"Why Dota Sucks" Lowell speaks out.

By Michael J. Lowell

Michael Lowell, curator of LearnToCounter.com (formerly ghetto.org). He follows a lineage of great thinkers. A mind that rivals that of Kierkegaard. Einstein. Ghandi.

It's no secret that Lowell hates DotA, but now he takes it to the next level. He is writing a book with the intention to excoriate every one of you. He has a one track mind: Humiliation of Every DotA Fan on Earth.



DotA is played all over the world and thusly will be heard the cries of anguish from DotA Fans.

13 chapters. 666 pages. The End of DotA. You get no love from Michael J. Lowell.

Your text to link here...

This guy says dota can't be learned by only the act of playing. Is he like constantly stoned?

The mere fact that he thinks this game cannot be learned by the act of playing shows just how little thought he out into the topic.
Everything from common item builds to meta game in dota2 can be learned by simply playing and observing while playing. If the task of watching all 5 heroes of the own team plus the heroes of the opposing team that are in range of vision is too much for him that's his problem.

For every player that has played games like Starcraft for some time watching all visible units and builds at all times should not be very hard to acomplish.

Also his arguments of a game having a simple set of rules is just hilarious. Sports like tennis, table tennis, football and basketball all have a relatively simple set of rules. This just means that the individual ability of the player to control the situations inside those rules is more important.
If every step of the game is controlled and regulated by rules what would be the point of playing?

Further making an argument for how stupid a game is is just ridiculous in itself. Games are supposed to be entertaining. That's what they are made for and that's what they try to do.
The dota genre is very popular because it offers a lot of variety to the gameplay.
With ~100 heroes and the viable team compositions you get a lot of different settings and courses of action in the game. If you also include the variety of builds on every hero this variety expands even further.
Inside this huge variety however is always some "impurities" which limit the variety. With the huge amount of variety keeping everything absolutely balanced is close to impossible which leads to the establishement of the meta-game.

However even with having a meta-game Dota2 is probably the one game that still offers a lot of variety to the compositions of teams and strategies. The current approaches of raw pushing, teamfights and "rat" which are currently dominating still allow a rather free choice in the compositions of the teams. Even inside the different approaches to winning the compositions of the team can be changed and varied depending on what kind of situation arises.

TL;DR : Dota2 doesn't get boring. It's always changing and it's always entertaining to watch and play.
It's not purely dictated by either a set of rules or the players abilities, but by a good synergy of both.

Dunno that Michael Lowell, Google says he is a baseball player.

Also,



That gave me lel.

Anyway, clowning aside, why does this guy think his work will do more job than all the famous "Dota vs LoL" arguments? If that book will get any attention, it's likely will be mostly used by LoL fanboys and Dota haters to prove that Dota sucks. I think he is too optimistic and ambitious - barely any Dota player will waste his time reading about how much his favorite game sucks, and for others this won't be much of a value either as they are not interested in Dota anyway(except above-mentioned Dota haters).

So, Mr.Lowell, why so much hype?

What even is this article?? I didn't read any of it, just the comments because to be honest I'm not interested in Michael whatshisface's article one bit, nor am I his book. This is the most stupid thing I've ever seen, it's as stupid of writing a book called "Why America Sucks" and then publishing it specifically to Americans only. I really don't understand what he is writing about, he is writing a book about "why dota sucks" because he personally doesn't like the game? I personally am not a huge fan of Hearthstone but I'm not going to go around writing some ******ed book trying to annoy every fan on the planet. If someone can give me a rough run-through of this article (because frankly, I'm not interested in giving his rubbish book the slightest bit of attention) then I would love to hear from you.

A vain attempt at attention seeking. I skimmed the prelude and it seemed to be an attempt to use lots of big words to say "I don't like this genre and don't like that anyone else does". At the end of the day, DOTA either works for you or it doesn't - that's fine. There's plenty of criticism that can be levelled at any type of game (COD anyone?) - I don't personally enjoy flight sims or racing games, but understand some people do. Shockingly, we don't all like the same things.

There's ~10 million DOTA 2 players and ~25-30 million LOL players who do, so let them enjoy themselves without your pedantic waffle. SFUAP.

This guy is really, really ****ing ******ed. In the way that he's putting things across, he is basically saying "I suck at dota and have no desire to learn it, therefore I diss every single dota player in existence. I'm so smart and intellectual lol."


I really love how, in another thread, he mentions:

"The range of extended mechanical flexibility that you get in Dota games with a free camera�which is merely matching what prior RTS games have done�does not change that it is a bad idea to have a free camera in a game which is centrally built around playing as a single character. Even if those individual characters can make clones or copies of themselves, and even if you have couriers and other supporting units. You're adding mechanical flexibility�or rather, merely matching what prior RTS games have done�and compromising your connection to the action in the screen by doing it."

This only shows how inexperienced he is at the genre. How are you supposed to view action from the other side of the map if the camera was fixed on your character(s) other than walking to the location? What if you were really far away? In actuality, the free camera actually allows you more access to a greater amount of the action so you can see more and do more.

From what I can gather, he sees himself as a philosophical game genius while he comes across as a self-righteous, egoistic bastard who will start insulting and reprimanding you at the supermarket if you've decided to buy a brand of cheese he doesn't like.

This noob should just stay away from our turf if he doesn't like us. Instead, he mocks us with his upcoming ****-***ed book.


TL;DR
This guy is a biased piece of ********.

When you compared this guy to Kierkegaard and Einstein, I lost it.

I love Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, etc... What did Nietzsche say about opinions?

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

So a guy doesn't like DotA and creates a book about it. Big deal. There are a lot of people that enjoy DotA, and I doubt that an E-book is going to change anyone's opinion. There have been people on the internet that have said that Chess sucks... Or Halo... Titanfall, StarCraft, Hearthstone, Call of Duty... Even children's games like Ants in the Pants. They're all fine and dandy (Especially Ants in the Pants).

Also, his thread has been read one thousand times. One thousand. Is that really what you consider influential? My coaching thread has over 10x those views, and I wouldn't consider myself influential AT ALL in the DotA community compared to others.

Basically... I'll read the book if it's free. There are no bad points of view. You can always learn from others. I doubt it will change my opinion on DotA. However if you think that some random guy with 1k views on his thread is going to crush the DotA community, I believe that you're mistaken.

(Also think twice before you compare some of the most influential people in our history to a random blogger on the internet.)

AngeloBangelo, I believe F.E.A.R was being very sarcastic when he said those things. If he was not, he might have a problem :P.

Whoa what is going on with all of those crazy symbols lol?!

Even worse, dota IS MADE INSIDE AN RTS! WHO THE **** IS THIS GUY!!!