*I first wrote this as a comment on a post about DOTA2, but I figured it'd get more views, and thus be of more use, as a blog post. No images cuz I can't be arsed to get them. To make up for my laziness, here's a song relevant to the post. Listen to it on repeat while reading. Or dont.

All-RIGHTY then. If you've never heard of DotA, I'm gonna say you've probably never played much, and almost surely never owned, Warcraft 3. You may or may not know about WC3's "World Editor" that was packaged in it, but people used it to make all sorts of mods and maps and stuff, like Footman Frenzy, Sheep Tag, and DotA.

Defense of the Ancients is pretty much THE WC3 game everybody knew, because it absolutely dominated the "custom games" list on battle.net. Probably still does, but I haven't played in years, so I can't be sure.

Regardless, the basic structure is that 2 armies, positioned at opposite corners, have to push toward each other's base and destroy it. Each team has respawning grunts/"creeps", and each player is a Hero character for their te