Was there a war? A game overview from a Dota player's perspective

Probably, anyone who is at least somewhat familiar with games has heard of **Defense of the Ancients**. Or to put it simply — DotA. This seemingly simple map for **Warcraft 3** has become wildly popular over the years. I bet that way more people are currently playing ‘dota’ than in the entire classical **Warcraft 3** and UMS maps combined. This very fact hasn’t gone unnoticed by many creators. While both skilled and unskilled creators were churning out DotA-like maps, seasoned developers were plotting cunning plans to transfer the popularity of the free game to a commercial foundation, making millions of dollars.

This is how heroes are chosen here

The first sensible attempt to capture the public's love happened early this year, specifically in April. **Demigod** was pompously released, and even more pompously demonstrated that Chris Taylor is quite the character, and Gas Powered Games can make not only grand-scale planetary battle simulators but also tactical shooters with RPG elements. Modern graphics, bright effects, and the quietly added “this is just dota!” gave the game a decent start. Starving for modern technology, DotA players examined screenshots, biting their lips until they bled (in agony—should they spend money?), watched trailers, wanted to demigod someone, and migrated to new battlefields en masse, but… upon taking a closer look, it became clear that **Demigod** did not copy the well-known map but merely borrowed some small elements. There were too few heroes, even fewer tactics, and balance issues reared their heads right after release. The game turned out to be somewhat unserious, light, and even arcade-like. Thus **Demigod** died (also due to dead and lagging servers), becoming pointless, while the number of players in DotA continued to grow...

But the eager minds thirsting for money did not settle down. Other brave souls from S2 Games decided to radically fix DotA, but not change it itself. They threw out a significant number of heroes, redesigned the remaining ones, and created their own engine. The developers dubbed their copy **Heroes of Newerth** (HoN, for short), announced a beta testing mode, introduced an invitation system, and… now they probably chuckle quietly at threads about HoN on various forums. The game, even when not finished, made quite a stir, and this noise generated endless streams of excrement that still flow today. Our task is to sift through all this dung and uncover the truth. What is Heroes of Newerth really like, and should the old lady DotA be worried?

A bit about the rules

Probably, anyone who is at least somewhat familiar with games has heard of Defense of the Ancients. But it is also likely that not everyone has played **Warcraft 3**. This chapter is for those who do not know what DotA is, where its progenitor AoS came from, and how one plays this good stuff. For those who do know — good for you, here’s a candy.


This is a candy

You can skip the spoiler; you're unlikely to find anything new there.

Players are divided into two teams of five (usually). The task of each team is to destroy the main building at the opponent's base. There are three main paths to each base, where computer warriors (also known as creeps) run towards each other. Players choose heroes — strong and particularly skilled fighters with a whole arsenal of skills and spells.

On the way to the enemy base, the team must destroy three defensive towers, behind which are the barracks of computer beings. Destroy the enemy infrastructure — our dummies become stronger. If all the military buildings at the base are destroyed — our heroes have become very strong, and victory is not far off.

The main feature of the game is the interaction between heroes. Someone slows down, another stuns, a third deals a lot of damage with a big lightning bolt, while the fourth is weak at first but capable of single-handedly killing two or three opponents at a later stage, just let him survive. The original DotA is rich in tactics. Actions in a mobile linkage of two heroes are very different from an assault with the whole team. It’s essential to react promptly and correctly to the opponent, take out the most dangerous ones, apply mass spells wisely, and divide the enemy forces in such a way that all can be killed one by one.

It’s worth noting that there are no universal tactics. There are too many probabilities and possibilities in the game. Just the team composition determines half of the match, and for each hero, there are several development and purchasing paths, which also affects both personal game tactics and team actions.

What do we have?

It’s no secret that DotA has many problems. Some of them are due to balance (let’s leave that to Icefrog, Maelstrom, and all the hangers-on; balance problems in DotA have existed almost all the time, which is why new versions are released), but the lion's share can be attributed to the outdated engine of **Warcraft 3**, which, while it gifted us a wonderful map editor, has long ceased to meet player needs. Some technical deficiencies have been addressed with the help of Garena (also known as GGC). Developers significantly improved the network protocol, added a ranking system, and protected against cheats as best they could… Compared to Battle.Net — it’s almost paradise, but even here there were problems. Hackers still seeped through; the program even after four years of work regularly "forgets" about connections (you can get disconnected from the game for no reason), and there are also rooms with a fixed maximum of 225 people, which are inaccessible. Moreover, the ascetic Asian program looks unappealing. And the main problem — crashes and lags, it did not solve.

This is how the main base is broken in HoN

Moreover, the immortal **Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne** released in 2003 has not just become stale over six years, but outright tedious. And there’s no hope for improvements in graphics, fixing bugs, or any kind of action from Blizzard (it’s no secret that the game has long been unupdated).

The developers of S2 Games decided that the best "killer" to DotA will be it itself. They shamelessly recycled the map of version 6.40, tossed out some heroes, redesigned the ones left, added a few new ones, and, probably, that was it. No fundamental innovations in gameplay appeared. Old tactics are not always applicable, but DotA also frequently revamped several heroes at once, nothing dreadful — everyone got used to it.

And this is DotA. Notice any cosmetic changes?

A new engine, modern graphics, and lots of special effects — this, of course, is hard work, but nothing fundamentally new appeared. The developers focused on solving the original's problems, plus improved some aspects. Therefore, we will only consider the game in comparison with DotA to understand how successful their work was and whether Heroes of Newerth has a chance of "killing" the most popular game.

Five victories

As soon as you enter the game, you realize that before you is the first great victory of Heroes of Newerth. The HoN interface is much more informative and convenient than that of its competitor. The game shows the state of allies' skills (level, remaining cooldown time); it draws several health\mana bars at once so that even in a fierce battle, a player sees what is happening; it displays the state of harmful and beneficial spells — there’s no need to guess when a healing effect will end; the hint honestly tells you how fast health is restoring and how much time is left (and all this is also highlighted in color); spells recharge according to a timer visibly displayed on the skill; characteristics along with the inventory are centered, there’s no need to get distracted, and lone heroes will never lose control over their character (that’s when you click somewhere, and the selection with the hero slips off).

In Heroes of Newerth, you can change any key assignment, which warms the heart and makes the soul feel at ease. Players unfamiliar with **Warcraft 3** may be surprised, but one cannot reassign keys (such an ordinary action) properly in the game. Rather, you cannot do it humanely. You have to use third-party programs, which cannot always handle the task.

Nothing is clear, right?

The only thing that I really disliked was how the opponent's inventory is displayed. The icons are small, making it hard to figure out what items the enemy is carrying, and for inexperienced eyes, it’s just a puzzle. Moreover, they are shown in the bottom right corner, where they are not particularly visible.

Even despite these minor flaws, the battle for interface is a defeat that DotA will never recover from. It is shackled to **Warcraft 3**, and these chains grow stronger each year, pulling an already standalone game into the abyss. DotA is regularly updated, but its foundation...

The second defeat HoN inflicts on Garena itself. The chat and friends systems in the new game are implemented way better. You can communicate during the game in a special menu that opens above all others. And there’s even built-in voice communication.

Here, however, too...

The third comparison involves ranking systems. In Garena, the entire ranking system is almost completely useless. Experience and levels are awarded for all games and maps, and the special DotA Ladder operates only in certain rooms, and even there, few people pay attention. Finding a team of truly skilled players is a complete hassle.

Heroes of Newerth calculates rankings differently. The main measuring stick of experience is the PSR (Pub Skill Rating). All newcomers are given a "zero" score of 1500. If you lose to weak players — you lose many points, and if you win against the weak — you get little. To rank up, a player must win regularly, and, ideally, against opponents of equal skill. It seems simple, but it truly works — a good player will hardly stay in the zone below 1500, and a bad one will naturally lose more often, thus hardly making it to real professional games (and won't ruin them). Systems with similar principles are used in many online games — in SF4, for example, or in DoW2.

The fourth victory is the greatest. The developers taught the game to allow rejoining players who disconnected. Moreover, there’s plenty of time for this — a whole five minutes. You can get hung up, restart a few times, but still return to the fight without negative consequences for the match and stats. Something similar is promised to be done for WarCraft (and for DotA, the issue of crashes, intended or random, is still very relevant), but they have been promising this for years.

This happens too often in public games

The fifth victory is the least significant — it’s the graphics and sound. Bright effects extensively use shaders, heroes are dressed in non-blurry textures, dark colors create a serious atmosphere, and there’s no cartoonishness of **Warcraft 3** (for which the game is often criticized). Graphics, to put it bluntly, aren’t the main thing, but they're not superfluous either. Heroes of Newerth has left its competitor with no chance for a comeback.

Gazing into the distance

Die-hard DotA players are already attributing game numerous sins to the game. Mostly these are all connected to the new heroes that developers have invented. They shout loudly that these heroes are OP, while the changes to the original are just the madness of a lunatic. Others scream and complain about monotony — the population in taverns has halved. Thirdly, they criticize the graphics, which... well, I won’t cite their arguments here, you understand.

All this is, in principle, not surprising — there’s hardly anything left to nitpick. It’s beautiful, technological, convenient, and most importantly — it remains the same. Tactics and interactions in HoN have not vanished. Essentially, the game loses out to the original in absolutely nothing.

Colorful chaos; from the abundance of bright colors, you can tell someone got a beating

Still, it’s worth pondering the complaints — all of them become insignificant. For example, the ringing word "imba" is shouted everywhere and always when someone loses but doesn’t want to accept defeat. You speak of unreasonable changes — but have heroes in DotA never changed? The version has stubbornly reached 6.62b, although version 6.40 triggered a storm of anger. Don’t like the new heroes? Do they not appear with enviable regularity in DotA? Finally, the number of characters has decreased — what is there that is bad about that? Do many get chosen for serious games? At most 15-20 (while there are 92). Complaints about the graphics are foolish. One cannot compare a game from 2009 with an old-timer **Warcraft 3** from far-off 2002.

The central path to the Guardians' base

If the developers do not steer off their chosen course, continue to update and actively support the game, and also keep it free (it remains unclear how S2 Games plans to make money — the website offers to buy a preliminary account, which only provides cosmetic advantages; should the game become paid, even if once, it would undoubtedly lose a significant part of its appeal), then they have every chance to seriously shake DotA. However, kills should not be expected. Heroes of Newerth is just the second new-old DotA, with a more friendly interface and heated seat cushions minor visual enhancements.

Central path to the Legion's base, do you see any special differences?

However, as an esports discipline, the prospects for Heroes of Newerth remain dim. To become a "shell," one must gather many good level players (in addition to universal public appeal), and they currently do not show a desire to jump into the beta version's abyss. Professional athletes look at the new game warily, but I believe it’s all due to the "settled" skills in DotA, which they are reluctant to part with.

Currently, another "killer" of both DotA and Heroes of Newerth is also in beta testing. It’s called League of Legends, being developed by Guinsoo, who at one time worked on the original DotA. There are already some first details, and as soon as I get the chance, I will certainly tell you all about it.

A brief version of the review, as usual:


If anyone suddenly wants to play, an invite can be obtained, for example, here