![]() When they’d worked on their own games, Guinsoo, Pendragon (League of Legends) and others had avoided poking the Blizzard bear by staying away from the core of DotA that was beholden to Blizzard’s custom map maker clauses. This level of legal minutia we’re talking about. ![]() Yes, Dota 2 not DotA 2, Blizzard owns the rights to the complete name Defense of the Ancients as of 2012 so Valve’s version is just Dota 2, not an acronym. In 2009 Icefrog revealed that he had teamed up with Valve for something that would later be revealed as Dota 2. DotA had a minor esports scene despite being a simple mod, but with sharks circling it was clear that the game needed to jump off Warcraft 3 for its own engine, or it would become an artifact of gaming history. During this era, Icefrog began looking to get DotA off of Warcraft 3, likely pushed by the official releases of competitors like League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. Icefrog, was now the primary creator of DotA:All-Stars and began bringing in an era of balance that was primed to foster esports-like competition. This is part of the aforementioned potential backstabbing (namely that DotA’s main site was taken down for a League of Legends ad that slandered DotA, but this article isn’t about that.) Guinsoo would move onto a little game called League of Legends by Riot Games (Guinsoo’s Rageblade!) alongside Pendragon the owner of a popular DotA fansite. The designer that people now associate with DotA because he’s been it’s primary designer since 2005, a hilariously long time. Guinsoo took over for a long time before the reins passed onto the, anonymous by choice, Icefrog. After this point, DotA and DotA: All Stars are essentially synonymous. ![]() At this point, many different creators tried their hand at making a version of DotA, but the version of the map that would truly take off would be DotA: All Stars made by Steve “Guinsoo” Feak. Eul ended up stepping away from the map shortly after creating it and giving the reins of the community. This original version of DotA had it’s a shockingly complete first draft for MOBAs, and had many of the core elements we know and love today. Now that we are caught up, we can talk about… DotA: A HistoryĭotA started back in the early 2000’s in the hands of Kyle “Eul” Sommer, who modern Dota 2 fans will recognize from the in-game item, Eul’s Scepter. So, Blizzard had a gigantically successful custom map within Warcraft that would go on to inspire some of the biggest games on the planet. By all definitions, DotA was a mod to Warcraft, and technically Blizzard could have shut it down at any time they wanted to, but why would they? Afterallm it was bringing thousands of players to Warcraft 3. The origin point of MOBA’s used Blizzard used that game’s IP and characters. This meant that DotA, a game so massive that it spawned a genre, existed entirely within another game. In some cases this was a model being used for a different character (ie: Illidan was Antimage) in others it was a essentially a direct 1:1 version of the character from Warcraft (Windrunner being Sylvannas Windrunner or Necrolyte being a Necrolyte.) All of the heroes and assets within DotA were from Warcraft 3. DotA (not Dota 2) was a custom map made in the Warcraft 3 custom maps engine. Even with everything that’s happened since, we need to remember that it all started with Warcraft 3. Defense of the Ancients (DotA) League of Legends (LoL) and Heroes of Newerth all spawned from a Mod made by a frozen frog, and possible backstabs/betrayal. One of the weirdest microcasms in gaming has always been the weird world of early MoBA’s.
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