I’m not sure what it is that draws me to Defense of the Ancients every day. It’s currently taking 50% of my play time and it’s a silly little custom game for Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. For those who have never played DOTA before it’s a little game that consists of two teams of 5 where you pick a hero and gear him/her up with the goal of wiping out the other team. You gain gold by killing “creeps” aka the enemies waves of computer controled units that meet in the middle to do battle against your teams creep waves. You wouldn’t think there would be so much to it but… there is! Not only is this the most played custom map of all in Warcraft but it has a cult following numbering in the hundreds of thousands! There are strategy guides written for specific heroes that crunch numbers and do mathematical equations to figure out what the best way to gear up. There’s replays saved where you can watch entire matches, there’s fanfiction and fan art, there’s even a league where you have to pay to play!
The difficult part of figuring out this addiction is actually understanding why I play. The game is technically the same every time. It starts with all players in their own bases and you run to your “lane” or area of the map and do battle until you or your enemy has better equipment and dominates you. It’s you or them every time and the person who wins is either the one with the better hero or the one with better gear because they were able to gain money quicker. Could it be that DOTA is so extremely pick up and play that I can have a quick match and go to something else and then come back for another match, etc?
It baffles me!
You should see him play it. He gets into fits of feral rage. I guess he’s just a passionate guy.
I understand what you’re going through. I love to play the game, but I can’t stand to play it on BattleNet anymore because 9 out of 10 times I get called a newb/noob/nuub by at least one person just because I’m not one of those people who have dedicated their lives to learning every little nuance of the game.