Think before you 'Flame' !!

Quickie: Dota 6.46 is out. Get it here.

Dota players has grown to quite a number here in Malaysia and the rest of the world. It is easy to play for a newbie and it gets interesting once you have mastered it and it will become much more intense when it comes to tournaments. In Malaysia, Dota dominated the local gaming scene and almost all cyber cafes in Malaysia have the mod dota in their computers with about 60-80% of their customers are playing it. Tournaments for Dota are held almost every month. There are a lot of reasons for this Dota phenomenon but I should talk about it next time. As usual, the downside of this is that other games such as Counter-Strike, Warcraft and Starcraft are getting less and less popular and thus some of their community began to flame (criticize) Dota. This can be accepted because in Malaysia, the gaming community is still not that large and when about 60-80% of them are already on Dota, the chances of the other games to reach a competitive level will be quite hard (Counter-Strike, Warcraft, Fifa etc etc) especially when the only tournaments held is for Dota. Of course there will be a lot of complaint among the gamers and eventually this leads to the flaming of Dota. As a fellow gamer, especially for Dota, I will hereby state some defensive statements to some of the bad remarks thrown by the others. Im not a fanboy or anything but I think it is an injustice to hate Dota just because it is popular. There are other ways to promote the games that you play. Take a look at Counter-Strike. Last time it was the most famous game in Malaysia and for your information, it is a MOD also, just like Dota. Counter-Strike also changed the gameplay of Half-Life like Dota changed the gameplay of Warcraft.

" In Counter-Strike, its all about timing, aiming and instinct and not forgetting, strategy ! "

Lets start with “Dota are for noobs who dont know how to micro-manage (control a lot of creeps/heroes/units) thus they cant play Warcraft and opt to play the more easy and almost no usage of micro-manage, Dota” and “Dota are for noobs because it is an easy game where you control only 1 unit”. Eventhough im not a fanboy but this really sound harsh to me as a gamer who plays Dota a lot. I don't think this type of remark is logical at all. It is just plain flame. For starters, not all who play Dota are interested in Warcraft-type of game (rts = real time strategy). So when they play Dota, does that mean that they tried to play Warcraft and suck at it ? Even if its true, who cares ? Not all gamers can play an rts-type game and be pro at it. Thats why there is a lot of genre like example fps (first-person shooter, Counter-Strike) and sport (Fifa). Dota is theoretically not a pure rts-type of gameplay anymore. You dont need to build buildings for units to spawn or balance ur supply of food for ur base but you do need to farm for gold. In Dota, you just control 1 hero and you can see that it is similar to Counter-Strike where you control just 1 unit. So in Dota, ofcourse the skill micro-manage dont apply but you need a quick response and be alert because each of the characters in Dota have their own abilities (up to four per char) for you to use depending on the situation (same like Counter-Strike where you need to practice your aiming and also your alertness and instinct is very important). So dont ever compare Dota and Warcraft in terms of gameplay. Never heard people comparing Counter-Strike and Half-Life. Heck, people praise the makers of Counter-Strike.

" You need to micro-manage ur heroes and units well in Warcraft to be able to win matches "

Next is “Dota has a boring type of gameplay, imbalance heroes and spells”. Ok, if they found that Dota is boring then what I can say here is that Dota is not their cup of tea. Hey, I do like Counter-Strike and Warcraft but I play Dota more often because people around me play Dota and I can play it comfortly at my home while Counter-Strike is quite hard to play at home (it is a very obvious reason here in Malaysia). For Warcraft, I admit, rts is not my cup of tea no matter how much I like it. For me, Dota is an interesting game overall. There are a lot of things u can do with it. For example, there are a lot of items and each of the items have its own properties, quite a number of heroes to choose with their own abilities and also, for teamplay, there are a lot of combos to use and timing it with the right skills, spells and abilities is important to perfectly execute a combo and you say this is easy and not challenging ? Its almost the same as those pushes and rushes in Counter-Strike. About the imba thingy, well not all game started perfect, heck even Starcraft and Warcraft have patches until today to fix the imba issue. Have you not heard of the imba mass human tower for Warcraft ??

" Teamwork, timing and combo is the main important thing in a Dota match "

Last but not least, “I bet you all that those 'dotards' (Dota fanboy) for sure don't know a thing about the original game, Warcraft and heck I dont think they play through all the campaign in it”. Ok, now all who play Counter-Strike, can you raise up your hand if you play the original Half-Life through its story and mission. Huh ? Only a few ? Nuff said.


Before I end this, I just want to state that I am not a fanboy of Dota nor I hate Warcraft and the other games. Its just that I feel its unfair to diss dota just because its gaining more popularity than the other games (especially in Malaysia). There are a lot of ways you can do to gain the popularity of the games you play. Take a look at Need For Speed and Fifa. The gamers who play it in Malaysia found ways to gain players hence making it a popular game. Slowly but surely, you can see the Counter-Strike scene in Malaysia is building up again with a lot of new clans popping up. For Fifa, there is an online league created by these gamers to play against each other and recently, there is this tournament called 'CelGames' where games like Fifa and Need for Speed is involved (the other games involved is Battlefield 2142 and Command and Conquer III) and mind you, there is no Dota and I dont see any Dota players complaining about it and to think of it, even in WCG (World Cyber Games), they dont have Dota except for the mini-event, Asian Cyber Games. If a pro Warcraft player in Malaysia, for example, paulyan, can play Dota (with team RoA and they will represent Malaysia for the upcoming Asian Cyber Games this weekend at Singapore) and doesnt have a problem with it, I dont see why we still need to flame Dota anymore.