Mar 15, 2009

Dawn of DotA

Caution: The article below contains a lot of complicated names and words which are below the understanding of a normal person. I suggest you take an WTF-DIDILWOPD (WTF did i do in life w/o playin Dota) test and if you get more than 98, you can proceed.

It all started in the first semester of my third year at college. Counter Strike and Age of Empires were ruling the roost in LAN gaming at campus. Dota was initially 'just another' Warcraft map for the most of us, but little did we know that this game would be more addictive than even Counter Strike. Looking back on how I got hooked to this game, I seem to have forgotten most of it :-/

[The story below is based on Mojo aka the-guy-who-played-beast-master-most-of-the-time 's memory]
(or was it controlling the pig more than the hero.. hence we saw the pig surviving more than the hero :P)
Buster, chimp, mojo and I used to play the traditional Warcraft maps and one fine day, they told us about this map (citation needed..). There was this nice competitive feeling when we played against the Bh3 guys and hence we wanted to learn this new map asap. The nights of the following week were spent playing a lot of 2v2 games. sc[chaitu aka the guy-who-does-not-know-time] mave[ani] mojo[mr. TI] and myself found everything so confusing. Especially mave! He took Axe aka Mogul Kahn in his first game and skilled Taunt [Berserker's call] first. He used it thinking that it would damage us [mojo&me v/s ani&sc] and ended up dying immediately :D
"WtF" was his reaction. All of us had played the warcraft campaigns and hence knew a thing or two about warcraft, but DotA was a total puzzle initially. And in case you're curious, my first hero was the ever beautiful Crystal Maiden [:D] for obvious reasons. Many items needed 1 wood and we wondered how to acquire that resource. After some googling, a lot of it started to become clear. Sc's Eye of Skadi build became THE build for all heroes as +10 stats for every orb was a nice deal for noobs :D

For CS reasons I picked sniper a lot [lesser than the famed sniper of Bits, Chattis ofc.] I can't forget that game with the Bh3 fellows when I was 17-0 with sniper :-) It was then that we came to know of Bh4's Dota craze [I think it was chimp/buster telling us to help them beat bh4..!]. It was 3v3 and rajukiller took balanar. The nights we spent anazlysing the heroes in Dota occupy sector 51 of my brain. Just unforgettable. When we saw Balanar's ultimate as "Change to night", sc and I were like ' WTF? Thats all? Omfg Rofl useless hero' and dismissed him from our list of useful heroes. That was to change very soon. We got totally owned that game and my sniper was a sitting duck :-x . Apparently, Bh4 started playing Dota a lot earlier and hence were much better than the rest of us [And for the curious few, Chattis picked enchantress that game :-/ and tanked her..]

As with most other games, we knew the best
way to become pero's was to watch replays. Many and nights followed with analysis of replays featuring CoL (Complexity) and then MYM, SK, VP, EG, KS, etc etc.
Ah, the number of games spent in learning this marvel of a map and the fun we've had in playing it over and over again can't be expressed in words. Its unbelievable what computer programming can create. The gpa loss of playing is worth all the fun you have in the game :)
What started of as 10-15 people playing DotA is now the craze in Bits. I've drastically reduced the amount I play this game, though I can't quite get it to zero. And yes, that pic is the load screen of v6.48, my favorite!

The green game, as my mom calls it, is something I can't ever forget.