It's just a humble custom map for the game, it's just the work of amateur authors, it's just an "unofficial" way to play the game, but it's now a mainstream form of entertainment. It's Dota! Not only has it become a habit to play Dota in college dormitories, but it has also become a common way to play Dota in addition to work and life, and many new generation of online games are using Dota game mode. There may be players who are fooled by their classmates to play Dota battles, there may be players who "lol" after work, and there may be players who are playing other Dota online games. When playing, does anyone know how this game mode came about? What has emerged in the development of this game mode? What did early Dota look like? Let's take you to understand it from the perspective of mainland players.
1. Start with "Warcraft 3".
There are several steps to play the original Dota: Open Warcraft 3; Create a game with Dota Maps Join someone else's Dota Maps host; Play the game. The appeal of Warcraft 3 isn't just the well-balanced multiplayer battles, the map editor that grabs the player's attention. Many players don't play standard battles, but they like to play RPG maps, and Dota has evolved from RPG maps. No matter how well you play Dota, remember that Dota is made using Warcraft 3's map editor. Of course, Rome wasn't built in a day, and this editor has produced countless predecessors of DOTA.
Second, some early RPG maps are nostalgic
X Hero, a defensive map that requires players to cooperate with each other to beat the level, and already has the concept of "loadouts", so if you bought a book instead of 4 shields with your first money, do it all over again!
Chenghai 3C, up to 5v5, but each player can control more than one hero as long as you have the money to buy. The 3 horizontal roads already have the prototype of DOTA, and they also need to be outfitted and jungled. At that time, there were special rooms on all major battle platforms.
3. RPG maps before DOTA
More players prefer light-hearted RPG maps over Warcraft 3 standard matches, even if the battles are well balanced. There were a lot of RPG maps in the early days, among which defensive and confrontational maps were relatively playable and popular. Although the balance of the early confrontation map was not very ideal, this did not affect the enthusiasm of the players, whether it was an Internet café or a battle platform, there were many people fighting on the confrontation map.
At that time, the more famous confrontation map was the 3C series, and the more played ones were 3C+ORC+AI and Chenghai 3C. There is a sentence that still impresses me deeply: "Strive for 3C to become an e-sports!" "Whether the balance is unbalanced, **no**, the core of these maps is cooperation, and no matter how powerful a person is, he is not invincible.
4. A historical summary of the Dota map
Dota, whose full name is Defense of the Ancients: Allstars, literally translates to "Guarding the Ancient Ruins". This map has a very long history, the idea came from a StarCraft map, and the first Dota map appeared in the era of Reign of Chaos, where a player named Euls made the first Dota map: Roc Dota, where both teams only had a total of 5 heroes, which was very simple.
After EUL "retired", a player combined a number of heroes to make Dota Allstars. In 2005, 6Shortly after the release of version 01, icefrog and Neichus stepped forward. icefrog is now the main map programmer, responsible for anything including the execution of the game and the testing of the balance. As the 6 series of releases continues, bug fixes, new heroes and new spells are being introduced to Dota all the time.
Dota's popularity in the mainland came after Icefrog took over, which is one of the reasons why everyone recognizes Ice Frog. However, the producers before the Ice Frog should not be erased, and without them, the Ice Frog may not be able to achieve its current achievements. Until now, the Dota map is still being updated, and it is still the most popular RPG map in Warcraft 3, and its popularity even exceeds the official content of Warcraft 3 itself.
5. The three major periods of Dota
1) EUL period
The first version of Dota was released in 2003 by the mapmaker "Eul". The hero skills in the original Dota map are the same as those in regular games, but the innovative 5v5 game mode is still loved by players. At this time, Dota only has 32 heroes and 39 items. With the release of Warcraft III's expansion, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, the map editor was able to customize items, skills, models, and textures in more detail. After EUL made the Frozen Throne version of "Defense of the Ancients: Thirst for Gamma", the map was never updated. In honor of Eul's early contributions, there is an item in Dota Allstars named "Eul's Staff of Divinity" (i.e., "Eul's scepter of divinity", named during the time of Icefrog). At this time, there are different authors who have added different new heroes, items, and traits in their respective versions. Steve Feck, on the other hand, brought together some of the heroes from various versions of the Dota map to make Dota Allstars.
2) Guinsoo period
Steve Feck (nicknamed "Guinsoo") continues to develop Dota Allstars; This version ended up being the most popular one. In fact, the maps that are now simply called Dota refer to Dota Allstars. Steve Fick said that when he started working on Dota Allstars, he didn't imagine that it would eventually become so popular, and his goal was just to fix various bugs in other versions and make a fun version to share with friends; The successful genre inspired him to devise a new name, and he felt that there was a new genre for games. Guinsoo always optimizes the map and increases its speed as he updates it. During this period, about 10 mappers created a forum called "9nid". Steve Feck has added an item combination system to help players acquire more powerful heroes, as well as a powerful boss "Roshan" (named after his bowling ball) that requires a team to defeat. Since Steve Fick started maintaining Dota Allstars, he added voice acting when killing enemies, and the map has been updated to keep the game alive. Steve Feck uses a Battle.net channel as a place for Dota players to communicate, but Dota Allstars is not used as an official site for discussions. Dota Allstars' clan team, TDA, has proposed a dedicated ** to replace the inconvenient update. On October 14, 2004, TDA member Steve Mescone (nicknamed "Pendragon") created the official community, Dota-Allstarscom。。About 10 people created the first semi-official forum, followed by the first Dota federation, Clan Tda, which was then available in version 584。Later, International Gamaing Syndicate (IGS) began to run officially sanctioned Dota tournaments, and as more and more people played the game, "Guinsoo" began to seek help from other map makers (including IceFrog). The map version is in about 6At 00, the deputy leader (pendragon) quit the club due to a conflict with the group leader (guinsoo), which led to a period of chaos in the management of the old club, and the working group began to disintegrate. In addition to the most powerful boss named after Steve's bowling name "Roshan", there is also an item named after Steve's nickname in honor of his great contribution to Dota Allstars - "Guinsoo's ** Scythe" (i.e. "Guinsoo's scythe of vyse", named during the icefrog period). Guinsoo, Neichus, and Terrorblaze, among others, made 600 and 6Development of Dota Allstars was discontinued after version 01. At this point, there are 69 heroes in the game. 3) Icefrog period
After Steve Wick stopped developing, the icefrog was released from version 602 began to take over, and he is still working on the map until now. He adds new features, heroes, and fixes, and each version comes with a record of updates. icefrog declined to be interviewed; Only through him can send the map to getdota using emailcom and the nickname in the map loading screen to see that icefrog is the author of the map. IceFrog now communicates with players and answers their questions about him and the game through his personal blog. He will also report on some upcoming map releases, including new heroes and items. icefrog is more open to other people's opinions, and many new things are created through discussion. Dota Allstars doesn't have a large development and testing team, which gives you an advantage when making games, but it also brings problems such as incomplete testing. Dota Allstars is maintained through the official community. Players can post ideas for new heroes and items, as well as other elements added to the map. Players contribute icons and hero descriptions and create illustrations of the game's loading screens, and provide serious input on existing heroes and items; Less than two weeks after icefrog changes a new hero, a new version of the map will be released. An artificial intelligence version of the map was also released. Pendragon continues to maintain dota-allstarscom (since April 2009, the site has more than 1.5 million registered users and 1 million monthly visitors). Later, he left Dota-Allstars because Pendragon and some people wanted to make Dota Allstars a commercial product, and IceFrog still wanted to keep Dota Allstars freecom and start continuing to develop the game on its own **. On October 5, 2009, icefrog joined Valve with a team of developers who will further enhance the Dota experience. 6. Orthodox Dota Game OutlookDota online games are borrowed from Dota models, but they are not Dota models. A godson can't become a son, let alone a distant relative? Only the authentic son of Dota can be called a sequel to Dota. However, due to some historical reasons that everyone understands, there are also two authentic sequels to Dota. If you really don't understand? Read below to find out. 
7. Versions in other games
It's not so much that Dota has been made in other games, but that Dota has become a game mode, that is, MOBA. In StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, also developed by Blizzard and originally related to the Dota game mode, there is also a player-modded Dota: Imperial Sanctuary Storm (later renamed Storm Age). Blizzard originally wanted to develop an official version of Dota, Blizzard All-Stars, but later after perfecting the game mechanics, it has broken away from the Dota routine, and the game has entered the closed beta stage, and the name is Heroes of the Storm. Supergod Heroes started out almost identical to Dota in terms of gameplay, and then gradually developed independently. 8. Dota 2 now
Dota 2 is a completely independent game jointly launched by the famous game company Valve and the current leader of Dota icefrog, which is the orthodox sequel to Dota, and gets rid of the embarrassment that Dota needs to "parasitize" on other games, and there are many fewer restrictions in the game system, not only functions such as disconnection and reconnection, ladder ranking and other functions can also be easily realized, and those who are in the game can also directly ** the player's first perspective. The hero model in Dota 2 is very different from Dota but the map elements and the skill data of the heroes are the same as the latest version of the current Dota, except that a small number of heroes have not been ported to Dota 2. Also, under the new engine, Dota 2 has a better visual impact and better performance of skill effects. Dota games have grown from 10 heroes at the beginning to more than 100 heroes with different roles now; From folk entertainment to the world's largest e-sports event designated projects; From the works made by amateur players with the map editor, to the perfect world** national server Dota 2. All we can do is show you the story of Dota and the joy it brings us will never be erased.
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