The history of Dota 2 as a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) is a long and winding journey. MOBA games are a treat to watch and play. The developers designed them with a team to topple the other team’s base.
Its design is simple, but the means to achieving the goals is quite fascinating to watch. MOBAs could be classified as Action Real-Time Strategy games. This is because it carries RTS elements and is reduced to one character for most of the experience.
Dota 2 is a MOBA with a passionate community worldwide. Some say that the game is run and maintained by the fans over the years. With over 20 years of support from its community, Dota continues to gather love and fame everywhere. It became the Esport it is today because of its legions of fans. From Sweden to Thailand, and the Philippines, Dota was a sort of household name.
Humble Beginnings
Another part of the history of Dota 2 is it didn’t start as Dota 2. Instead, it started as the Defense of the Ancients. Defense of the Ancients is a mod created on Warcraft: Reign of Chaos.
Sometime after, it also found its next iterations in the Frozen Throne expansion. It had the impression of a role-playing game, where the goal is to gather gold to gain items. It also had a leveling system used to learn and upgrade skills and improve hero stats.
The map Aeon of Strife was a Starcraft map made by Gunner_4_ever. Unlike its successors, it was a PvE map that features a player team pitted against a CPU faction. While the game was good, it didn’t quite entice the crowd it gathered for long. Something was missing in Aeon of Strife that the successors had, a real team of opponents.
Eul and Allstars
When Defense of the Ancients moved to Frozen Throne, Kyle “Eul” Sommer started creating Thirst for Gamma. This was the real successor to Dota that never gets talked about. It featured a top-down twin base map with five lanes. It didn’t get the recognition Eul expected it to get, and thus he disappeared from the scene.
The original Dota became open source and mapmakers Meian and Ragn0r created DotA Allstars. This iteration compiled popular heroes from multiple versions and combined them into a single map.
Steve “Guinsoo” Feak elevated the game with recipes and the iconic Roshan during his time as lead developer. Guinsoo maintained communication with the community through the battle net, and later through dota-allstars dot com.
Icefrog and the History of Dota 2
Guinsoo soon turned over the keys in 2005 to an anonymous person named Icefrog. They would be the longest-serving developer of the mod. When League of Legends came, and the Allstars website was bought by Riot, Icefrog created playdota as a replacement. Icefrog looked to provide Dota with a new home because WC3 limited the game’s potential.
After looking far for a team to share his vision, Icefrog found an ally in Valve Corporation. Icefrog and Valve went into collaboration and started work on DotA’s official sequel. In 2011, Valve announced the inaugural The International at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. Inviting the top 16 DotA teams competing for a $1,000,000 prize pool. In 2013, Dota 2 comes out of beta and is released worldwide as a free-to-play game.
