One of my good friends has been pestering me to learn how to play the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients for a long time now. As a fellow RPG fan, he doesn’t care much for the regular Warcraft III RTS game – now he only play the mods. This weekend, I had some free time so I could finally sit down and learn Defense of the Ancients.

I own a Mac and only recently acquired a wireless mouse with a right-click button. I had previously been avoiding playing Warcraft III because of this physical barrier. However, there was also a mental barrier in that I have never really been attracted to war games or anything involving commanding units (unless you count Battleship). I had barely played the tutorial for Warcraft III when I finally decided to play the mods, hoping that they would have a greater appeal for me.

Defense of the Ancients (aka DotA) turned out to be more fun than I expected. In the beginning, you get to command one hero who can help turn the tides of an otherwise equal battlefield. While each of the games lasted around half an hour, I found that I could gain some sort of attachment to this hero, who essentially became my main focus. I played different heroes each time, and each had their own set of abilities and vocal responses. Some characters were more annoying than others, such as a perky dryad with a voice reminiscent of a ditzy ninth-grader. My friend played a group of goblins that I dubbed the “Band of Muppets” after their silly voices and weak attacks.

There is little customization in the characters, but I found myself going for only female characters. Like an avatar, I wanted to create a character that represented an idealized version of myself. I really enjoyed playing the beautiful, powerful women. I tried to go against my typical hack-and-slash combat mode to play the pretty, agile mages. These characters required some adjustments to my battle tactics, so I tried to learn how to attack from a distance and retreat at the first sign of a weakening defense. After struggling with this new technique for a couple games, I tried to switch to a powerful, combat-based Dragon Warrior. Unfortunately, I died faster than before.

I quickly discovered that I have a long way to go before I can really contribute to a team effort in DotA. I played DotA only against my friend or the computer. I played against my friend once (only after getting the hang of it by playing a few games cooperatively on easy mode against the computer). However, he happened to be very good at killing me – he killed me about seven times for the one kill I managed to get on him, and only by a happy accident. I am a sore loser from my past when I often lost board games to my older, wiser sister. I didn’t want to ruin my fragile self-esteem at the beginner stage so I insisted that he help me win by mentoring me instead of defeating me and leaving me out of the game. I wanted to be able to enjoy the game in the future.

My friend mentioned how DotA is basically an RTS modified to be more like an RPG. As he and I are both big RPG fans, it would make a lot of sense that I feel more attachment to a single hero that I control in this mod as opposed to a band of warriors in the normal game. With a name and a story, these characters jump out. Their vocal responses and special abilities are customized to where you would want to put different types of heroes on opposing teams. It could be a lot of fun to play in a group, where many different people choose characters that fit their player types and personalities. I hope to be able to play with a real team in the future, so maybe their personalities can shine through the heroes they command.