Does DotA 2 already have one foot in the grave?

Valve’s new baby, Defense of the Ancients 2, is currently in beta with a slated release date resting somewhere in TBA 2012. It’s a game that exists as the grandfather of MOBA games (Massive Online Battle Arena) in the same way that X-COM is the grandfather of strategy games. It’s an ancient game that Valve decided to shake the dust off and re-release it. What makes me curious is that I can’t see this game being a marketing success.

Put simply, DotA is an old dog. Sure, its womb might have provided the conception for games like Demigod, HoN, and League Of Legends, but like Cronos of old, it has been surpassed by its children. It’s a game with less players who still play it on Warcraft 3 than people who play MAG regularly.

It’s not that I don’t like DotA. I’m just almost certain that the revamp is doomed to failure. It’s a case of Duke Nukem Syndrome waiting to happen, especially if it doesn’t revamp itself. Let’s go back to the basics. DotA is the very first MOBA game in the same way that Doom is the true first FPS (we’re going to ignore Wolfenstein for sake of argument). While Doom is undeniably good, and a decent game to go back and play on DosBox, it wouldn’t be able to be considered “the next Call of Duty” without some tweaks. If you copy and paste the game as it was to a modern PC and upped the graphics a bit, it would still be considered a weak game due to the massive catalog of other shooters out there. Players would scratch their heads as they looked for blue key cards. The lack of damage modifiers and hit boxes would make players reconsider their purchase. Even the guns would feel out of place.

Luckily, when Doom 3 came out, they realized all these issues and fixed them to make it better. The enemies were smarter and fiercer, the guns seemed more to the modern standard, and the atmosphere felt more in place for the day and age of gaming we were in. At the end of the day, the changes to Doom that brought around Doom 3 were much needed. This is how DotA 2 should be looking.

I played DotA back when it was a cute Warcraft 3 mod. It was a fun game, and I can respect it for what it accomplished. Would I dig through my collection of old CDs to find my copy of Warcraft 3 so I could play it today? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t want to because there are already a small army of other games that succeed it that I can play. League of Legends stands alone as a triumphant symbol of what a game’s evolution should look like. It took the best of DotA and fixed it.

Let’s look at DotA comparatively to League of Legends. In DotA, skills feel a little bit on the weak side late game. The only ones I often find myself using are ones that either affect the enemy’s status (slows their movement or stuns them in place), or ones that affect me and my team (heals, and speed boosts). Late game, it feels more like “who picked the best equipment and got the most kills” than “alright, I have these skills which can accomplish this for me if used right.” Mages use physical attacks as much as the damage dealers do, and it feels like a giant arms race to see who can bop the other one on the head with their fist the best.

Let’s look at League of Legends. Spells do not fade out later in the game because there are items built around spells that make them stronger. In DotA, my healing spell caps out at 250 health restoration. In League of Legends, I can potentially make my healing spell heal for a seemingly limitless amount of health, bringing a fellow champion from the brink of death to full health. This makes the characters in League of Legends remain unique late game and not blend in like they’re one giant blur.

Another difference is how League of Legends carries itself. If the two games were actually stores and were placed next to each other in the mall, League of Legends would be that humbly built board game store that has tons of unique and friendly quirks about it that makes you feel like you’re not an idiot for bringing your out-of-shuffle infect deck to a Magic tournament. DotA 2 on the other hand looks more like a Games Workshop filled with guys wearing trench coats and re-breathers. Put simply, League of Legends looks friendlier to approach than DotA 2, making it more accessible to larger audiences.

Perhaps the biggest issue with DotA 2 is how very niche it is. Its original audience has lost a larger percentile of its numbers because of these other MOBA games. It’s easy to say that it has a chance, but it’s hard to see it going anywhere. Sure, Valve could throw money at it until it made it to the MLG and its original fans might come back, but it will be short lived. It’s like Starcraft. The original was amazing and a great step for strategy games, but the sequel was unfortunately out of place. It had some success, but I hardly think about it anymore.