Recently, I have entered the MOBA scene, or multiplayer online battle arena for the uninitiated, with casual wonder. This was not my first foray into competitive online games, but it has proven to revitalize my passion for the genre and give birth to my support of the overarching phenomenon known as e-Sports. While I have never been a hater of professional gamers, I hadn’t really participated in the movement. With the monolithic success of DOTA 2 and the overwhelming support via twitch TV and other streaming services, the status of e-Sports has begun to grow from a hardcore gamer niche to near professional sport levels within recent years. While this will not be a story of my aspirations to become a professional gamer, it will be an account of my experiences from my humble beginnings to my current state in the game. Fear not! This will not be an attempt to review DOTA 2, as Mr. Sean Bean will succinctly prove, such an attempt would be a fool’s errand:
This is the beginning of my toils as a lone gamer in DOTA 2…
As a regular listener of the Giant Bombcast, I became very interested in the game that Brad Shoemaker had become enraptured by beginning on 5/7/2013. Much to my surprise, after researching DOTA 2, I found that it wasn’t the run-of-the-mill RTS in regards to micromanagement and base building that many mainstream, competitive games are (not that I have anything against those types of games, I just have an incredibly poor ability for micromanagement in video games). Instead, I found a game with a titanic roster, and a premise that while simple enough, provided ample opportunity for teamwork and Patton-level, meta game strategy.
After completing the tutorials and playing against bots for practice, I decided to jump head first into individual match-making, or mm, to see why people were flocking to DOTA 2. As my blog’s namesake will attest, I had very few friends I gamed with and exactly 0 on steam.
Enter the Pick-up-Game (PUG).
With the variety of game modes, I settled on just limited heroes for my first couple matches and slowly moved into the many other modes such as random draft, all pick, captain’s mode… etc. Though those games were laden with admonishment for “being the worst player in DOTA 2 history”, I had an overwhelmingly positive experience with the depth and breadth of DOTA 2. The roster, which boasted 100+ characters, was as mouthwatering as a large-scale, Las Vegas buffet². I had become hypnotized by the seemingly endless team possibilities and was ensnared just as Mr. Shoemaker was.
After focusing on a couple of characters in some of the staple roles (Carry, Support, Nuker and Jungler specifically), I began to attempt to hone my skills and advance from pond scum tier to gelatinous cube tier. In doing this, I got my first dose of the hard knocks of what I endearingly call “PUG Life”, which would prove to be the masochistic approach to DOTA 2 that I would come to know for many matches (166 to be exact), and the establishment of my “solidarity in the face of evil approach” to individual match-making.
With each match, I was playing tempting the hands of fate. Every game was like blindly picking from grab bag of scenarios, many resulting in a soul-crushing defeat chased with bitter contempt towards the less savory individual mm. Here is a list of the prototypical scenarios encountered during my stint in PUG life:
This list is not all-inclusive, but rather a taster’s choice of my favorite flavors of pain:
- I didn’t get (insert overused, easily countered character) so I feed. Odds: 10-1
- Four other players pick carries…. RAWR Super-Duper Team… utter annihilation from the start. Odds: 6-1
- DOTA 2 Master is on your team, judges all mistakes, and is playing like a bag of wet garbage. Odds: 6-1
Aye, Aye SIR!!! - All supports…. LOL… Odds: 19-1
- Vladimir Putin has sent his DOTA 2 scourge to disregard any semblance of teamwork, and rage click the Russian national anthem on the map. Odds: 11-2
Feel the wrath of the Red Death! - Die to first blood, team turns rabid and eats you like a starving wolf eats its young. Odds: 3-1
- Holy shit! We actually have a working team… and disconnect. Odds: 6-1
I cannot claim innocence either. As I began to become more familiar, I too would falter in my resolve to not be a giant scrotum, from time to time. With each passing game, I would become less and less interested in proper playing of the game, instead developing tactics to counter the problems within my own team. I was losing the key concept of teamwork and combined strategy as I adapted to my environment. I was turning into what I hated most. I had become hardened by the mean streets, transforming into a jack booted thug who thought victory was attained by only the most savage DOTA 2 player. I had stopped communicating in chat, auto-muted all players, and just did my own thing no matter what was going down, if it meant I would be making forward momentum in a match. This obviously was not a tactic that resulted in victory very often.
After a while I was playing less and less, and eventually stopped playing for a while. My disappointment with the lack of community within the game, which was building so much momentum despite of it, had overridden the enjoyment I received from the game. I jumped into the steam forums to find that a large portion of players felt the same as I did, but those who challenged those offenders within the community would be met by comments like:
“Stopping crying n00b”, “Don’t be a bitch”, or a multitude of other reductive comments that added no insight but rather reinforced the negative perception of MOBA communities.
Then, by pure luck, I decided to try-out the chat channels in the DOTA 2 client. I had never done before due to my assumption that the channels were filled with many of the players I had grown to despise within individual mm. After noting many channels in non-English text, I found the Giant Bomb channel. I joined and, after some waiting, found players looking for a group. I was very reluctant at first, but decided to join to see if there was a marked difference in the conduct of players versus individual mm. The results were like night and day. After a few matches, I was blown away by the difference in my overall experience. We discussed team picks, players with more experience gave real-time coaching in game, and no one raged when someone died foolishly.
And this is where my story is thus far… I have seen the light, and shed my lone gamer ways in DOTA 2. In doing so, I have seen enjoyable matches and begun to network within the community. That once bitter after taste has sweetened considerably, and I now get why so many people are enamored with DOTA 2. The layered interaction in the game, including pre and post-game involvement, is comparable to that of regular sports, in my opinion, and gives credence to the financial boom that e-Sports have seen since the recent mania surrounding modern-day MOBAs.
TL:DR Wrap-up
Individual MM: 
Team Game:
The Lone Gamer...er 