| Defense Of The Ancients |
Article Index for Defense Of |
Shopping Ancients |
Articles about Defense Of The Ancients |
Website Links For Defense |
Information AboutDefense Of The Ancients |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT DEFENSE OF THE ANCIENTS | |
| warcraft custom games | |
|
''Defense of the Ancients'', commonly known as '''DotA''', is an Aeon of Strife-style ''custom map'' created for the game '' (RoC) by Eul (US West), the map was later unofficially ported into the Warcraft 3 expansion pack, '' The Frozen Throne '' (TFT). Currently, several variants of the map exist under the name of DotA. It has also won best and most popular custom game on the official Blizzard Warcraft website. There is also a tournament hosted by dota-allstars.com and approved by Blizzard. Only avaliable for US players, the prize pool is well over $250. Replays of last year's tournaments are avaliable on their website. GAMEPLAY Concepts Since DotA (Defense of the Ancients) is a custom map, some of the game concepts are very different from the original ''Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos'' or ''The Frozen Throne''. The original game and the DotA custom map, however, do share some similarities, such as usage of modified Warcraft characters, adaptation of Warcraft spells such as Heal, and items such as Boots of Speed. For the DotA map, two bases are set at opposite corners of the map. In each base is situated a central building known as the ''Ancient'', from which the map derives its name. The goal of the game is to destroy the Ancient of the opposing team and to defend one's own ancient. Ancients used for each team are commonly The Frozen Throne/World Tree (in the variants Classic, Allstars); and the normal Town Centers for either side (in the variant Outland). Three lanes join the two bases. A river runs diagonally through the center of the map, perpendicular to the three lanes. Each team has a number of defensive towers in each lane, placed on their side of the river. The teams consist of up to five players, each controlling a single hero, and a computer which controls ''creeps''. Standard variants do not support the artificial intelligence ( AI ) for computer controlled heroes. A variant known as DotA Mercenaries has allowed more computer controlled players, and is commonly used for training purposes or when other human players are not available to play with. Some developers are coming up with test versions of DotA maps with variable-skill AI players. The latest being Cloud_str who created dota allstars 6.27b AI. The opposing bases produce troops, known as ''creeps'', every 30 seconds, beginning at 1 minute 30 seconds. The creeps are produced in sets (also known as ''waves'' or ''spawns'') composed of a number of melee units and a single ranged unit, and path down the three lanes available on the map towards the opposing team's base. As the game continues, the number of creeps increases, as does their hit points and damage. The creeps for the Scourge are composed of Ghouls and a Necromancer, while the creeps for the Sentinel are composed of Treants and a Druid of the Talon. As the creeps travel along these lanes they will battle any opposing creeps, heroes, or towers they meet. Towers possess superior firepower compared to the creeps, so it is difficult for creeps to advance past towers without the assistance of a hero. Certain versions of DotA (e.g. Allstars and Mercenaries) have Runes in the river which can be picked up by any hero to gain bonuses for a short time (such as Double Damage, Regeneration, Haste, Illusion and Invisibility), while other versions have different uses for Runes (e.g. Challenge activation in Outland). Without the influence of heroes, the game cannot quickly be won by either team. Creeps will battle each other and then sacrifice themselves in futile attacks on the towers. However, in practice, there will usually be a slight imbalance of power over time due to the specific placement of towers, creep paths, and other variables (due to slight tweaks over a number of versions, the "advantaged" side varies). This imbalance, however, is so slight that the presence of even a single hero for any amount of time will negate it. Introduction to Heroes Heroes are ranked by level. Upon gaining a level, heroes receive bonus attributes (see below) and a skill point to be spent in learning a new or upgrading an existing skill. Heroes may gain levels during the game by earning experience. Experience can be earned by killing creeps, which is known as ''creeping'' or ''farming'' and by killing enemy heroes which is known as ''pawning'' which lets a hero earn much more experience points. Neutral creeps of varying difficulty are also planted throughout the map, and they may also be killed for experience and gold. Neutral creeps are not programmed to do anything except battle other characters who come too close; as such, they exist only to be killed for experience and gold. These neutral creeps vary in strength from very weak level one creeps, to very powerful ones which a whole team of high level heroes needs to fight in order to win (e.g. Roshan, in DotA Allstars). Hero Attributes Heroes possess three main statistics, known as ''attributes'' (Strength, '''Intelligence''' and '''Agility''') with every hero having a '''Primary Attribute'''. The Primary Attribute can be determined based on icons shown on the status panel, as depicted here (Strength depicted by a 'fist' icon, Agility by 'foot' and Intelligence by 'mind'). Increasing the Primary Attribute of a hero will increase damage. In addition, increasing the attributes of a Hero will enhance corresponding statistics.
(the effects of an improvement of a hero's attributes may vary among heroes. {Link without Title} ) Hero Statistics Heroes also possess a variety of statistics that may be altered by inherent skills, purchased items, or changes of attributes:
Banlist This is not part of the DotA game, but is used by some players today. The most popular banlist program is WC3Banlist and can be downloaded {Link without Title} free of charge. Once configured (requires installation of Winpcap or Winsock), it can check the IP of anyone in your game to determine what country they are from (Altough this is not usually the case, for example the broadband company AOL is popular in the UK but the AOL ISP server runs through the US, meaning that GB -and other contries- players often get labelled wrongly as from the US). Game hosts use this to boot people who live far away to stop games from Lag ging. Another feature of this program is the ability to Ban people who you do not wish to play with again. The program adds the names and IPs of people who want to ban to a list. If those people join your game in the future, WC3Banlist will notify you. Most people usually ban people for disobeying DotA TDA rules (which can be viewed by pressing F9 in-game) and other unwritten codes of conduct: spamming in chat, "backdooring", feeding, and leaving the game. There are several misconceptions about the WC3Banlist program. First, although it logs other people's IP addresses, they are not accessible to the banlist user. (If that was the case, then the program would violate Blizzard Entertainment's EULA.) Secondly, when someone gets banned, he is still able to play DotA, just not with anyone who has his name on their banlist. Furthermore, a banned player can still play with the person that banned them, since it is just a message alerting the banner that a banned person is present (unless they are the host and has autokick functions on). In order to standardize and expand the effectiveness of the WC3Banlist program, the programmers have created a website {Link without Title} which allows players to share banlists. In addition, there are a number of "Approved Hosts" (people who are deemed honest and fair in their bans by the moderators of the banlist.nl community) who share their banlists with thousands of people. This system has created a more "global" banlist that has names of thousands of banned players. Lastly, many people claim that the WC3Banlist program can indeed differentiate between a player leaving the game (either by closing the game or disconnecting from the Internet) and someone who "lags out." That is, however, untrue. Numerous tests have been done to prove this. (Lag outs can be simulated by repeatedly calling a person using dial-up or by using voice communication over a dial-up connection.) Every time a person leaves the game (whether it was a concious decision to leave or a technical problem), WC3Banlist will recognize that person as a leaver, which leads to Banlist users to ban some people unjustly. DIFFERENT VARIANTS OF DOTA DotA Classic This series is the original DotA, which began with Eul, the creator and first editor. This RoC map is considered by some DotA players to be the most balanced and best map series for DotA. Eul, the original editor and creator of DotA, has since declared his map to be Open-source , and currently there is no official editor for the RoC DotA maps. However, there are still unofficial editors whose maps are hosted frequently. The most notable current editors are Quantum.dx (3.6d, as well as 3.95C, 4.0 for TFT), Fluffy_Bunny (3.7, 3.8x, and 3.9x series), Ryude (3.7x series), and Danite (Rumble 3.x series, Danites Hell, and Multimode 4.0). DotA Classic for RoC has clans that continue to play against each other and also hold tournaments. The most popular version on most servers is 3.7 (created by Fluffy_Bunny), while 3.6d is still played in Asia. The 3.7x, 3.8x and Rumble series are all played in decent numbers in public games. CHAOS CHAOS is a Korean-language port of DotA, and is not popular outside of Asia, though it enjoys cult-like popularity there. Danite's Hell DotA Danite's Hell is a version of DotA 3.7 in which all the hero skills are randomly chosen. Some skills are left out, however, such as those which need only be leveled up once or twice, or would be impractical on a large amount of heroes. The Stealth Assassin has many moves, for example, that only require two levels to upgrade. This version is very popular with many players because of the new level of uncertainty. Allstars Main article: Development Currently, in most versions of Allstars, the map contains many more heroes and items than does the original DotA, and is 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 is alleged to have similarly 'borrowed' most of his triggers, spells, heroes and items from other people; Guinsoo, for his part, maintains that the map was created from scratch (besides the map layout) and based only spiritually on Eul's work. Regardless, Allstars remains widely played on The Frozen Throne, and is the most popular Warcraft 3 custom map. 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 5.84b. Guinsoo joined the mass movement to the popular MMORPG World Of Warcraft , and IceFrog took over as head of project since version 6. Current player trends Currently, players have shown increasing interest in the 6.xx versions as with each consecutive version, more bugs are fixed and the map is believed to be more stable and balanced. Version 6.32, the most current official version, is the most frequently played on Battle.net and LAN parties. It has been noted that only the Malaysians and the Turkish still frequently play 5.84c on the Battle.net servers. Many of the Turkish people prefer to stick to the 5.84c version due to the great changes of the map , the new balance of the heroes and the new items. The omni-present mode is the -allrandom (-ar) mode. Currently, DotA Allstars is popular among many players around the world, as observed on the Battle.net servers and the PvPGN network of private servers. Players of DotA Allstars, particularly in the Asia n region, sometimes go to cybercafés for friendly matches and cash tournaments. DotA Allstars was also featured in the Malaysian and Singaporean World Cyber Games 2005 . Outland DotA Outland is another Frozen Throne variant of DotA, mostly maintained by Softmints and JackOfBlades, but now work has passed onto emjlr3 for the time being, who is very experienced with JASS , and will be able to bring a new dimension of hero making to Outland. It is less well-known than Allstars, but updated far more frequently. It is more hero-based than item-based, a slightly slower-paced game than Allstars, and the heroes are entirely different. Development has re-started after much time was taken in fixing the lag spikes created in 4.4b. The next version will be released very soon. Comparing Outland to other AoS maps
Unique characteristics of DotA Outland ''Some information partially adapted from the DotA Outland page (as written by the Outland creator).''
Challenges ''Challenges'', much like the Rune powerups in Allstars, are an interesting aspect of Outland. A player picks up a rune, and is then given a challenge to complete. If the player succeeds, he/she gains 750 gold; failure will cause the loss of a level, which is more significant in Outland than other versions. This puts pressure on the player to complete the objectives. The current ''Challenges'' are:
Only one challenge of each type can be active at any one time, but two challenges can be held at the same time by a single player. Heroes The hero variants of Outland differ from other versions in many ways. Firstly, experience gain is slower at the start of a game, and items take priority. Secondly, the heroes are much more functional towards their purpose, for example, the Red Stain is an excellent "hero-killer", yet its "pushing" skills are weak, unless its entire item build (order and selection of items) is focused upon it, causing it to become only moderate at both. Hero killing is also a harder task, as heroes are generally more resilient, and all heroes have access to an "escape move" (ability which aids in escaping from a hero trying to kill another hero). There are many "special" hero types in play from other heroes, most notably the "Shadowdancer" whose movement style is based on "blinking" (short distance teleportation) and Focus Monk, which needs to go into a "Trance" every 60 seconds to replenish his energies. This takes 5 seconds to activate, and his skills gain bonus' upon activation of this skill. Heroes with these abilities are designated by red text displaying the abilities when selecting the hero. EXTERNAL LINKS |
|
|