What is Dota 2?
Dota 2 is a free to play MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) type of game released by Valve in 2013. The abbreviation Dota stands for Defence of the Ancients, and this was the title of the first Dota game. Originally, the first game was released in 2003 as a modification for Warcraft 3, which featured an amazing World Editor(map creator) which originated in creating some incredibly advanced maps - which then led to some huge standalone games - with Dota 2 and League of Legends being the two best known examples.
Dota 2 gameplay
Two teams of 5 players face each other, with the objective of destroying the opposing teams Ancient. Each game starts with a pick and ban phase of the available heroes, there are 119 heroes available with each of them having their strong and weak sides, but also synergies between each other, or being a good counter to the enemy picks. Because of those synergies and counter strategies ban/pick phase is being one of the most important phases of the game. It happens on a similar manner of the pick/ban phase of maps in counter-strike, but here you’re banning/picking the heroes, not the maps.
After the pick/ban phase the game starts, it starts with buying items, which are essential at the start like hp regens, mana regens, hero attributes boost. Two teams occupy the opposite corners of the map, which is divided in half by a river, with the opposite bases being connected by 3 paths, known as lanes. Those lanes are protected by defence towers, which will attack the opposing team when they get to the towers range. Periodically a small group of computer controlled creeps is being spawned, and is traveling through the lanes trying to reach the opposing Ancient, they will attack the opposing units either heroes, creeps, towers or the Ancient. The area between lanes is called the jungle, with neutral creep camps spawning there, which can drop items for the player's hero.
Killing enemy creeps/buildings/heroes allow the player to acquire better items, and level up their heroes so they become stronger. Usually the games are around 30 minutes long, but the match time in DotA might be a hard estimation, there can be games which are 20 minute long, in theory a game can last forever if the ancients are not destroyed, but the longest you’ll see are usually 60 minutes. Fun Fact: the world record for a tournament game is set at 200minutes, which happened in Cloud9 vs SFZ game.
“Dota 2 is by far the most complex and the hardest esport multiplayer game you’ll encounter”
Dota 2 is by far the most complex and the hardest esport multiplayer game you’ll encounter. Its super hard to enter, very hard to learn, and looks impossible to master. On the other hand Dota is one of the most fun games to watch, and it is a very rewarding game because of the difficulty level.
Dota 2 - eSports and betting
Dota became one of the most popular esport titles in the world, making the top3 together with Counter Strike and League of Legends. Dota 2 is also the title with the biggest esport event - The International - is a tournament which had a whooping $34.330.068 prize pool, yes that's right over 34 million dollars! With the winning team - team OG - bagging $15.620.181 into their pockets. But The International is not the only tournament, there are other big offline events with prize pools reaching $1M like ESL One tournaments. Currently in the quarantine time, a lot of events moved online creating a lot of betting options.
Dota 2 games are usually played in a best of 3 format, with the finals being played in best of 5 format, that creates betting options for each of the rounds, handicap bets, or round specific bets like the number of hero kills of each team.
Live betting is another exciting option to bet on Dota2 events. All the betting options are available for each round of the match, live in play.
What's coming to Dota 2
As of quarantine shutting down a lot of offline events, those are moved to the online world. But it also makes it very hard to tell dates of the events upcoming.
Follow Cloudbet's Discord Channel.