen without any real explanation of how it works. The recommended items for the character I played didn’t make much sense, at least as far as skill synergy was concerned, and the icons for the items are as indistinguishable as the attributes those items provide.

Maybe I’m getting old, but I don’t want to work in order to learn a game, and I think that’s how HoN feels. I think I could probably come to enjoy the game – after all, I loved Dota – but it would take so much time just to get familiar with the items and champions again that it doesn’t feel worth it. Why a developer would make an exact clone of a game but change the names and styles of every item and character is totally beyond me.

News, PC

dota dota vs hon heroes of newerth hon lol competitors lol vs hon moba moba genre

Is there another LoL client update in the works?

January 24, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

Riot recently announced that summoners will soon be able to play co-op games against computer controlled champions for IP. It sounds like a cool system, at least for getting back into the mix if you’ve been away for a while or want to test a new champion. More interesting to me, though, is the screenshot that’s in the current client for the service.

As you can see above, the picture shows what appears to be an updated client with some new features. For starters, there is a ‘Game Mode’ field. This could mean very good things for players who, like myself, enjoy a little variety. I would love to see all-random deathmatch implemented, and it would be interested to have an All Random All Mid option as well. The bad news is that the field is blank other than ‘Classic.’ Granted, Riot probably doesn’t want to leak anything, but that could also be an indication of just how far off these new game modes might be.

It’s hard to see much else. The new format is much more conducive to multiple maps in a list format, instead of the current grid button system the client uses to select game types. Any guesses as to how far away this client is? I’ll say six months.

league of legends, News

all random all mid aram arem captains mode client update co-op mode cooperative play deathmatch dota draft mode game modes game type lol changes lol update new client new features random draft rdem

Valve making a DotA clone?

August 7, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Some of you may recognize the name Jon St. John. Yeah, he has a badass name in real life, but he’s also done voice acting for one well-known and incredibly delayed badass: Duke Nukem. Well, Jon St. John has a new project, and one that could be of interest to LoL players. He’s doing voice acting for Valve’s version of DotA.

I don’t really have any details, and frankly, the DotA moniker comes from JSJ, not from Valve. What we do know is that Valve hired IceFrog (the mind behind DotA (along with Zileas)) to make something to please DotA fans. Jon St. John posted to his Twitter account this weekend that he has been doing voice work for DotA at Valve Software. I’m not sure why he would call out the name of the game without hearing it from Valve, and if they didn’t give him the go ahead, you can bet he wouldn’t be talking about it.

This doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot for the LoL community, but it could be bad news for any HoN fans out there. I’ve played a bit of HoN and been completely unimpressed, so it’s not like the name DotA will kill a game like LoL. It could kill HoN, though, especially with the kind of money Valve has. What could be a problem for LoL is just that – the money.

Valve could very easily sweep in on LoL territory with more bank, more developers, but more importantly, more support. With better server uptime and the bankroll to back a quicker development cycle, Valve could make a dent in the LoL player base. That’s not to say Valve will do that, just that it could with the resources it has. Valve was notoriously slow with some of the TF2 developments, though, even if TF2 has a massive player base. Let’s also not forget that IceFrog did work on HoN, and we can all see how well that’s going.

In short, I think it’s totally possible that Valve is working up a DotA clone and it has the potential to make a bit of a stink for the big players in the MOBA world. There are so many variables, though, that Valve has a long way to go before