Having read through most of this, its fairly simple to categorize the posters here:

- Demigod Seperatists - believe universally that DOTA is a bad game with terrible people and are quick to tell you so.  Their motivation for their hatred is sometimes unknown, though the opposition will tell you it is because they tried it, got pwned, and rage quit in their first few games.  Other theories include that their fathers were DOTA players who beat them.

- Demigod Disciples - genuinely believe that Demigod is better suited to their interest in gaming and tend to focus discussion on game accesibility and game community.  Some may have DOTA experience but most probably just dont get the same reward from the gaming commitment that is DOTA.  Probably the most reasonable people here, or at least the ones that get out the most.

- Guardians of the Community - These middle of the road thinkers pride themselves on their open mindedness and adversity to conflict (read: lack of opinion).  Whether they actually favor one game or the other and actually believe their posts or not, they will try to get everyone to see the value in the other's game/opinion.  Motivations for taking this stance vary widely.  Some do it to appear superior, above the petty squables of the DOTA Elitists/Demigod Seperatists, while a few may actually believe that both are equally good games with unique appeals and are naive enough to believe they can convince others of this.  As a general rule, dont trust any of these unless they have the "Stardock" tag, everyone has an opinion, or they wouldnt have opened this post.

- DOTA Lovers - have played DOTA enough to understand its complexity and, good or not, can understand why they lose or win a DOTA game (which does take some experience to figure out).  They often appreciate Demigod as a fine break from DOTA and probably are more interested in discovering the nuances and strategies of Demigod than the average Demigod Disciple or Seperatist.  I predict these will become the best Demigod players simply because they understand the importance of gameplay details and are willing to figure out how to make the details work for them.

- DOTA Elitist - are jerks and have just amount as much justification to be a jerk as one can possibly have.  DOTA is an unaccesible game for most people and becomming truly good at it probably requires more experience and practice than the majority of games (cliffhanger-steep learning curve).  When you have spent that much time learning every aspect of a complex game just so you can be considered an "average" player, it is understandable that you become frustrated with the player who thinks DOTA is dumb because they cant choose sniper and right click their way to victory.  To become a DOTA elitist, you have to not only play more DOTA than is healthy, you also need to be exposed to enough DOTA nubs (who are unwilling or unable to see DOTA's appeal) to become frustrated with them and more importantly be prone to that type of frustration.  This of course doesnt change the fact that elitists are jerks and they probably abuse DOTA nubs.  Yeah you are better than them at DOTA and they are probably close-minded about it, but how important is that really?

Defense:  I have no doubt I could get flamed or banned for this post.  Also, someone will try to categorize me so I am going to beat you to it: I am a DOTA-lover, used to be a DOTA Elitist, and think I am moving towards Demigod Disciple.

Prediction:  Everyone is still a Demigod nub.  Seriously, Demigod is more complex and has more potential for stratification of skill levels than most people seem to realize.  It requires a lot of the same talent and experience that DOTA requires and will move in that direction eventually so if you want to keep playing and winning, you need to learn to love the genre.

EXAMPLE 1) You need to be very aware to play these games.  It pays in Demigod to watch the minimap and, if your teammates are fighting close by, you need to get there with the quickness.  This is a lesson every DOTA player has to learn quickly.  Farming regulus all game without paying attention wont get the job done against good teams.

EXAMPLE 2) Items purchases can be greatly optimized.  Anyone who knows the DOTA community should be familiar with your mathcrafters.  Well known players in DOTA tend to purchase items to give them the greatest advantage at all parts of the game in order to get ahead, meaning they optimize return to cost  and rarely have left over cash (e.g. branches instead of nobilitys early).  Good Demigod players will need to start doing this soon.  Have you ever really thought about whether its better to get the +4 mana regen helm or 2 combat mana pots?  How about this, you have 3k gold and 4 item slots, should you get that one uber helm or 2 lesser helms?  1 expensive armor that doesnt quite fit your build or something cheap and a bunch of pots to get you through the next 10 minutes?

EXAMPLE 3) Map control.  How many good DOTA teams dont place wards to always know where the enemies are? (if you dont play DOTA, just know the answer is "very few")  Demigod places even more emphasis on map control with its flag capture points and purchaseable creep upgrades.  To quote one of my other posts, try defeating an equal team on the map "brothers" without upgrading your citadel when they do.  Also, I think we will see an increase in gank strategies once people figure out how to allow the enemy to push without losing too quickly.

Also, this is a wall of text and I doubt anyone will read it all but at least I killed some time at work.

Bye!

I think the rest of us are more interested in getting the game-breaking bugs worked out first.

+1

I never actually meant to make it sound like I was going at the guys throat in my post, just pointing out what he said contradicted itself entirely.

Oh man...so many huge posts in this thread I just stopped reading. But the man's got a point. Dota isn't going anywhere any time soon, and DG has a lot of potential...just as soon as the bugs are fixed (omfg @ UB losing control every command)

A couple points made though, Dota does have a lot behind it and its not going away anytime soon just because DG is new and shiny. The dota community is a bunch of jackoffs, I've played pro but I was never -ACTUALLY- pro, just semi-pro. But I never liked it, full of too many conceited pricks. But then again, what community doesn't end up like that? A game grows in popularity, its fanbase gets bigger, eventually people start thinking they're better than one another and out come the epeens.

Needless to say this topic has gone far beyond *I am/am not going back to 6.60*, and is definitely now in the bashing one another category. But hey, we have a great community here in DG right? Everybody is so friendly! (no, that was NOT sarcasm..right?)

I think you missed my point. I don't play Dota anymore because I don't care. Has nothing to do with whether or not I can hack it. You must not have done any serious clan vs clan or your an out right liar when you say you've never encountered map hacking (I'm leaning towards the latter). Spare me the veiled insults of insinuating I think people are hacking when I lose.

As for the Nirvana metaphor, let me just verse you in a little War3 history since your obviously a johnny come lately. The original Dota was created by EUL, later stolen by IceFrog. He outright stole the map, removed EUL's name and put his own on it and tagged All-Stars on the end. he then proceeded to crack open every successful AoS map that was released and out right copy and pasted the hero code into all-stars. Sure, he changed the names of heroes and abilities but the entire map is plagurized. A lot of people spent a lot of time learning Jass and creating heroes only to be ripped and stolen by Icefrog, so please don't try to put him in same arena as Kurt. Icefrog didn't create shit, he merely stole everything.

If you want to see real (original) talent go check out

http://www.tidesofblood.com/

or

http://www.jx3.net/TDG/wiki/index.php/Image:Maps.gif

and check out Oculus Wars, 11th Hour and Battle for Atlantis

You are a true and complete picture of ignorance if you think Dota is somehow more balanced than demigod.

Relavance of this post?

I played dota from 2004-present, my problem with DoTA is that cs/deny is a major part of the game but with the lag delay it becomes extremely difficult to do this as well as I can unless I'm hosting or its over lan.  As I became quite competitive I found I couldn't play unless I was hosting, generally over listchecker.  Even fast hosts with listchecker caused .5-1s delays that made my scores plummet.  Demigod doesn't require such precise timings which I tend to prefer.  DoTA's resolution is also very poor at this point, I need to be able to zoom out and see more - I use a 24" monitor.  I think if you took the best of demigod and the best of DoTA you'd have the ideal game though.  Heck, I think if you raised DoTA's resolution to 1920x1200 and were able to completely mitigate delay, it would be the superior game.  Not really possible though.

I've played a little DOTA, but i never could learn it in order to be a good player. It's way, way too hardcore, you absolutely MUST memorize ALL the 80+ heroes and items and their interactions in order to have a chance and not be kicked from the game, lol. I don't hate it though, i love the concept and many things, but it's way too hard to master. Maybe if i would have played it from the beginnings, like many veteran players, it would have been easier to learn. But for a new player, it's a herculean task to master the game in it's current state.

Demigod is just right. Easy on new players but deep enough to separate avg players from skilled players. But it needs work in order to succeed, and i'm not referring only to the net problems, but to new content such as new demigods (a game like this needs at least 20 demigods) and new items/revamp items. And of course, continuous balance work.

The only other game that is like DOTA, is League of Legends. It's made by the original makers of DOTA and has big potential. Unfortunately, i really, really hate the art style, especially after i've been spoiled by Demigod. And i've got a feeling it will be as hardcore and inaccessible as DOTA is right now. We'll see...

Oh.

Oh WOOOW.

I just checked out league of legends or whatever, oh my god the art... your right.

Its like WC3 meets anime meets looney toons... WTF were they thinking?

Graphics dont make a game, but it seems they can kill it, I'd never try that game out simply because it looks so stupid.

And I was complaining because Erebus looked cartoony hahahaha.

I think DG will continue to evolve, I hope it dosent get too competetive though.

Had a little break from this forums (not like i'm a regular) beta-testing League of Legends-Clash of Fates and found this thread, which was very interesting indeed...

So far the dota elitists, yes we are elitists. I've been a part of the Dota Allstars community for well over 4 years and so far the DA community have left the DG community alone. Do not start a war. Garena alone has over 6 million Dota players and when you include all the private servers in countries like Austarlia/New Zealand, Philipines, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.etc Remember this does not even incude battle.net You are looking at approximately around 12 million and above Dota players.

Dota currently has over 30 million builds with heroes and items, yes 30 million. And yet its popularity exceeds in the millions and in some countries higher than World of Warcraft. Demigod is a tiny fly compared to the giant spider Dota is....For your sake do not piss the DA community...

Lets pit the dotakus vs anonymus.

Interweb Armageddon.

Dude, you're only making yourself look bad by pretending map hacking doesnt go on in Dota. It may not in outiside areas/private servers, but it does on Bnet. At any rate, I'm sick of arguing with a fan boy. You keep on raging against the machine and worshiping Icefrog in your time capsule, the rest of us will move on with civilization.