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Comment by P5fRxh5kUvp2th | Hacker News Reader

For anyone who isn't familiar with Dota's history, the above poster is effectively lying (yes, lying).

Starcraft and Warcraft 3 had what they called "custom maps" that people would play competitively online, with completely different styles of gameplay than the original game.

There were probably thousands of custom maps, but over time "genres" of map became more popular than others.

Dota is one such map, but it became so popular that in 2013 Valve released Dota2. Valve got involved because a few of their employees were fans of the original Dota mod and they wanted to build a modern sequel.

Dota, in terms of esports (aka Dota 2), is less than 10 years old.

Dota as a genre can draw it's LINEAGE back to the original mod from 2003, but that's about it.

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Since you're calling me out for lying:

The first dota esports tournaments started in 2004, full history here: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_Competitive_DotA_(T.... The tournaments have been running for 19 years.

Even if you argue that Dota 2 was the true birth of these tournaments, The International 11 (the 11th yearly dota 2 championships) was held this October: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_2022

The first International was held in 2011, over 11 years ago. Invites to participate went out to the existing highly ranked dota esports teams - DotA was already established as an esports game at this time, which is why they were able to source teams from around the world to play.

In regards to your claim of lineage, in the same way that chess does not change between a wooden board and when you upgrade to one carved in marble, I'm curious as to why you see these as two separate games? Dota 2 was purely an engine upgrade rewrite of the original mod, without any gameplay mechanics changes. Dota 2 and Dota 1 maintained parity with each other until Dota 1 was deprecated in December of 2016: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Version_7.00

They're the same game.

I said effectively lying, everything you're saying is technically true.

But it would be akin to claiming modern day esports started in the late 1950's because Tennis for Two was released and is a competitive game.

No, modern day esports can trace it's _lineage_ back to the late 1950's.

It'd be akin to claiming Counter-Strike has been an esport since the early 2000's because people would get together and compete in very small tournaments. CS:Go was the first version to be explicitly made for competition and it was released in 2011.

It was a completely dishonest response.

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