My Love Affair With Dota 2

I'm the kind of person who loves to fall in love. It doesn't matter what it is, be it a girl, a song, an artist, a tv show or a game. The recent thing I've fallen in love with is Dota 2, and NO I DON'T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH IT. It took a while for for me to appreciate the small things that make it different from other MOBAs, some of those small differences took time to get used to but now they've just become part of the reason I love Dota 2.

It's hard not to laugh when you hear Clockwerk, a dwarven soldier who build a mechanical suit saying "I am a can of whoopass" when he kills an enemy hero, or Ursa, a bear warrior yelling "For The Cubs!" as he charges in to battle. The amount of character that each hero is impressive to say the least, each with their own unique back story, and that comes across in the game as well. Magnus, a rhinoserus like hero, who's mission is to find a mate, makes sometimes weird remarks to all the female heros like "Windrunner, you are always running through my mind." Each hero doesn't behave or sound similar, which is why you start to fall in love with some heros. Slowly you'll start randomly spouting "into the weave" because you've play too much Weaver.

Something that I feel has been lost in this generation of gaming was complexity and challenging gameplay. When studios are building a game with the budget of 100million and more, they can't afford to take chances on building a game that won't appeal to all segments of the market, essentially the game is turned in to the Jack of all trades. Dota 2 doesn't worry about trying to please everyone, it's built for gamers by gamers who aren't afraid of a little challenge, gamers who aren't don't see failure as something bad, but rather as an opportunity to learn and evolve.

The involvement of the community has been a pillar from the start of Dota and it continues in Dota 2. With the community making cosmetic items, couriers and skins, the game is at the whim of the players, something that is rare these days in video games. Additionally, those items that get accepted into the game are sold or drop with the creator getting a cut of the profits. Various item creators have turned this into a means of living, I wish I was creative enough to think of a courier of a dachshund chasing a wiener on a stick or a chicken with rockets strapped on to it, it's so great to see everyone coming up with ideas to make the game more enjoyable.

If Dota 2 was a girl, she'd be a nerdy girl with glasses, a little acne, she's into anime, some freckles and loves game of thrones. But once you give her a chance you find out she has a great personality, and you start to fall for her all those small quirks start to be what makes her different and why you like her. Eventually her acne cleans up and you find out you've been with a gem all along just like dota 2.