So I was reading Kotaku earlier and saw How Dota 2 Exposes The Shortcomings Of The Video Game Industry and suffice it to say after reading it I was completely astonished based on my experience with the game.
The author of the article they are referencing praises the game as different and like nothing else out there, Are we playing the same game? It feels just like any other MOBA except to me it was even harder to get a handle on the mechanics than any other one I have played. It didn't feel to me like anything was different other than the level of polish compared to other games in the genre.
But the biggest thing that got me was this "Which is to say, it looks like Dota 2s about to become the most popular game on PC. And it couldn't have come from a professional games studio." I cannot fathom how they could come to that conclusion. Other MOBAs have caustic communities, but what I have seen in DOTA2 beta really pushes it to a new level. An apt comparison to me is to take a game with a learning curve equal to or higher than something like EVE and then cut out the helpful community and replace it with the worst vitriol from the Diablo3 boards and let it marinate.
To me it really seems like people are heavily over-estimating this games success. This is one of THE MOST unfreindly genres for newcomers (and possibly the most difficult MOBA to learn period) where you literally have to either bang your head against a wall for hours and hours or read essays worth of material just to be not terrible. And combined with the level of hostility that I experience playing this game I do not think it will be as successful as they expect. My feeling is that they will pull in a TON of people since it is free to play, but the retention will be next to zero. I can't see many people who don't already play these games putting up with the caustic community for as long as it will take to learn.
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