Valve making DotA 2

By Fred Dutton Published 13 October, 2010

Sequel to RTS behemoth due in 2011.

Valve has announced that it's working on a sequel to the hugely popular online RTS title, Defence of the Ancients.

According to Game Informer, the sequel runs on Valve's Source engine and includes voice chat. Visuals have been upgraded but remain faithful to the original's cartoony style.

There will also be a new coaching system which lets veteran players help out newcomers.

Defence of the Ancients, or DotA as it is more commonly known, began life as a custom scenario for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. An anonymous developer known as IceFrog has been custodian of the mod ever since, making regular updates.

Valve has confirmed that IceFrog will be working with them on the sequel.

DotA 2 will launch on Mac and PC in 2011.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • tossetaz #1 2 years ago

    I'm wondering if it's not too late, unless the gameplay is changed somewhat I don't see why anyone would choose it over Heroes of Newerth? Sure it has the DotA title but is that enough?

  • Trikk #2 2 years ago

    DotA title is enough, and S2 is a tiny company compared to Valve. A ton of people will get it simply because it's on Steam and will come with a TF2 hat or something.

  • DDevil #3 2 years ago

    I literally can wait!

  • ChthonicEcho #4 2 years ago

    It will be interesting to see what the creator (or, well, one of the original creators) of DotA has to add to his initial concept, and what Valve's first foray into a completely different genre will be like. I know next to nothing about DoTa, though, and the idea doesn't really appeal to me. Still, the art on the GI article is pretty good, the morphling in particular.

  • Drool #5 2 years ago

    IceFrog helped S2 as well. Any radical changes will be enforced by Valve. I don't think they'll make it as newbie-friendly as LoL but I doubt they'll make it as harsh as DotA (for newcomers).

  • foamy #6 2 years ago

    League of Legends

    /thread

  • Plewt #7 2 years ago

    So basically a port with some steam functions added.

    I predict a meh/10.

  • tenofspades #8 2 years ago

    well I'm looking forward to it. From Valve it must be pretty decent.

  • Bernkastel #9 2 years ago

    Where's my Episode 3, Valve? Get your shit together.

  • Zaiz #10 2 years ago

    DotA is less gigantic than everyone makes it out to be, and it bothers me. It was an incredibly niche game and it had a large audience for its size, but it was never gigantic.

    But I doubt I'll get this. I already play LoL, there's no need for two DotAlikes in my library.

  • ChthonicEcho #11 2 years ago

    @retrend

    An anonymous author uses publicly available information and what is very clearly guesswork to try and throw shit stains on Valve. Considering that the only bit of information that is arguably not public is the part where S2 was given a visit from Valve's legal team.

    It's extremely likely it's just sour competitors. Most of the blog post focuses on how IceFrog is stealing ideas and all that. S2 and Riot games are definitely desperate enough to write something like this up, after being shut up by Valve's lawyers. Laughable, really.
    Edited by ChthonicEcho at 14/10/10 @ 08:03

  • Spekingur #12 2 years ago

    Yeah, LoL is targetted at the "mainstream" group.
    My friends and some of their girlfriends (that aren't that much into these kinds of games) started playing LoL. They are now hooked in a bad way. LoL is a money sink.

    My question is though, will Dota 2 be free to play?

  • Snaggletooth #13 2 years ago

    I don't want to hear anythng from Valve other than Ep3 or HL3.... it better be fucking epic after all of this time. Oh, Portal 2 excused.. I am on my 3rd PC since Ep2 now, come on guys i'm no spring chicken anymore

  • hypersp #14 2 years ago

    Question is how much? LoL does the job for me.

  • randompanda #15 2 years ago

    This is one of their big 3 surprises? Boring.

  • gav082 #16 2 years ago

    @retrend I picked up that link from penny arcade yesterday made for some intresting reading, have you also seen EA Louse? Link can also be found at penny.