Your Dota story

Hi, I'm gathering research for a paper I'm writing on the growth of the community and e-sports of Dota.

The purpose of this thread is for people to come and post their Dota story. For example, you say when you first came to hear about/play Dota. How much you take part in the Dota community and how it has changed if you have been doing so for a long time. If you a casual player or take it more seriously. And when you first started following professional Dota and any significant memories of it.

So you basically get to show off and I get to reference your magnificent words in my paper, yay for everyone.

I began playing "actively" about two or three months from now. I started playing due to the fact that I was literally too good for LoL in order to achieve more there and DoTA 2 seemed as a similar challenge.

I am like the heart of Dotafire (the old rusty!) and I am going to take Mowen's throne one day (soon™).

When i was a mere little boy, i played dota. but thats only because i played WC3.

then a year ago my brother started playing dota 2. i was like 'meh'. but then i played it.. and played it again... and i was in love.

first, i was just a casual player. then i looked up pro games, youtubers, and i was amazed at how deep the game was. i always have that great satisfaction when i won a game or turn around a fight (the latter happened more often).

dota for me?

you could call it a mere game, or a hobby. you could also call it an addiction. but when i played dota, i have this feeling of joy. when playing with buddies or having a terrific game, even if i lost.

so is it a mere game? perhaps it is. perhaps it is more. to this day i do not know that my enjoying of dota is just because it is a mere game or because i am in love with it.

i may never know. all i know is that i enjoyed it.

the person who hasn't ever posted a dota relevant comment give the first reply. yaaay!

lies

http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/forum/general/hero-list-31463#comment-100803
http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/forum/general/post-your-game-stats-here-6634?page=11#comment-98337

I didn't even have a steam account way back in early 2013/late 2012. I was mainly a console gamer, but I had just built my own PC and was starting to use it more. My friend, who had played Dota 1 and currently plays League, got some Dota 2 beta keys, and made an offer over facebook for them. I don't usually go for those kinds of things, but as fate would have it I was in a good mood that day so I told him I'd like one. I made a steam account, he gave it to me, and we played a bot match or two. I didn't really understand the game, so I played a few more bot matches on my own. The game just wasn't clicking for me, so I soon gave up on it.

A few weeks later, I was sitting at my computer, bored out of my mind after a long week at work, and I saw the Dota icon on my desk. Out of desperation for something to do, I opened the game and played another bot match. I randomed Luna, and the game just went so well. I felt really accomplished as I mowed down the enemy team, even though it was just bots. This was the first time I'd won a bot game on my own. I started playing more often, and eventually I found some friends during co-op bot matches that I have continued playing with to this day. We must have played almost 200 bot matches in total before we felt like we were ready to play our first 'pub' game, whatever those things were.

Then, the day came and we played it. We won our first pub handily, probably thanks to the ridiculous amount of time we spent practicing. We won our first 8 pubs, actually. It was great! I think that was the moment that Dota really became a game for me, instead of a curiosity. I began playing very regularly, and my hero pool began to widen. Instead of the hodgepodge of heroes/roles we'd picked up, we began narrowing into specific roles that each of us were best at; I was the dedicated support player. It was great, and we even though about starting a team (some of the other members had begun following the pro scene).

That was when I started realizing that dota had become an addiction for me. As an anecdote, my family is prone to forming addictions, so this was a serious issue for me. I kept playing for a little bit, denying to myself that I was really addicted and that I could quit any time. Eventually something happened while I was in a dota match and I had to choose whether to deal with that or finish the match, and I ended up finishing the match. Afterwards, I felt so bad about what I'd done that I uninstalled the game. That was hard, and I really wanted to come back to the game, but I couldn't. After a few months away, the urges started fading and it got easier to deal with.

I thought that would be the end of it, but then one of my IRL friends asked me about this 'Dota' game he'd seen some people talking about. He wanted to try it out, and he knew I had played it. I figured this would be a good opportunity to get back in the game while maintaining some responsibility, so I started teaching him about how the game worked in some bot matches. We limited how much time we were allowed to spend, and the habit stuck with me as he started moving away from the game. I guess it just didn't have the same draw for him. :/

Anyway, now that I was back in the game, I contacted my old dota lads and we started playing again, but I made it very clear that I had limits and that this game was always just going to be a game for me, not a serious thing. It's worked out for the last year or so, and I've been really enjoying the game as it's evolved over these 2+ years.

I'd heard about Dota when I started playing on Steam, but never really payed attention to it. Started playing about 6 months ago when my friend introduced me to it; haven't been able to stop since.

So I started Dota around the time of TI3 when my little brothers introduced me to the game. I hadn't heard of it up until that point, but after playing it for the past while I couldn't believe I hadn't gotten into it sooner. I was primarily a console gamer at that point but ever since I started playing dota I just transferred over to PC.

I played through bot matches for a while to get myself attuned to the game and fell in love with playing carry and offlane. But then I decided to do my first player match. I was excited, I had played a ton of Razor games and thought I was ready to go mid. I got completely and utterly destroyed. From that point on I worked hard to find out what I had done wrong, what I could do better and how to do it. I started watching replays, watching how the pros did it, getting recommendations from other players and Dotafire members.

Today, Dota has become a thrilling hobby for me. It also turned me into a massive supporter of the e-sports scene. I keep up to date with teams and have a blast watching tournaments. I've also met some incredible individuals in the Dota community as well, people that were willing to take the time to coach me, to mentor me, and are all-around cool people.

It is a brilliant strategy game that doesn't get boring no matter how much you play. I have personally never found another game that has enthralled me as much as Dota. I have a feeling that won't change much for me in the future. Dota has been a source of enjoyment for me for a while now, and it's the game as well as they people in the community that have made this possible.

-BK

The first time I tried was in 2012, during the closed beta.

I liked it, but not nearly as much as other games so I completely dropped it a couple of weeks after Medusa was added.

Come Summer 2014. I start watching more and more streams and sub to a few DotA channels. Until then I had only been interested in FPSes. After all, when I was 6 years old I was playing Quake 2 on my mom's computer.

I pick it up again in August.

Now I have the bug, but I've been having to stay away for a while because of studies and trying to git swoll.

I've been playing for like 2 years now, but it has not been very consistent because of studies (i took 2 3 month gaps) and a couple of other things (did you guys know that I was shot =D)

The craze for Doto never truly left me, this was the first game I was so addicted to that I completely stopped playing many others just to make time for this one.

burned out 3 PC's playing Doters, not planning to stop anytime soon :{D