Dota Revisited

I wrote about DotA 2 months ago with the aim of understanding this game the guys love to play every chance they get. And as Luiz nicely announced in the chat box, Jenny, Soo Man and I went to CX yesterday after lunch to watch 5 of the guys play their favourite game. Let me refresh your memory on what DotA is, which I extracted from Wikipedia last time and pasted here now.

Defense of the Ancients (often referred to as DotA) is a custom scenario for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, based on the "Aeon of Strife" map for StarCraft. The objective of the scenario is to destroy the opponents' "Ancient", a heavily guarded structure in each corner of the map. Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied heroes and AI-controlled fighters called "creeps". As in role-playing games, players level up their hero and use gold to buy equipment during the mission.GameplayDefense of the Ancients pits two teams of players against each other: the Sentinel and the Scourge. Players on the Sentinel team are based at the southwest corner of the map, and those on the Scourge team are based at the northeast corner. Each base is defended by towers and waves of units which guard the main paths leading to their base. In the center of each base is the "Ancient", a building that must be destroyed to win the game.

So.. let me tell you my ten minute exposure to DotA. The first thought that crossed my mind when I went in CX was "wow.. this place is so systematic and clean." The screens are all flat screen monitors, with earphones attached to every computer. Then we saw the guys all seated and playing their game. Waltson wasn't too happy cos he was losing, as was Edwin. So they started another round and I saw ugly animated creatures running around the screen (these ugly creatures are heroes, I think?) followed by other smaller ugly creatures (which Klement kept telling me are creeps, I believe that, man.. what an apt name for those things) and they were fighting each other. Then there was another bigger troll hurling stones at all the creatures running around the screen, which nobody seemed to be able to kill. Then I saw Waltson breaking and 'eating' some trees.. what is that all about?

Are all the guys groaning over my description.. have I just spoiled the fun of the game? Hahaha.. ok, we girls lost interest pretty quickly. Waltson tried to explain the game to me... but all I saw was little ugly creatures running around, some throwing stones.. lots of stones.. I think Jenny and Soo Man didn't even try understanding the game.. haha.. can't blame them also lah.

Well, I left CX no wiser than when I first went in what this game was about. My brain can only categorise and shelve this experience under "The things that guys do but girls don't understand." Hahahaha