The Origin of the Defense of the Ancients ( DOTA)

DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) is the customized map game of Blizzard’s Warcraft III : The Frozen Throne, the Defense of the Ancients, popularly known in its acronym DoTA. Today, noone possibly can deny DoTA fever throughout the world and became a constant waterloo-threat of most online game creators.

DoTA was originally created by a legendary mapmaker called just by his alias “Eul” (hence the item Eul’s Scepter of Divinity) on of Warcraft III : Reign of Chaos World Editor. Upon the release of the Frozen Throne expansion, Eul failed to update his map and generous enough to let others develop the map into what we known today as DoTA AllStars by another mapmaker called “Guinsoo” (hence also the item Guinsoo). With the great features of World Editor, DoTA maps was even more creatively developed in the 6.x versions by today’s DoTA AllStars main programmer called “Icefrog”. Until today, Icefrog declares official map editions of DoTA even though many other World Editor mapmakers edit DoTA maps in subtle different ways.

World Editor is a JASS(J-Asynchronous Scripting Syntax)-based application software used to create and edit 3D game maps in Blizzard 's Warcraft III. The mapmaker can custom the game through existing virtual palette for units, buildings structures, terrains, sectors, and cameras views. There is also an added pallete imported from Starcraft’s map editor called doodads (for waters, trees, bushes, boulders, skeletons, fire pits, and others). JASS programmers can specify triggers on how units respond to specific events in the game. These triggers are the building blocks of DoTA’s gameplan. It is the reason why neutral units would retaliate when being attacked and all surrounding enemy units to attack Axe when he pumped the berserker’s call skill. Any instruction from the gamer prompts a trigger and so on with other triggers - a chain reaction of triggers.

The editor of Warcraft maps and game customs has really surpassed all other forms of game editor in the sense that even novice mapmakers can understand and can easily get along. No wonder why Euls have given up so much inspiration to custom Warcraft games the way we wanted to, and customize the map that we always want to play to – the DoTA AllStars. So before Icefrog customized the most popular version of DoTA AllStars, before Guinsoo updated DoTA into AllStars, and before Euls created the DoTA custom game, the Blizzard programmers had already handed down to us this great World Editor to kick that creativeness out of gamer’s playful minds. Warcraft, in general, and DoTA AllStars, in particular, may not be this dynamic without the World Editor’s provision to enrich the game itself in the farthest way Blizzard could have imagined.

So, why don’t we make Icefrog as another item like Euls and Guinsoo? The challenge is for us to take that great lead of improving and DoTA AllStars with the World Editor.