Dota 2 isn’t for the faint of heart. It isn’t for everyone. But if you play MOBAs, then it is for you. This is the game in the genre you need to play. If you don’t believe me, then consider this: There’s a reason why the community has crowd-funded a total of $900,000-plus to the prize pool for The International 3.You’ll need knowledge, skill, and a smidge of spider-sense. Friends to learn with are a must, and don’t be deceived by the lack of a pricetag: Dota 2 will cost you hundreds of hours.As such, you should not expect to have fun your first day playing... or even your first week. That sounds like a cardinal sin of gaming, but there’s method to this madness. In short, Dota 2 is a deeply layered construct of systems, and to survive you need to understand every single one and how they interact with one another. Everything from learning to work as a member of a coordinated team to the counter-intuitive practice of killing your own AI units to deny the enemy experience points and gold they’d get from doing it themselves, and understanding the effects of hundreds of complex abilities like Bloodseeker’s Rupture (which deals huge damage with every step you take) is a big barrier to entry. Even figuring out which of the 102 heroes (and counting) fits you best is a time-consuming challenge.To grasp the subtleties of how heroes interact and fight you have to do more homework on the different kinds of damage and how they’re mitigated; how to prevent one type of spell from affecting you, and when you use that countermeasure; how the different kinds of aggro work, and when you need to manipulate them; the timers (which aren't made visible), and how to optimise your play around them.Dota 2 deserves its intimidating reputation, and it probably won’t suit you if you’re looking to play casually. There’s a huge time investment before you can even enjoy a game, let alone feel competent at it. But once you start to learn its secrets, there’s a wild and exciting variety of play here that’s unmatched, even by its peers. It’s a challenge of knowledge as well as reflexes, and success is a rush. The fact that it’s completely and totally free to play in the way we wish all free-to-play games could be isn’t just one of the most generous propositions anywhere in gaming, it creates a level playing field where skill and cooperation is paramount. May the best team win.

Dota 2 isn’t for the faint of heart. It isn’t for everyone. But if you play MOBAs, then it is for you. This is the game in the genre you need to play. If you don’t believe me, then consider this: There’s a reason why the community has crowd-funded a total of $900,000-plus to the prize pool for The International 3.You’ll need knowledge, skill, and a smidge of spider-sense. Friends to learn with are a must, and don’t be deceived by the lack of a pricetag: Dota 2 will cost you hundreds of hours.As such, you should not expect to have fun your first day playing... or even your first week. That sounds like a cardinal sin of gaming, but there’s method to this madness. In short, Dota 2 is a deeply layered construct of systems, and to survive you need to understand every single one and how they interact with one another. Everything from learning to work as a member of a coordinated team to the counter-intuitive practice of killing your own AI units to deny the enemy experience points and gold they’d get from doing it themselves, and understanding the effects of hundreds of complex abilities like Bloodseeker’s Rupture (which deals huge damage with every step you take) is a big barrier to entry. Even figuring out which of the 102 heroes (and counting) fits you best is a time-consuming challenge.To grasp the subtleties of how heroes interact and fight you have to do more homework on the different kinds of damage and how they’re mitigated; how to prevent one type of spell from affecting you, and when you use that countermeasure; how the different kinds of aggro work, and when you need to manipulate them; the timers (which aren't made visible), and how to optimise your play around them.Dota 2 deserves its intimidating reputation, and it probably won’t suit you if you’re looking to play casually. There’s a huge time investment before you can even enjoy a game, let alone feel competent at it. But once you start to learn its secrets, there’s a wild and exciting variety of play here that’s unmatched, even by its peers. It’s a challenge of knowledge as well as reflexes, and success is a rush. The fact that it’s completely and totally free to play in the way we wish all free-to-play games could be isn’t just one of the most generous propositions anywhere in gaming, it creates a level playing field where skill and cooperation is paramount. May the best team win.