DotA: AllStars Part 1: The Basics

DotA: AllStars Part 1: The Basics
Punit Lodaya	Email Print
Feb 9, 2006

If you happened to walk into a gaming cafe recently, you must have come across the term DotA. DotA is slowly eating into the popularity of Counter Strike and claiming a stake for the crown of the most popular multiplayer game in the country. Gamers have already migrated from Counter Strike to DotA for a higher dose of excitement. In fact, the game was already popular abroad, with WCG Singapore and Malaysia conducting the game competitively and CAL (Cyber Athlete Amateur League: Online Event Held in US) recently announced DotA as one the major competitive game.

Still baffled by the term DotA? It actually stands for "Defense of the Ancients". Defense of the Ancients: AllStars (or simply DotA: AllStars or AllStars) is a just another variant of a custom map DotA for Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. DotA origin can be linked to a custom map called Aeon of Strife for Starcraft: Broodwar that had a similar gameplay. The Warcraft III port was simply called Defence of the Ancients owing to the units and characters of Warcraft III having Ancients. Ancients are supposed to be gigantic walking-talking trees which some of you may have witnessed in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers movie. The original DotA game which was not as popular was soon abandoned by the author. But the author made it open source before he officially shut down the development. Since then, many developers worked upon the original DotA and came up with their own version. But, Allstars continues to be the most popular of them all.

In DotA: Allstars, there are two sides (Sentinel and Scourge) having their own base at two opposite corners of the map. The map is divided in two halves having symmetrical design. The objective of the game is simple. Destroy the opponent's main Ancient (Ancient is the term used in DotA for buildings). The first side to do so, achieves victory.

The base consists of towers and units producing ancients. The units (referred to as creeps in game) are produced automatically on a regular basis. These creeps go and have a direct clash with the opponent's units and the first fight usually starts at centre of the map. The players get to control a special unit called Heroes, who are stronger than the normal units and have special abilities. Each team can have a maximum of 5 players. Thus each team can have a maximum of 5 Heroes. There are three lanes, typically referred to as top, middle and bottom lanes, which connect one base to the other. The creeps continuously spawn on all the three lanes. Now, it's up to the Heroes to push the fight right up to the opponent's base and start destroying it.