Defense of the Ancients

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This article is about the WC3 custom map. For BassHunter song, see Vi sitter i Ventrilo och spelar DotA.

Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is a type of custom map created for the game Warcraft III (by Blizzard Entertainment). DotA can be played as a multiplayer game, either on Battle.net, private servers or local area networks. The original map has spawned several variants, including DotA Allstars. DotA Allstars v5.84c was featured in the Malaysian and Singaporean World Cyber Games 2005 national finals and the Cyberathlete Amateur League now runs both Open and Main divisions using DotA Allstars v6.38b. <ref>Warcraft III DotA league news, Cyberathlete Amateur League - Accessed September 19, 2006</ref>

1 Gameplay
2 History
- 2.1 Defense of the Ancients variants
3 Controversy
4 Trivia
5 See also

[edit] Gameplay

The main objective of DotA is to destroy your opponents' main structure before they destroy your own. Each player chooses a hero, with its own skills, strengths, and weaknesses to achieve this objective. To reach the other base, there are three lanes that a team can "push," which involves destroying towers, enemy units, and other enemy heroes on the way. The game ends when either the Sentinel or Scourge main building is destroyed.

By destroying enemy units, heroes, and buildings, each player gains some gold that can be used to buy items to make their hero stronger. Each hero in a certain radius of the kill also gains experience, which leads to the level of the hero becoming stronger and gaining a skill point.

[edit] History

The original DotA map was created by a player named Eul.<ref>DotA map posting by Eul, warcraft.org - Accessed August 23, 2006</ref> <ref>Hey Now, You're an All-Star..., starcade.com - mentions Eul as the original developer - Accessed August 23, 2006</ref> There is an item in the current DotA Allstars tributing Eul (Eul's Scepter of Divinity). Eul has since abandoned DotA, and his original map has inspired many variants, including the well known DotA Allstars. At one point Guinsoo (who is also tributed to in the item, "Guinsoo's Scythe of Vyse") worked on it; however, later on another team member from Clan Kali, Buriza, worked on it as well (there exists an item, Buriza-do Kyanon, which refers to an item from Diablo II, in which the item description speaks of it's imbalance). Currently Icefrog is the one who is leading the team of DotA Allstars. There has been controversy over Allstars concerning the extent to which it used the original map's contents and the changes it made to the map's gameplay. <ref>The true history of "dota", thewarcenter.com - an example of controversy concerning Allstars and Eul's DotA - Accessed August 23, 2006</ref>

[edit] Defense of the Ancients variants

Throughout the history of the Defense of the Ancients map development, various DotA map titles were created by map developers. These include:

DotA Allstars
Gamebox DotA
DotA Outland
DotA Classic
DotA Rumble
- A variant of DotA with only one lane (through the middle), with towers scattered throughout.
DotA: Danite's Hell
- A variant of DotA in which each hero is missing its normal magic abilities. Instead, abilities are randomly assigned from the pool of all possible abilities for heroes on the team (that is, the Scourge or Sentinel).
DotA SC ^{[citation needed]}
- A Starcraft-themed variant of DotA, with the fantasy themed heroes of regular DotA variants replaced with heroes representative of units from Starcraft and its expansion. Heroes are easier to kill, games are finished quicker, and there is the use of "Comsat Buildings" to sweep for cloaked or camping players.

[edit] Controversy

There are Warcraft III players who oppose DotA, due to the number of DotA games on Battle.Net (often more than two-thirds or more of the custom games being played at any one time are DotA variants). In addition to the disgruntlement that many of these players do not play the regular Warcraft III games and therefore believe that DotA is destroying Warcraft III as a whole, and several clans have been formed as anti-DotA clans. <ref>An example of an anti-DotA thread, worldofwar.net - Accessed September 28, 2006</ref>

[edit] Trivia

Swedish eurodance musician Basshunter wrote a song called "Vi sitter i Ventrilo och spelar DotA," which translates to "We're sitting here in Ventrilo playing some DotA."