(Thanks to FreeSoul for the intricate details!)
Warcraft doesn’t end, and I’m happy for it. I don’t play the game, but watching them all play it here in college, and spending time with them while they go through hoards of strategies and then beguiling each other about the farce the last game was: that’s just endless hours of entertainment. The pik-ban session starts probably an hour before the game commences over the LAN, and those introverts you saw lingering limply around the campus suddenly seem to have come to life, an exuberance pouring forth from them, as they curse and bellow to no tomorrow. “Pit Lord? Do a hex, and then remember to bring down the rain of fire when you summon the pit”, “Dude! I had Butterfly and Skadi eighteen minutes into the game! What you do for the next fifteen minutes is farm like a bitch!”, “Why the fuck would buy a Gem and drop it? And why the fuck would YOU buy Lothas when there are wards all over the place and Anub’arak has a gem?!”, “DUDE! IMBA, DUDE!”, “NOOB!”, and so on and so forth. While all the time, it has only been an excuse for me to stand there in the open and look at the moon without seeming like a retard :P.
Man is also an animal, and he is possessed with some instincts that come naturally. For example, campaigning for vegetarianism is hard not because leaf tastes bland, but because to eat meat is the natural order. Mind and the sixth sense apart, he is still an integral part of the food chain; if man ceases to eat meat, then God knows what would have happened to the population of chicken. I mean, man is predator and meat is prey: he doesn’t have to cook leaves enough to make them lose their anti-appendicidal properties. And so it is with violence, and strategies, and war, and battle, and hiding, and lying, and backstabbing, and associating. Apart from being a very violent game in its own regard, DotA is endless entertainment, and it seems to compensate for a lot of absent elements in our lives. The craving for power, a ceaseless megalomania, whether wrong or right, is natural. The right to stay in power, the drunkenness you derive from being in control, the ability to demand service at the snap of a few fingers, and most of all, the skill to assure authoritatively that you are dominating the setup, is overwhelming, and again, natural. And DotA provides for all of these; if you’re man enough, come and get it!
A little less than a hundred heroes, twenty five levels, four special abilities each, six allowable item slots, two races of warriors, three primary attributes, two forms of attack (HP/Mana), and a thousand recipes to concoct and enhance your powers. A pik-ban session before you begin – a chance for your opponent to bottle your strategies, paying for this luxury with a chance for you to confine his: the game is a true test of optimisation. In the heat of battle, just image: 5 v 5, an incalculable probability of determining your opponent, three prime corridors, twelve towers, two fountains, stacking auras and effects, and an umpteen number of neutral enemies. DotA is truly a game that never ends. Just by integrating the fact that not all aspects of the game can be experienced at the same time, the developers have unconsciously made that sense of “What now?!” omnipresent through the gameplay. You don’t know what’s coming next, you don’t know what you can do to maneuver out of it alive, and you don’t know who’s opposing you. Apart from testing your reflexes and your ability to think and respond quickly, the game takes a step further: it fosters the importance of playing as team, and to do what is expected of you. The characters are there just so you can detect a sense of progress and accomplishment. Forget the know-how. It’s just a matter of know-what.
Clathration Therapy 