"Hardcore games for everyone." That has been Blizzard's mantra, and at this year's Blizzcon they're sticking to it with their upcoming massive online battle area game: Blizzard DOTA. This game stays true to the genre's established format, while also streamlining some of its more cumbersome areas. It also brings together an all-star cast of Blizzard heroes and villains. Thrall, Kerrigan, and even Diablo III's Witchdoctor are all included. We got the chance to play a few matches here at the show, read on to hear our impressions.
A relatively young genre, a MOBA game is about you and team of allies leading individual heroes into battles. They level up, collect gold, equip items, and (most importantly) try to kill the enemy team's heroes. Along the way they must destroy enemy turrets and, ultimately, the enemy's keep--thereby ending the game. Waves of lesser units are deployed on both sides to support the heroes. Compared to the genre's other entries, the moment-to-moment combat in Blizzard DOTA is very familiar: heroes have clearly defined roles and teamwork is a must to achieve victory. Where it differs is in the other mechanics--items, last-hitting minions for gold--that could be seen as cumbersome by new players.
In our first game we loaded up Stitches, a damage-soaking tank modeled after WarCraft III's abomination unit. Its abilities were hook, a skill-shot projectile that physically pulls the target towards Stitches; shockwave, a cone-shaped burst of damage; devour, which consumes an enemy minion (doesn't work on ally minions) and heals Stitches; and putrid bile, Stitches' ultimate skill which slowed and damaged enemy units near Stitches. We didn't see a passive skill for any character.
The first thing we noticed is that the map was very similar in layout to League of Legends' summoner's rift. There were three lanes lined with friendly and enemy turrets--as well as "jungle" areas between the lanes with brush for characters to hide in and neutral monster to slay. There's even a river cutting through the middle of the map. The next thing noticed was that we were completely broke. Lacking any starting gold, we summoned our mount and road off to the top lane.
Every character in Blizzard DOTA can summon a mount to increase their movement speed. The summoning takes about three seconds and lasts unit the champion attacks or is struck. Once we started killing enemy minions we found the focus on last-hitting has been reduced. In other MOBA games, if you don't land the killing blow on a minion then you didn't get the gold. Here all we had to do was be near an enemy minion when it died to earn some currency. However, if multiple allies were present the gold earned from the kill was split between them, even if we made the last hit.
With some coin in our pocket we teleported back home (another ability shared between the cast) and visited ye olde item shoppe. This could be the game's most controversial split from the genre. Instead of having dozens of items for players to analyze and memorize, the shop consisted of three stat-boosting items and a handful of specialty items (most with active effects). The stat-boosting items provided a permanent enhancement to health, damage, or mana/cooldown reduction and could be purchased multiple times. Most of the specialty items could also be purchased multiple times to increase the item's rank (and its effectiveness).
In the jungle space between lanes there were monster camps that, when captured, would supple our team with powerful new minions. Our enemies could capture these camps as well--four camps total--so we had to keep an eye out for that. Our match with Stitches ended in a tie (the demo had a time limit) but from what we experienced, matches were shorter than in other MOBA games. Whether this is from a lack of experience or a design decision remains to be seen, but we're thinking Blizzard wants to keep it shorter. And in true Blizzard fashion, a release date isn't set but you can expect news of a beta in the coming months.
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