DotA Allstars

DotA Allstars is a variant of the custom map Defense of the Ancients for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne by Blizzard Entertainment. It is a team strategy game focused on hero combat. The objective is to destroy the opponents' base using one's own hero along with allied heroes and allied AI-controlled fighters called "creeps".

Gameplay

Dota Allstars revolves around the use of individual heroes, neglecting the traditional RTS's focuses on resource management and base-building. Each player controls a single hero, which is a powerful unit with unique abilities. As of version 6.40, there are 82 heroes, divided between two teams. DotA allows for a maximum of ten players in a five versus five format, and games are usually played with even numbers of players on each side. Along with his or her teammates, a player fights alongside one of the two battling computer-controlled powers—the Sentinel and the Scourge, which are thematically represented as good and evil, respectively. Each team has a computer-controlled base on opposing corners of the map. The objective of the game is to breach the other team's base defenses and destroy their main structure (World Tree if one is affiliated with the Sentinel side or Frozen Throne if one is affiliated with the Scourge).

In contrast to Warcraft III, DotA Allstars has no macro-management because players do not construct buildings or create units. Instead, a player's attention is focused on their hero, and their time is devoted to gaining experience by killing weak enemy units, gaining gold by getting the killing blow on these units, and skirmishing with the opposing heroes. The typical resource-gathering of Warcraft III is replaced by a combat-oriented money system. In addition to a small periodic gold income, heroes earn gold by killing creeps, base structures, and enemy heroes. With their gold, players buy items to strengthen their hero and gain additional abilities. Certain items can be combined together with predefined 'recipes' to create more powerful items. Buying items to suit one's hero is an important tactical element of the game.

A typical DotA Allstars game lasts between thirty and ninety minutes, depending on the quality of the players and heroes on each team and also on the game mode. There are a variety of game modes which dictate whether people can choose their own hero, get one randomly assigned to them, and change the difficulty of the game. Many of these game modes can be mixed, increasing the variety of play.

Hero Classes

Heroes can be broken into distinct classes or game roles. Although the classes of heroes are not official and exact definitions are debatable, any given hero can be placed into one of these classes. Style of play differs among the classes, and a successful high-level team will usually include at least one representative from each class. A team's strength derives from picking a combination of heroes that complement one another and give the opportunity for a good synergy of abilities.

Carry hero. This hero type can propel their team to victory. Carry heroes generally have high damage output, are frequently ranged fighters, and often require expensive items to maximize their effectiveness. Many carry heroes are characterized by rewarding the high amount of micromanagement required to get money quickly.
Support heroes. This hero type fills the roles of disabling opponents, healing friendly heroes, and casting high-damage spells to maximize combinations and finish off wounded enemies. Most intelligence-based heroes fall in this category, but some strength heroes can also play this role.
Initiating heroes. This hero type is used to initiate team fights and ambushes. Initiating heroes have skill that will disable or disrupt a large number of enemies, and generally they have higher survivability than other classes. Some high-level team combinations dispense with this class in favor of an extra support hero.

In a typical team-vs-team combat, the initiating heroes will attempt to start the battle favorably, often with spell that affects several enemies. Support heroes will disable the most powerful opponents. Carry heroes will engage last on their team and attack easily killed "soft targets" or the most dangerous opponent, depending on the team strategy. In unorganized noncompetitive games it is common to see numerous players select carry heroes. This is because many players focus on killing heroes, and it is further motivated by the selfish fact that there is no way to know how good your teammates are until the game is underway. A highly skilled player with a carry hero can turn a game around more easily than with a support or initiating hero, even when hampered by poor teammates.

Recognition and popularity

Blizzard has officially recognized DotA Allstars as its first Spotlight Map entry in the Battle.net Hall of Fame. It was also an independent tournament item at the debut of Blizzard's BlizzCon convention in 2005, which was won by local player, ArchsageVal. Dota Allstars was also featured in the Malaysia and Singapore World Cyber Games 2005, 2006, and the World Cyber Games Asian Championships 2006. DotA is included in the game lineup for the internationally-recognized Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL) league and the CyberEvolution (CEVO) league. Team JMC overcame coL (Complexity) and took the CAL season one championship title. Season two was won by coL. Despite the new strategies introduced in season three, the activity of DotA in the higher division CAL-League is starting to diminish.

As its public profile has increased, so has DotA Allstars' popularity among players around the world, as observed on the Battle.net servers. In addition to competitive play in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America, casual games are played in every Battle.net region. Though the map is developed in North America, players are increasingly joining clans and leagues in other areas, challenging more established North American clans.

DotA has inspired significant fan art. One of the most famous DotA-inspired songs is "Vi sitter i Ventrilo och spelar DotA" by Swedish musician BassHunter. There are many other amateur songs, often in Hip-Hop genre, known and created by players. Fans also created the artwork displayed while the map is loading.

Development

Currently, in most versions of Allstars, the map contains many more heroes and items than the original DotA map. The heroes and items are updated frequently, which may explain its ongoing popularity. However, this popularity sparked a controversy over who ought to be credited for its fame. For instance, a number of Classic players resent Guinsoo for having 'stolen' their game, especially since he has similarly stolen most of his triggers, spells, heroes and items from other people; Guinsoo, for his part, maintains that the map was created from scratch and based only spiritually on Eul's work (Guinsoo has only admitted to taking the terrain and the idea for some heroes: everything else is his own, he claims). Regardless, Allstars remains widely played, and is a very popular Warcraft 3 custom map.

5.xx Series

Bugs in version 5 of Allstars prompted many to offer fixes to Guinsoo but the development of the code was opaque and release schedules were discretionary. As such, the map forked in version 5.84c with Guinsoo releasing version 6.

Guinsoo ended the version 5 series with the creation of DotA Allstars 5.84, which added new heroes and a few bug fixes. Still, several errors and imbalances were overlooked in 5.84 leading to the release of a corrected version immediately, known as 5.84b. A Russian developer named True. Rus developed an unofficial fork named 5.84c and then 5.84d. These did not feature any new functionality or heroes, but he did fix several skills that were functioning improperly due to a recent Battle.net patch and optimized the loading time of the map, reducing it from 6-10 minutes to 30 seconds-2 minutes. You can also deny in order to reduce experience that opposing heroes gain. In this game there are many heroes that have an edge over others such as Pudge, Leshrac and Weaver, these heroes are the strongest in the game so they appear in almost every game.

The optimization tool can be found at http://mapwc3.narod.ru/tot.htm.

6.xx Series

The 6.x series was released on February 28th 2005. Changes including new heroes, new items and a new icy terrain were released in version 6.0, though the terrain was later changed back to almost match that of the 5.84 series. The original changes in 6.0 were quite drastic at first, causing some players to resist and stick with the 5.84c version.

Shortly after the release of 6.01, Guinsoo devoted his time to World of Warcraft and discontinued development of Allstars. In Guinsoo's absence, IceFrog stepped up along with Neichus. IceFrog is now the main programmer for the map, doing anything from implementation and balancing to debugging. With each consecutive version released by the team in the 6 series, bug fixes, new heroes and additional spells have been introduced.

6.27b

On October 31, 2005, with the new endorsement from Blizzard Entertainment and the opening of a Cyberathlete Amateur League division dedicated to Defense of the Ancients, another era of Allstars began. With the introduction of DotA into league play, there came a new wave of team strategy that evolved out of normal public play. Whereas previously players ran around the map trying to get hero kills to fund the best items, league strategy is based on team synergies which focus around picking heroes with complementary skills.

During each successive CAL season, league strategies have become more and more advanced as new balances have been introduced and tactics have been discovered. In Season 1, the normal strategy was to find a balance flaw such as the item Necronomicon and aggressively exploit it. In Season 2, strategies emphasized mid- and late-game team combinations which required split-second timing and team synchronization. Season 3 saw the introduced of "lane control" as a new factor in DotA strategy.

In contrast to previous seasons' lane combinations which relied on team ganks and timing, lane control is the technique of establishing dominance of one's lane very early in the game through superior micromanagement and aggressively attacking and subduing the enemy if their hero choice is inadequate. Lane control has taken a dominant role in competitive play, forcing players to abandon many late-game-oriented heroes in favor of those that can satisfactorily hold a lane. However, recent changes to deemphasize experience denial are viewed as the first step along a path to redeem heroes that have been deemed unsuitable for league play and create more focus on last hitting for gold to "farm up" for late game rather than denying experience to the opponent.

Since 6.27, the map used in league matches is usually several versions behind the most current map, giving time for the league version to become considered stable and bug-free.

6.37 onwards

CAL Season 3 used version 6.37, and this version was employed in several major tournaments including CEVO and MyM3.^{[citation needed]} Initially the map was considered well-balanced, but toward the middle of November^{[citation needed]} teams began to discover that Sentinel was considerably stronger than the Scourge. In combination, several Sentinel heroes formed an overpowering combination. The standard Sentinel lineup was Chen, Twin Head Dragon, Vengeful Spirit, Beastmaster, Syllabear, and Bristleback.^{[citation needed]}

These heroes formed the core of what many started calling 4/4^{[citation needed]}, a term for the dominance of Sentinel. Scourge had many powerful options in 6.37, including as the game's best solo hero Viper. However their synergy couldn't stop Sentinel's midgame pushes. In the highest-level tournaments, it was extremely rare for anyone to win when playing Scourge during this time.^{[citation needed]} As of version 6.41, three of the heroes in the standard Scourge 6.37 lineup are weakened, in addition to new heroes and other changes which affect the game balance. 6.42 was a bugfix release, it was not instantly put on getdota.com (it was distrobuted through the backup site: dotadl.us.tt[1]), making some question its legitimacy although it did turn out to be an official release.

DotA Allstars AI versions

In the more recent versions of DotA Allstars, AI versions have been released for the official stable maps. Although normally DotA is meant to be played between human players, Cloud_Str has written AI scripts to allow the computer to control heroes. Its purpose is to help human players train and to improve their skills. In addition to providing practice for newer players, the AI maps are useful for testing new item and skill builds.

Bots play adequately, but are not much threat to an experienced player as they are not programmed to use teamwork or complex strategies. Additionally, they are not difficult to kill since they have low awareness of the amount of damage they are likely to receive in the near future. Their item builds and skill builds never vary from game to game, so they cannot adapt to the heroes they fight. Recently, more features have been added to allow players to control the actions of the "bots", namely to defend the base when necessary. To partially compensate for these weaknesses, the AI-controlled heroes gain experience at a much faster rate than human controlled heroes. The most recent versions of the AI provide a better challenge to players as the bots have better tactics and strategies compared to the initial versions. A one versus five match up would seemingly be impossible to overcome with the latest AI versions. The AI maps are available from GetDota.com.

New players

Among experienced Dota players, new players are heavily criticized since their repeated deaths give the opposing heroes extra experience and gold, which can cumulatively lead to a dramatic advantage. To avoid such difference in skill levels, beginning players are encouraged to practice with an A.I. map (http://www.getdota.com/ai) to familiarize themselves with the mechanics and heroes of the game. Dummy guides, such as one written by Tichondrius (http://forums.dota-allstars.com/index.php?showtopic=34783) and ZeLink The Hitchhikers Guide to DotA, can also dramatically speed up the learning process.

External links

GetDotA.com, the official download site for DotA Allstars
DotA Allstars official website
Official DotA Allstars Forum
Battle.net Map Vault Hall of Fame - DotA Allstars entry as the first SpotLight Map
Banlist.nl - The popular Banlist program for managing games and preventing leavers
DotAPortal.com
DotA Allstars Strategy
DotA Revelation
DotaOwnage.com - New DotA Allstars site.

International Leagues

CAL - Official CAL DotA international league
DotA-League.com - A great DotA-League website