In 2002, Blizzard released WarCraft 3 and
packaged it with a robust multiplayer mode
that had players all around the world scrambling
to climb the Ladder.
But while they were duking it out in the Lost
Temple, mapmakers were busy tinkering with
the World Editor and pumping out countless
maps that flooded the custom games list -- though
none had the staying power of Defense of the
Ancients.
DOTA was released in 2003 by mapmaker Eul
and took advantage of WarCraft 3's hero system
while doing away with resource-management
and base-building.
The five-on-five format exploded in popularity,
and with the impending release of WarCraft
3's expansion pack, DOTA's best days were
still ahead of it.
The Frozen Throne delivered a more sophisticated
World Editor, but Eul passed the proverbial
torch to Steve Feak, better known as Guinsoo.
Guinsoo improved upon Dota by adding Roshan,
an item recipe system, and dozens of new heroes.
This variant, named Dota Allstars, became
the most popular, and was eventually handed
over to IceFrog after several updates and
revisions.
DOTA grew well beyond WarCraft 3's shelf life,
but being shackled to an aging RTS engine
started to wear on the game and its fans.
As competitive online gaming evolved, the
industry took a long hard look at transforming
DOTA into a genre of its own, and soon, pretenders
to the throne sprang up everywhere, but none
bore the DOTA name -- that is until the brain
trust at Valve decided to enter the DOTA arms
race.
After snapping up the rights to the name and
assembling an all-star team that included
IceFrog and Eul, work began its DOTA's spiritual
successor in 2009.
Valve revamped the Source engine and implemented
features the community had been clamoring
for since its WarCraft 3 days, and after nearly
two years in beta, DOTA 2 was released in
July 2013, 10 years after Eul uploaded the
very first version of Defense of the Ancients
to Battle.net.
Have fun!
