Valve is making DOTA 2!

Anyone read that icefrog tell-all by a disgruntled Valve employee??

As I understand it, icefrog hardly made dota.  He combined a few of the dota maps into a single one.  Taking a look at the code it was pretty poorly written as well.  Community for it was amazing however - opened my eyes to the worst community the internet can provide. 

Between Demigod, Heroes of Newearth and Leagure of Legends, I think this niche genre is kind of ... saturated.  I trust Valve will make it work, and add their usual spices, however I have to ask: how many of these games do people need in such a short period of time?  Heroes of Newearth is, for all purposes, what DotA fans were clamoring for.

Indeed.. for a while DotA was one of its kind, but the market is saturated now. Demigod can more or less be discounted at this point in time, there aren't enough people playing it. Both HoN and LoL are alive and well, however. Don't know about HoN, but LoL actually has national big-money tournaments. Valve is going to have to try *really* hard to make it stand out. LoL and HoN never quite directly competed, the core gameplay is the same style, but there are large differences between the games. Valve's game, however, is going to have to compete with both of them at once, and needs to do enough different to really shine.

The genre isn't saturated! Modern shooters are an example of saturated. 2 games is not saturated. (Demigod didn't count)

Valve's interest is that people consider the other dotas like HoN and LoL the second rate clones. They're naming the game "Dota 2", so they'll sell it as the only true Dota succesor. I dont know how the Source engine will run a game like this. It's not exactly a FPS.  Will it look like Alien Swarn?  If it's too different then longtime Dota fans won't play it.  I think they're just going for name branding with "Dota 2" and making this the next TF2 and L4D.  By that I'm saying, "TF2 is the game you want to play, not that second-rate copy Fortress Forever."

This deserves to fail horribly if for no other reason then Valve's BS attempt to trademark "DotA", which is something they had nothing to do with and Icefrog has no particular claim to either (as simply the current maintainer of something created by people before him).

Yes exactly, but you know, this are Valve and Icefrog joining together, and somehow both are inmmensely regarded by each of their own fan bases, Most comments on that icefrog blog are saying it's nothing but the HoN and LoL teams belly aching.

I don't think you all are being very fair to Ice and Dota.  Yes IceFrog wasn't the original creator, but Dota would have died a long time ago without the constant balance and updates. 
Have you all read the post?

All that is really being done is Dota is getting a big financial backing.  And it was just a MOD!  This is a success, not a negative.  Now if they go the route of TF2 and make a full blown store out of the thing.... then I may have to recant.  But if it ends up like I'm thinking it will be - IT WILL BE EPIC!!!

It is when you consider that both of these games are very recent. Even though there are lots of modern shooter games, only 3 are now the "primary" ones - Modern Warfare 2, Bad Company 2, and the new Medal of Honor. Before MoH, there were also two, and MoH is being highly compared to both MW2 and BC2, with a lot of reviews mentioning that it really doesn't do anything special over either. This is exactly the problem that will be facing Valve. There are already two different and established *current* games of the genre, just like there was for MoH. MoH failed to bring anything new to the table, and its reviews (justly) suffer because of it. If Valve fails to bring something new to the table, it'll suffer the same fate - gamers who like this genre already have a choice of LoL (free to play, even) and HoN, they will have little reason to leave them for a shrug-worthy 3rd game of the genre.

While I plan to enjoy whatever they come up with, the DOTA name is more of a restriction than a hurdle.  Hardcore DOTA fans call league of legends too much a break from the original formula, and genre fans consider HON to be nothing new.  With "DOTA 2", they are really boxing themselves in as far as what they can do creatively.

which is the point.  They don't need to dick around with it at all.  It is near perfection already.  It just needs a visual facelift.

Well, it appears all is not well at Valve, and Icefrog is apparently not leading Valve in a good direction.

A few of us were chit-chatting about this over here in the Demigod forums (great dota clone).

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/398903

Just in case you fellas were looking for any additional blah blah on the topic like me

No wonder DOTA's community is renowned as the worst of the internet. The man they so revere seems to fit right in with them. I've pretty much given up on Valve anyway. Tired of seeing them work on and release project after project while we still wait for episode three.

Lamest announce from the big company ever. The game is utter crap and it'll fail 100%.

Icefrog is maintainer number... what, 3? He didn't create DotA. He didn't create DotA Allstars. He stepped in later. And that's great. But it doesn't give him or Valve any kind of moral right to trademark the name and block the ACTUAL CREATORS from using it. That was just a sleazy corporate team in action.

Well if you are going to make a sequel to something (and if someone who worked so heavily on it is involved you kind of have a right to) then you have to trademark the name, that's just business.

Anyways as for the Dota saturation, I don't agree either.  I loved Demigod and would have payed for expansions or DLC for it and I've never played dota or LoL/HoN which to me appeared to be budget PC games.  If a good decent budget PC game comes out based on it I'm sure to try it out, esspecially as it's Valve.

DOTA and its clones were entertaining games, but have the most toxic, cancerous communities I've ever seen.  Unfortunately, I don't think even Valve can fix that aspect of the game.

Have none of you spent any time at all browsing 4chan?

Seriously though, I say hold off judging it so much until we start seeing the game. Valve likes to turn good mods into games of their own, and DOTA was certainly the best mod to hit WC3. I'm willing to wait and see the end result before grabbing my torch and pitchfork.

Our definitions are just different. WWII shooters was a saturated genre. DOTA games are not. There's 2 of them that have any relevance at all.

someone posted this on the Steam forum

http://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/

Just like there are 2 (well, 3 now though I don't think MoH's long-term prospects are good) modern shooters that have any relevance at all Nobody mentions any other modern shooters anymore, all the comparison is between these. As such, how many games came before is basically irrelevant, it's the number of games currently in the picture that counts.

Yes, if you look at the absolute numbers there are many more modern shooters that have been released compared to DotA-style games. But if you are a new player trying to get into the modern shooter genre your options are Modern Warfare 2, Bad Company 2, and Medal of Honor. You'd never look at anything else. Likewise for a new playing going into DotA - they'll have LoL, HoN, and for what it's worth, Demigod.

It's never the total number of games in the genre that have ever been released that's important when deciding on a new game of the genre. It's how many current games in that genre people are playing that their new game will have to compete with. Apparently, Valve thinks they can create enough appeal for DotA 2 (probably by name, as much as anything else) to make it a successful competitor to the existing games. Time will tell if they manage

Again, our definitions are just different Annatar =P

I don't consider the DOTA genre saturated because there are only 2 games.

There were dozens and dozens of WWII games releases, regardless of which of those were relevant or not.

LoL and HoN are shameless rip offs of DOTA. At least Demigod was different. There's a lot of room here for innovation. DOTA 2 probably won't be that though.

The genre is probably mildly saturated, especially since it is already a niche genre.  League of Legends, Demigod, Heroes of Newerth, Bloodline Champions and more recently, Storm of the Imperial Sanctum, are all competing for the same niche player base.

I think Dota2 will probably succeed because it's going to grab the players that were attracted to HoN and SOTIS; people that really liked the old DotA formula and pacing and items and heroes.  HoN and SOTIS have copied, at some level verbatem, a good chunk of DotA's heroes, items, abilities, etc.  With Dota2 being a strict DotA clone (even down to the item/heroes names, which is something HoN was afraid to do legally), I think it will find the success and legitimacy that HoN and SOTIS have tried to achieve, but have ultimately failed to do. And of course, it's a Valve game, so it will undoubtably pull in some people who weren't originally fans of the genre.