I’m a little bit wary of adding to the hundreds of posts, articles, forum threads and news sites dedicated to the fine art of Dota; it’s hardly a subject that needs more words written about it when there are so many that already exist that could probably do the job just as well. I’ve played Dota for a grand total of eleven hours (this is nothing) and so this ain’t going to be a detailed analysis of Dota’s gameplay by any means, and if you want one of those you should visit one of the other gaming sites. Before I got into the Dota 2 beta, though, I noticed two interesting things about it:
1) Everyone who has played Dota rapidly undergoes this weird sort of mental break and starts communicating in a bizarre moon language that renders them unintelligible to anyone who isn’t a fellow Dota player.
2) Everyone who hasn’t played Dota consequently has no idea what the fuck Dota is, except possibly that it does something to people that ensures it retains one of the most toxically unpleasant player communities on the entire internet.