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. The Ancient Fortresses are located inside strongholds at the heart of each factions territory.

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.

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
Every even minutes(0:00, 2:00, 4:00 etc.) 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 grants you double the attack damage (sort of), Illusions grant you two illusions, Invisibility grants you invisibility, Regeneration restores your health and mana to 100%, and Haste grants you maximum movement speed. These powerups are highly valuable and can be used to gank effectively.

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 be careful as to not get too close to towers unless you have to. If you are pushing to destroy a tower, let the creeps go in first, as the tower will start attacking the creeps. This will allow you to get in range to attack the tower, without it attacking you back.

There is an item called the Scroll of Town Portal. It costs 135g and it can be used to teleport to any allied building still standing around the map. Players will often use this item to teleport to these defensive towers in order to quickly return to their lane.

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 you destroy the enemy barracks, your creeps in that lane will gain a major power-up. If you destroy all 6 barracks, all of your creeps will gain an even larger power-up, which makes them almost impossible to stop. If all 6 barracks of the enemy team are destroyed, victory is guaranteed in 99% of the cases since it becomes so hard to defend against the 'mega creeps'.

The barracks play a major role in the game. If you kill even just one of the enemy's barracks, you have gotten a great advantage. Many players will concede the game once the other team has taken their barracks.

Ancient
This is the main building in both bases. If you destroy the other team's ancient, the game is over and you have won. This building does not attack. The building will also slowly regenerates over time. Destroying this building is the main priority. Some games will even come down to the wire where it is a race to see who can kill the other's fortress first.

Heroes
Heroes are all unique characters within Dota 2. At the start of each game, players are split into two teams of 5 versus 5 and then select a Hero from the Hero Pool. Every player controls his own Hero and any units that Hero controls, such as a Creeps#Neutral Creeps under the effects of. 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. Each level a Hero earns grants attributes and a skill point. Dota 2 currently has 107 playable heroes, compared to the 112 heroes from DotA 1. Heroes are split into 3 categories: strength, agility and intelligence; and into the 2 factions, The Radiant and The Dire.

Items
Items are used to give heroes additional abilities, bonus stats or provide health or mana regeneration. Items are sold at the shop, side-lane shop or the secret shop. 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, each of which have 6 slots.

Gold and Experience
Gold is granted periodically, but is largely accumulated by killing hostile units, which grants a distributed amount of gold to the killer or the killers team.