The original DotA was itself inspired by a StarCraft mod, called Aeon of Strife. Know your Dota lineage Dota 2 itself is a sort of official sequel to Defense of the Ancients, a modification to Warcraft 3. It's the biggest game on Steam, boasting more concurrent players than any other title on Valve's DRM and distribution platform, regularly breaking 300,000 concurrent players. In this way, it grew organically as gamers gave keys to friends or sold them for inflated prices. Even with this limited availability and a learning curve that's almost horizontal (in that additional time doesn't actually gain you much additional skill), Dota 2 has become hugely popular. You can sign up and Valve will e-mail you when you can start playing.īefore its 'official' (though still limited, see sidebar) release this week, Dota 2 has been available for the last two years as an invitation-only beta, with beta keys randomly assigned to existing players. The game is being rolled out through a staggered launch, both to ensure that the game isn't inundated with people who don't know what they're doing and also to ensure that the matchmaking and game servers can tolerate the influx of new players.
Staggered releaseAlthough Dota 2 officially launched out of beta this week, Valve has stopped short of making it a free-for-all where new players will get slaughtered by beta veterans.
