SC2 killed HoN's map editor, and Dota2 will finish off the last of HoN...
I've never played DotA, only HoN/LoL, so I don't feel that excited for Dota2 and won't buy it.

I am almost 200% sure that you will reconsider when videos are released.

Anyway, anyone that thinks I am overhyping this, I will eat my own words (web-cammed) as collateral.

http://www.dota2.com/2010/11/dota-2-qa/

I came, we'll see, DotA 2 will conquer.

I still dont know about that. Considering the fact that DOTA 2 has at least a year before it comes out, I feel like S2 will still wind up on top.

Hon's biggest issue on the market is that it costs money. DOTA 2 will cost money.

Also, I think if S2 gets their hero creation together, the S2 heroes could be a lot better than DOTA's. Already a lot of S2 heroes are favorites of old dota fanboys, and in a year, imagine how many more of them there will be.

I wouldn't call S2 out of it quite yet.

Doubt it, IceFrog still has the biggest draw in the market, the fact that he has the DotA brand and he can import over all heroes of DotA means he almost automatically wins the hardcore DotA fans. And with those features and the support of Steam on his side, it looks easily over for S2

So, essentially, Valve is taking the quintessential cream of the map-making crop from Warcraft 3 (ie. Dota) and doing what Blizzard should have done (making a real Battle.net 2.0).

I doubt I will buy it. Especially since there is going to be no new content whatsoever. I pretty much know every single hero and it's correlated item builds, weaknesses, skill paths etc... If I wanted, I would just reinstall Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne and play DotA - noobs/leaves/feeders and all.

I started playing LoL recently. And all I can say is lol, it burns my eyes.

Sure, it is a safe bet by IceFrog to import all the heroes, items, recipes and gameplay mechanics from DotA - but it says a lot about his creative engine... ran out of creativity-juice methinks. Let's see where this Abdul Ismail is in 5 years time.

This whole "creativity" argument bores me. If there are not problems with the game, and it's not stale, why do you need to do creative things to change it? He shows his creativity by the original development in the first place and the way he reacts to the evolving metagame through patches. There is no need to reinvent the wheel just because shallow players don't understand the game's depth and complexity. The game itself is an avenue for creativity- every game gives you the opportunity to do something new. When a game has that kind of massive replayability that after 5 years is still largely unexplored, the game is fine as is. Update with new features, new graphics, new architecture, but keep the gameplay preserved.

This is a huge reason why S2 and HoN are having an incredibly hard time becoming stable and developing a competitive scene. DotA has something like 10 million players worldwide. Icefrog doesn't need to change anything to be successful, and when he does start serious changes he should simply make a new game that addresses EVERY design problem with DotA from an eSports stance, and there are many.

That's why I can somewhat agree with what the LoL developers are doing, but HoN devs are just being idiots. I honestly don't even think they care at this point that they're going to get blown out of the water, they already have our money.

No, they definitely care. They made a post on the forums about it. Pretty much the whole thing is that although it may not ook like they're doing much, the current things that they're working on are huge.

Also, yeah sure Dota has 10 million players worldwide. The issue is that somewhere around 3/4 of those players are playing on cracked WCIII copies for free, since they can't afford it. So maybe dota will appeal to them. Too bad none of them will pay the 30-40 dollars to buy it.

The thing that bothers me the most is when people complain when S2 changes any basic part of the gameplay. IIRC, in a patch 2 or 3 patches ago, icefrog compltely changed the exp system to actually hurt ganking, a key part of the game. No one complained. But if S2 decides to give more gold to supports for assists, then everyone explodes in anger.

Honestly, a lot of people are already going back to playing dota and saying that they miss all of the S2 heroes. HON has also gained incredible E-sports coverage and recognition for a game its size. Considering how long it took dota to get that far, I'd say HON is in pretty good shape.'

Edit: I just read somewhere that icefrog said there are over 22 million dota player worldwide. WCIII the frozen throne only has about 1 million copies sold worldwide. Need I say more?

The only reason why HoN has gained incredible E-sports coverage is the fact that DotA already set the stage for HoN to come on. DotA had to build it's own user-base before being really accepted as an e-sport and of course it's going to be easy for a DotA clone to come in and have e-sports presence. All of your numbers are purely speculation, and the reason why people would be more willing to transfer over to DotA 2 because IceFrog is making it and he'll have zero restrictions on what he does, unlike HoN. Also, IceFrog will eventually stop developing the original DotA and the userbase will have to go somewhere, the most likely transition would be to DotA 2. The fact that it's supported by Steam only makes the game only so much better.

No actually, they aren't speculation. I checked it myself. WC3 frozen throne only has 1 million sold copies. Also, the 22 million was an old estimate of icefrog's, based off the 7-11 million downloads of the map.

And HON really doesnt have restrictions per-say. I'd say it's better to have a team of developers than a single developer who can do whatever the fuck he wants.

Also, even if and when Icefrog stops developing dota, there's bound to be people who wont want to buy dota 2. And then what will probably happen is what dota's history has been famous for. Someone else will take over for the map development.

I'll just leave this here.

Alright, DotA 2. Not going to make it like LoL. Ever.

My argument is simple: Not enough people who are playing the MOBA games even know who the origonal creators of DotA are, and more then likely could care less who is developing what game; they're in it for the fun, and the replay value of the game. Most people who stuck it out with DotA on WC3 did so because they prefer the origonal, and didn't want to move, because they were having that fun still, otherwise they would have when IceFrog had his stake in HoN and whatnot. Since the game is going to be one time fee, that'll turn off even more gamers since they can get the equivalent for free with LoL.

Next, they MOBA community is now oversaturated with the basic DotA style game. Adding ANOTHER isn't exactly going to wow anyone into instantly walking over to DotA 2, and playing it for the rest of the decade like the very first game. Graphics are nice, but that isn't what gets a large porting of the gaming community these days. They want fun, be it simple, or quickly obtained.

Also, I'd like to point out that where Shredder added the 22 million players point, I can't help but believe that IceFrog is simply a biased pig, if he even thought about saying that, unless theres some underground club in wherever he lives in the world to have a name like that, as Loveless pointed out. Totally wouldn't get it if the game was rated to give you orgasms in the first five seconds, constantly.

Hahahaha.

I literally lol'ed when you said "make it like LoL."

Wow, they got players to play a free game!


Icefrog working with HoN and Riot wasn't known until recently, and both games changed tons of things. DotA players will be able to sit down at a game and straight up play it. With the way Steam works, there will no doubt be tons of free trials, guest passes for friends, and maybe even a subscription system for SEA players.

So you mean like the way that HON has free trial passes that you can give out to friends and how it has a subscription system with SEA players (garena) right?

And is Rammus trying to say that LoL has been successful? Because F2P games rarely last that long. I mean, HON has even been known to have budget limitations, and it makes every player pay at east $30. I also highly doubt a lot of people use LoL's micro-transactions. I'm just sayin, I wouldnt be surprised if LoL went away long before HON and Dota 2.

Also, as the "oversaturation of dota style games" goes, I think there's always a place for new ones, as long as they do something different. I mean, look at all the modern day FPS' out there. For example, COD black ops and the new Medal of Honor. Both are extremely similar games. They both are doing well. why can the same not be said for HON and Dota?

And also, either way, dota was averaging 300,000 players at any given time for a while. I'd say at least 7-11 million players is a good estimate.

SEA players have to have a Premium subscription to GArena to use HoN, which not many do. And they can't interact with the rest of the community, which is just lame.

Indeed. I didn't mean to make the game operate like LoL, rather, reach its level of success. And yeah, the point is that they need to do something different. IF is late, and they plan on making the game just like the origonal for starters. Thats not a good enough selling point for anything. FPS's get different selling points by hitting different eras and play styles, such as adding RPG aspects, Third Person, or more things. Just a few graphics updates aren't going to hook in the world, and I still know enough people who hate the acronym DotA being thrown around, same with the phrase "Steam Game."

I really can't say they're going to get more then the people who worship the ground IF walks.

Rammus, did you even read the Q&A I posted? Graphics are the least important new thing out of more than a dozen.

So how is this any different from a subscription system that steam might have for them? I'm also pretty sure they can interact with the entire community, considering that there are massive tournaments where SEA players are playing against US teams, from SEA.

Also, like dota, many of the most competitive teams come from SEA. If they couldnt interact with the rest of the community, then how would they have even become a competitive team?

I'd guess that GArena is more expensive and doesn't have the support of the mainstream who are fine continuing to play DotA, rather than learning a new game. I obviously can't really give any evidence, but I'm willing to bet that Icefrog's name and the new features will be enough to at least shift a good portion of the community.

And no, for HoN SEA is limited to playing with SEA players, not sure where you're getting your information. In DotA they can play with the rest of the world, but usually only do so at LAN tournaments from what I can tell. They become competitive teams by having their own distinct competitive community. Haven't you heard "Asian DotA" versus "Euro DotA" versus "Chinese DotA" etc.

I'm just confused then how any SEA competitive teams are playing against USE teams on USW servers, like has been done many times before.

... they aren't? A few HoN teams flew to a LAN in China a couple of weeks ago, that's about the only interaction I'm aware of.