LOL@Demigod even being considered. It's DotA, LoL, and HoN.

Valve will succeed 100%.  At least in destroying HoN. LoL will survive on the basis that its gameplay is slightly different, but more importantly, it's F2P. The original DotA will probably not survive, seeing as how its current maintainer is working for DOTA 2.

People keep ignoring the most important thing about this announcement: all of the Steamworks features Valve is building to accommodate DOTA 2. The number one problem with DotA and its spin offs have been the community surrounding that game. Because of the team nature of the gameplay, a bad player on your team means you lose the game. This causes nothing but rage and hatred. HoN and LoL both have matchmaking, but all that does is pair bad players with bad players and good players with good players, meaning the bad players will stay bad and will still rage.

Valve is adding in game training. Seriously, does no one else see how amazing this is? No longer are you scouring the internet for a guide. Someone can literally make a guide in game that you follow. Not only that, you can have a coach pointing things out to you while you play, and the coaches will get rewards for doing so. Community participation will tie into your in game rep. Things like that will actually give people an incentive to help each other out, something that has been sorely missing from the MOBA genre.

I don't know why everyone is so hung up on "Oh, it's the same game!" The same game that gets 6 million downloads the very day it releases a new version? Valve is fixing everything wrong AROUND that game. Nowhere to go but up.

You severely underestimate the power of rewards for good behavior and preordering.

If Valve offers TF2 hats for buying DOTA, that's like 20K sales right there from people who might not even boot up the game (see Worms Reloaded).

In game skins for being nice, or being a good coach, will alleviate much of the community problems.

Dota was created by Eul (and maybe a few helpers) ... in Wc3 before frozen throne came out... he had to extract the data from the maps using WinMPQ to do so.

I don't know who made DOTA allstars, but I feel like Icefrog probably isn't anything special.

But in case you were curious, I can almost guarantee that Dota 2 will be free to play with microtransactions. There is a small chance they will charge money for it up front, but I think its very slim.

Apparently Dota 2 is just going to be a direct port of Dota to a new engine.  The game itself will essentially be identical - same heroes with the same skills on the same maps.  Everything will be made to match the original game as closely as possible on the new engine.

On top of that they are going to add the coaching and whatnot.  Basically the machinery around the game will be new and greatly improved, with the game being the same.

I personally will stay with LoL, since I think its a much better game for people who arent super hardcore 24/7.  I liked Demigod the best...but well, the pooch was really screwed on that one.

L.O.L.  that is so true.  but sad.

I've played with my friends before and it wasn't all that bad.  course that was a couple years ago.... has it really gotten that bad?!?

It has.  It seems to get more so like that as the genre becomes more niche.  And those people aren't the least interested on Steam.

And after 6 straight hours of BALLZ fueled gaming, and screaming in what seems like tongues, you blackout.....and wake up in a bathtub with your kidneys missing.

DoTA. Watch your kidneys, mate.