I wonder what the original maker of the Starcraft AoS must be thinking about all this... seeing his original idea go from mere UMS popularity to now a blizzard sponsored game and its own stand alone game

He probably feels proud, and probably have better things to worry about.

You can buy them with points you can earn with playing...

What ahli said. You don't spend real life money on them if you don't want to. Instead, you get what's called IP (influence points or something) for playing games, whether you lose or win. You get more if you win, and more for playing longer games. People who pay money don't have any advantage over people who play for free at the high levels, and only get a small advantage early on (they can buy runes which take a while to be able to afford them if you play for free, but that's quite minor).

You can't buy runes with RP ("Riot Points", which cost money) so the only real advantage early on is buying boosts to IP and XP, or buying heroes. Plus I've never seen a champion rotation (which changes weekly) where I couldn't play at least one of the free champions. And I'm sure that's how it is for most people who play LoL.

I don't think that the transition for w3 (or Hon/lol) to sc2 will happen... just look at sc1 and the South Korean starcraft sports league. Still going strong after the release of sc2. Maybe some will hop onto the bandwagon for sc2 but that will probably less than 10 percent as you stated but in my opinion it would more likely be less than 3 percent.

It already has happened to a degree. SotIS is insanely popular, and SmashCraft already has its own following. I don't think any custom map will make people buy SC2, but the existing MOBA maps on SC2 are already succeeding pretty well.

Also consider that SC1 is still going strong because it is a standalone game. Yeah, people still play WC3 because of DotA, but I bet a lof of WC3 players have SC2 as well and would be willing to play Blizzard Allstars if it is ever released.

I don't understand why people would pay 60 bucks for a shitty online service just to play a certain map when they could pay 30 bucks for HoN or nothing for LoL/DotA.

They wouldn't buy it just to play a map. I'm making the assumption that most WC3 players already have SC2 anyway.

I'll give Blizzard's DotA a shot, but with 300 latency at minimum I can't see it being more fun than HoN even with the most amazing heroes and community features ever.

Most W3 players are on sc2 as the traffic for W3 dropped quite a bit when sc2 came out.

Right, so that then helps prove my point. You said 3% of WC3 players will transfer to SC2 and play the MOBA games on SC2. If most WC3 players have SC2 already, then that is much higher than 3%. And I imagine they will play the MOBA games on SC2 as they wont have to pay for anything they haven't already purchased.

Gunner4ever must be dead, or completely done with video games, or we would have definitely at least heard a squeak out of him by now. Unfortunately at this point, it is impossible for someone to say there were the original Gunner4ever and prove it. Maybe it's all for the better, because I know I would go insane seeing something I started grow into the monster that it is now, and having no one but maybe a few close friends believe me. Also, that god for IceFrog having a good conscience (I kow he didn't make the first dota) and officially stating that dota was inspired by AoS, or else all us SC1 nerds would sound like crazy conspiracy theorists whenever we brought it up.

I wonder what other maps gunner made...
Well, at the least, we can say Panzer_Kavelier made the first PvP AoS (the unofficial AoS II map), and plenty of people know him.

War3 players and DotA players are rather distinct groups.

I understand that. My point still stands though. I'm under the impression that all WC3 players who specifically played DotA are probably on LoL or HoN right now, if not still clinging to DotA. I'm assuming that most WC3 players did not buy the game for DotA alone, and most WC3 players who bought WC3 because it was WC3 and not because DotA existed have also purchased SC2. It is therefore most likely that people who have SC2 and like playing DotA will play SotIS, SmashCraft, or Blizzard Allstars (if it is ever released).

I get Jack's original point about how Blizz wants a piece of that DotA pie, but I actually don't think they believe it will attract new people to purchase the game. I think if that was their ploy, then they'd be advertising the map more than they have been (which should be easy since they haven't said anything about it other than at BlizzCon). Hopefully they'll talk more about it at the upcoming BlizzCon.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Apr 26 2011, 12:16 am by DevliN.

Maybe they'll charge $$ for the DOTA map on top of buying SC2.

That was mentioned earlier, too. I'm no sure why exactly, but I don't think they would do that.

Maybe UU was right and they will release it with the map store. I just want the damn thing out already so I can rape it of its new models.

I agree with your premises, but your conclusion doesn't follow. Casual players might play it occasionally, but casual players won't make the map popular.

The maps are already popular, though. They may not have full-blown tournaments yet, but neither did DotA this early in the game. SotIS even has its own program to rank players outside of SC2.

If they start having real tournaments, people who are actually good at AoS-style games will come in and wipe the floor with the newbies, just like they did with HoN: SotIS is about as similar.

I doubt it will get to that point, but Blizzard's DotA will be completely new and may be fundamentally different enough to allow new players to "catch up."