Dota 2 is currently my most played game online. I must admit that I have been playing dota since 2003 so this year marks my first decade of playing one game. There are millions more like me, some even that have been playing for longer.
I remember when I was first introduced to the game at a small LAN at a mates house. I was blown away by the concept and understood early that dota is a team game and strategy is needed to keep your wins up. I played everyday and became quite good, I would enter local dota LAN competitions with a team we had put together. We sucked big time in the beginning, but after much practice we started to win games.
I went through phases of playing all the time to not playing for a few months at a time. I think the game got the best of me in my second year of university (2005) when I failed and needed to repeat some subjects. Big lesson learnt here, gaming comes second to studies.
When I first heard of Dota 2 and the beta release I knew I had to play it. I was lucky enough for steam to invite me to be part of the dota 2 beta program. I must say I am really impressed so far with the game. Starting with the visuals of Dota 2, the graphics are really well done. You will probably need a mid range graphics card to be able to play with everything at full. It’s a big jump from the old school look of Warcraft 3 and even better expected. I must say in comparison to other games like League of Legends Dota 2 has graphics that are easy on the eye.
Gameplay is still Dota, all items are the same aswell as hero’s. Not all the dota hero’s have come across to Dota 2, some I think are still under development. But with each no update of the game we see new balance changes, bug fixes and sometimes new hero’s or items being added. Don’t forget there is also the Dota 2 store where you can buy items to change the way your favoutite hero looks. This is were money comes into the game. Apart from the dota 2 store, the game is completly free to play which is what made the original game of dota so awesome and easyily available to all.
I have recently started playing Dota 2 and would like to share my experiences. Overall the game is great, the graphics are really impressive and the game-play is somewhere between League of Legends and HoN. Which is great if you loved these games to begin with. Some issues I have found that from a South African point of view there are no local based servers and when playing on an international server there is heavy delay. I’m talking about over 800ms ping and that’s from an Mweb 384 uncapped in Kwazulu-Natal. This is hardly playable and I’m not sure if it’s just me or if other South African players experience the same issue.