I had a little think about why Blizzard would bother making DotA. Sure, they own the copyright due to their EULA, but if there's maps like SotIS (and soon Temple Siege) around, why bother? It seems like a waste of money. Even more than that, they're taking a long time over it. They released 3 other UMS maps, why didn't they release DotA with them? (sure it's a bigger map, more complicated, and requires a little more balancing, but still, they're a huge game dev company and it's only one map).

From what I can see, the reason is simple. WarCraft III DotA has millions of players. It STILL HAS millions of players, even though there are maps like SotIS out there. And a large percentage of those millions of people have pirated WC3 to play it. Also, games like Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends have attracted more millions, many of them ex-DotA players. What Blizzard is doing is trying to get a piece of the pie. StarCraft II online requires a legit client, so it's very difficult to have something like garena where you can play pirated copies of SC2 on. Therefore, playing SC2 DotA requires you to pay your $60 to Blizzard. Let's say 500,000 people move from LoL/HoN/WC3DotA to SC2 DotA. Maybe it's only a tenth of the community, or less. But that's still $30,000,000 dollars, which is easily worth the thousands they spend on game designers and artists and a month or ten of balancing. And think, if they release the next two installments of SC2 and update DotA to be only playable on those versions, there's another $120 in their pocket by all the people playing DotA.

This also means that Blizzard is happy for SotIS, TS, Hero arena, and all the other AoS maps to be popular, because they also attract users from LoL/HoN/WC3DotA, who also pay their $60. They're just using their copyright of the DotA name and their abilities as a game design company to make a superior product to attract more users, which it would be hard for SotIS/TS/heroarena/over9000AoS's to compete with, but is competitive with LoL/HoN/valve'sDOTA/WC3DOTA. And this is also why DotA won't be released tomorrow; they'll want to make sure it makes a big market splash, so they'll make it balanced, bug-free, and competitive before they release, which takes time.

I suppose the final question is Will It Work? Will people pay $60 to play SC2 DotA when they could play WC3 DotApirated/LoLforfree/HoNfor$15? That's the real question, and I think Blizzard's too late. Maybe some people will, but the majority of people who play SC2 DotA will have already bought SC2. We'll see though. Should be interesting to see how things progress.

They'll need to tack on a huge story or some sort of procedural gameplay to at least attempt to appear justifiably distinct.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Feb 13 2011, 7:54 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

They're making SC2 DotA because it's the game is a fun diversion.

It's not meant to be a serious or competitive game to me, you'll have 400 ms ping at best...

I played Blizzard DotA (now called Blizzard Allstars) at BlizzCon, and it kicks the ass of every SC2 AoS I've played so far. I actually enjoyed it as much as LoL if not more. I think it'll be worth it for that alone.

I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard Allstars is released in conjunction with their Map Marketplace...

I would be. StarJeweled was as much of a success at BlizzCon and they released that for free. My guess is they're just having a lot of balance issues or something. Hell maybe they're waiting for legal considering Valve is making DOTA.

Blizzard Dota will become either like LoL, or worse, like HoN, where eventually, things will cost money

it's also makes good sense since, coming from WC3, everyone plays Dota..
(and srsly, blizzard reli only cares about wc3 -> sc2 "transitioners" now)

Blizzard deleted my post on the bnet forums about this, so I MUST BE RIGHT!!!!

You do realize that HotS and LotV will be priced as expansions and as a result will cost less than WoL, so there will be less revenue than you exaggerated, but still some, and Blizz deleting your post doesn't mean much, it could simply be due to the mention of piracy

I'm fairly sure that from what Blizzard has said, HotS and LotV will be priced the same as WoL was. Their excuse is that the campaigns in HotS and LotV are as big as WoL.

HoN is bad because it costs money okay

so since when were you high?

Blizzard said priced as expansions, ill take a look at the price compariston between BW and SC1 and see if there was a difference

Turns out my post wasn't deleted, I'm just blind and assumed it was still on the first page.

HoN is "bad" because it costs money because I don't see anyone HERE playing it
and my friends who used to play it don't play it anymore b/c it costs money.
It's "bad" as in it lost popularity

Meh.. there's no doubt Blizzard Dota (now blizzard allstars) will be done very well, and people will love it. I'm not too sure about the other AoS's being a driver to attract other people to buy the expansions...

You really need to stop believing everything you read, it's getting kind of pathetic.

HoN's popularity has been growing steadily since release; the amount of concurrent players has never been higher, and I play daily. Microtransactions are optional and don't affect gameplay.

Faz-, buddy. Context man.


Was just explaining why HoN is Bad (it'll cost money to play.. and that's ALWAYS bad... assuming Free things are ALWAYS better)
Sheesh, man... you're certainly in a good mood, calling people pathetic just for that.

Free things are rarely better, they are underdeveloped and have much weaker maintainability. I would not even remotely concede that assumption.

Half of your posts I see have things that are just flatly wrong. If you're going to get angry at being called out on that, stop posting hearsay.

No I meant it is better For us that it's Free.

As in "wouldn't it be better if HoN was free, so i don't have to pay to play it?"
or like "wouldn't it be awesome if WoW was free?" It isn't going to happen obviously.

I think what I was pointing out back then was that b/c HoN is now not free, it has probably caused a lot of people to Not play the game, which is bad. It doesn't matter if the community is still growing strong, it's just that the game has lost of a lot of players.. which is bad. It also doesn't mean that the game itself is bad, it just means that they're working on a game that a lot of people won't play simply b/c they have to pay for it.. which is bad.

Jeeze
Next thing I know you're going to start saying my posts are politically incorrect or some shit like that.

... I know what you mean. I think you're wrong. I'd rather pay for a good service/product than not have to pay and get shitty service/product.

Keeping people who are too cheap to pay $30 to support a game that they enjoy and further its development from playing also has the benefit of reducing the ratio of idiots.

Well that's true too

But there're games that I see that have came up with really good alternatives.

1) LoL - From what I know (I might be wrong), you need to buy a Champion (hero) in order to be always able to use it. What I heard is that they have different heroes available for free over time. So if you're really serious about the game, and want to have a stable hero, you gotta pay for it.

2) Echo Bazaar - A text based story-telling game that limits the amt of actions you can do over time. They make it so that you have to buy "Fates" in order to do things such as open Storylets (side-stories) that gives a lot more experience/rewards, or buy an extra Action candle (increasing the amt of available actions at one time from 10 to 20).
They also have promotions... right now, one can upgrade to EIGHTY actions per time.

3) Runescape - Runescape has is a browser-runned online MMORPG. It's quite impressive in a sense that it can be runned on a browser.. it has a Free version, which is about 1/10th of the entire game, and will allow you to get used to the whole game, but it is the Members (paid) version where things get REALLY interesting. Even I've paid for this game (I was young.. I was desparate).. and you know me, I'm a cheapskate.

So, in lieu of all that, I should say that needing a payment for a game isn't bad, but NOT having a free version of the game is definately bad.