Dota 2

Dota 2 is an Action RTS game, developed by Valve Corporation. The title was formally announced on October 13, 2010; and was released as a Free to Play game on July 9th, 2013 for Windows, and July 18th, 2013 for Mac OS and Linux. It is the successor to the very popular Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients, which was based on the Aeon of Strife map for StarCraft.

Basic Premise
Dota 2 is a combination of RTS including perspective and a heavy requirement of tactics and team co-ordination and RPG including itemization and leveling up. Players are split into two competing teams (Radiant and Dire), each consisting of up to five players. The main objective in Dota 2 is to destroy the enemy Ancient inside their stronghold. These strongholds are protected by multiple towers down 3 lanes. The player controls a Hero, a strategically-powerful unit with unique abilities and characteristics, which fights for them and gains strength by leveling up and buying items with gold. Experience is earned when creeps and heroes die. Gold is gained passively over time, by killing creeps, by killing enemy heroes and by destroying buildings.

Development
Icefrog was hired by Valve Software in 2009.

The beta began in 2010, officially ending in July 2013 just before The International 2013 when the Windows client was officially released to the public with a queue system to deal with high traffic. The Mac and Linux clients were released a week after the general release of the Windows client. Dota 2 runs on the Source Engine and mimics some of the quirks that were present in the original DotA game in order to preserve gameplay.

Factional Divide
Each faction occupies a part of the map, this is reflected in the appearance of that area. The Radiant is based at the southwest (lower left) corner of the map, while the Dire is based at the northeast (upper right) corner, both sides being divided by a river. The Ancients are located inside strongholds at the heart of each faction's territory. Total map size approximately 15,000 units x 15,000 units.

Lanes
The map is segmented into three different lanes, the top, the bottom, and the middle lane. Each one of these lanes leads to the other team's base. In a typical Dota game, each team will send two heroes to the top lane, one to the middle lane, and two to the bottom lane, though this may change depending on the team's strategy.

The bottom lane for the Radiant, and the top lane for the Dire, are considered the safe lanes. The creeps meet each other close to the towers, which means there's less of a chance that the other team will try to kill you while you are near your tower. These lanes are recommended for beginners, as they provide some added protection against ganking.

Runes
At the start of the game and every 2 minutes onward, a rune will spawn at either the top or bottom of the river. There is a 50% chance that it will spawn at either location.

There are five possible runes that can spawn: Double Damage, Illusion, Invisibility, Regeration and Haste. Double Damage increases your Hero's auto-attacks by 100%, Illusions grant you two Illusions, Invisibility grants you invisibility after a 1 second fade time, Regeneration restores your health and mana to maximum, and Haste grants you maximum movement speed and immunity to slows.

Towers
Each faction has defensive towers placed all over their side of the map. These towers do a lot of single target damage and prevent Heroes and creeps from pushing into the enemy base. In the early stages of the game, a hero can only take a few hits from a tower before dying. So one must be careful as to not get too close to towers until they have gained enough strength.

Barracks
In each base, there are 6 buildings called the barracks. There are pairs of barracks at the end of each lane; one for melee creeps and one for ranged creeps. If one team destroys the enemy barracks, their creeps in that lane will gain a major power-up. If all 6 barracks are destroyed, all of the opposing creeps will gain an even larger power-up, which makes them very difficult to defend against. These 'mega creeps' can usually assure victory because of their high health, damage and numbers, and can kill a Hero quickly if they are reckless enough.

Ancient
This is the main building in both bases. If one team destroys the other team's Ancient, the game is over and the destroying team has won. This building does not attack and will slowly regenerate health over time. It is defended by two towers and cannot be attacked until those towers are destroyed.

Heroes
Heroes are all unique characters within Dota 2. At the start of each game, players are split into two teams of 5, then select a Hero from the Hero Pool. Every player controls his own Hero and any units that Hero controls, such as summoned units like Eidolons. Heroes will gain experience when enemy units are killed nearby. They start the game at level one, and as they earn experience, they eventually level up, and each level grants more attributes and a skill point to spend on upgrading abilities or more attributes bonus. Heroes are split into 3 categories: strength, agility and intelligence. Dota 2 has currently implemented 107 of the 112 Heroes.

Items
Items are used to give Heroes additional various abilities, bonus Attributes, and/or provide health or mana regeneration. Items are sold at Shops, which can be found at the base, the side-lanes, or the more secluded Secret Shops. More powerful items require several base items to be created as well as a recipe. Items take up space in the Hero's inventory, courier's inventory, or stash, all of which have 6 slots for storage.

Gold and Experience
Gold is granted periodically, but is largely accumulated by killing hostile units, such as creeps, towers, or enemy Heroes. Depending on what unit you kill, gold may be rewarded solely to the killer (such as creep and barrack bounty), or distributed to the killer's team (such as towers or Roshan).