tl;dr: What do you think of the DotA genre?


too short; more info:
So I was talking to a mate (he studies game design) and he mentioned that some people find it hard to think of DotA as a genre, and although he thinks it is, he says that because HoN, LoL, DOTA2 and DotA are the same game just reskinned, it has so little diversity that it is not useful to classify it as such.

Personally, I have been a Warcraft 3 modder since back in the day, so I know a bit about the history of DotA. The history starts back in Starcraft, with a map called Aeon of Strife (AoS). AoS is often called the grandfather of DotA - the first ever game of it's type, and for 10 years the WC3 gaming community referred to DotA and DotA-like games as "AoS's". To us, AoS is very much a genre. However AoS did not have many things that modern DotA games have - there was only one team, the 'heroes' did not level up (you got gold from killing things and could buy upgrades and units such as siege tanks), and the enemy waves constantly grew stronger. Flash forward to Warcraft 3's release and we have the legendary Enfo's Team Survival (ETS). In a nutshell, it was basically AoS, but competitive. Two teams would both fight off waves of enemies and whoever lasted the longest won. The concept of heroes was introduced, there originally 8 or so heroes to choose from, and you could level up your abilities (traditionally two skills available from level 1, one ability available at level 6, and one ultimate available at level 10. Additionally each hero has an innate ability that is unlocked at level 0 and is unlevelable - a sort of flavour ability often integral to the hero). Later we have the advent of the first modern DotA game - Tide of Blood (ToB). ToB has hero leveling, a map setup much like modern DotA's, and you had towers and you could fight the enemy heroes. ToB was enormously popular - equivalent to 2009 DotA. However ToB broke due to a WC3 patch, and until maybe 3-5 years ago, was unplayable. DotA also emerged quietly during ToB's heyday. DotA originally had around 8 heroes, and was very basic. After many years of being a decent but not amazing map it was abandoned. ETS was also abandoned around the same time - a time when many old modders gave up modding and moved on. ETS was picked up by the MT Team, who developed Enfo's Team Survival: MT Edition (ETS:MT). The number of heroes ballooned to around 40, and the balance was dramatically improved - so much so that it is often compared to Starcraft, a masterpiece of balance, in fact, the motto of ETS:MT is "Balance is everything". DotA was picked up by a long series of devs, and became DotA: Allstars (simply referred to as DotA). DotA's hero count grew to an amazing 90+, and being worked on by low level skiddies the map size ballooned to ridiculous proportions (often when a WC3 map is badly made and badly coded it is jokingly referred to as a DotA-like). DotA achieved massive success due to aggressive hosting efforts on Battle.Net and on other networks.

If one were to compare AoS to DotA and ETS:MT (the two most prominent descendants of AoS) then ETS:MT would be the more similar of the two. However, ETS belongs to a genre lovingly referred to as "hero survivals" - a genre that encompasses any game where a team of players attempt to defend a location against hordes of enemies, from Horde mode in Gears of War, to Killing Floor. And DotA will forever belong to the AoS genre.

Of course, for financial reasons each of LoL, HoN, DOTA, etc each want to invent their own genre (hero arena, moba, hero defense, action real time strategy, derp herp derp) - funny that these guys who are trying so hard to stand out and be different are selling reskinned copies of the same game...

Even more funny is the one guy who actually owns the DotA intellectual property is Blizzard, and they have been forced to rename their game to Blizzard All-Stars. AND they are the only ones not making a DotA clone!
> Not making DotA clone
> Owns the DotA name
> Forced to not call their game DotA
Crazy stuff right? But then again the AoS genre is all about the money!

IMO: Blizzard DotA All-Stars will be great for the AoS genre. It brings something that is a non-clone in to the spotlight! I know there is Demigod which is far from being a clone, but it didn't get a big enough playerbase, and didn't have enough accessibility (this may have changed due to steam integration).