Random Battle

You may or may not want Dota 2 to be free-to-play (F2P), but there are is a reason why it could and it should be, Valv^E is the developer behind the game.

There are generally 2 reasons why people don’t want Dota 2 to be F2P:

• The games will be flooded with noobs and trolls that don’t care about playing well and making sure everyone’s having fun.
• F2P means having to pay later for DLC (downloadable content) to unlock the full game (heroes, items, etc.)

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About 4 months after its release, the Nintendo 3DS is getting a price cut, from $250 to $170. I remember being excited for the handheld when it was first announced, but the launch lineup was not really interesting. The announcement, along with the news that people who logged in the Nintendo virtual shop using their 3DS before August 12 would be given 20 free downloadable games , made me take another look at the handheld. Certainly, 4 months after its initial release, the system must have some decent games? Not only, the selection of games is very limited, the 3DS still has some big problems that make it difficult to rationalize the decision to buy one.

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DotA, which stands for Defense of the Ancients, is a custom map created for Warcraft III where players join either the Sentinel or Scourge team by incarnating a hero. The goal of the game is to defeat the opposing team. The map became very popular among custom map players, including myself, and made its path to many competitive LAN tournaments. The game can still be played today in the custom maps section of Warcraft III.

The creation DotA has created its own genre and is now becoming mainstream. A first game, League of Legends was released in October 2009. Guinsoo, which modified the original DotA into DotA Allstars, was part of the design team for the game. Another clone, Heroes of Newerth, was released in May 2010. It is often regarded as a less user-friendly game for games who want an experience where skills matter more. It is less popular than its direct competitor, League of Legends, in part due to its price.

Finally, superstar game company Valve, saw the popularity of the genre and decided to purchase the rights to DotA and create a full-blown sequel using its own engine. The sequel, Dota 2, is supposed to play very much like the original, but with updated graphics, integrated online functionality and other benefits that making a standalone game provide.

Last week, Blizzard tried to introduce a new feature in its forums: forcing users to post using their real name. Of course, this was met with a lot of controversy about the dangers and negative impacts of having your real name being associated with a comment on a gaming forum (employers having prejudices against gamers, stalkers or just crazy people wanting revenge against other players). I won’t go into more details about why forcing users to use their real names is a bad idea, this topic has been covered enough.

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