Right from the start, all the heroes are unlocked, opening up a veritable buffet of options to play with. Best of all, there’s no restriction on who to play. It’s got a massive roster of characters to choose from, over one hundred in total, and yet each one still manages to feel distinct from the others in ability, function, and presentation. While Dota 2 might have helped lay to groundwork for MOBA games, there’s a lot in the game that makes it stand out from the crowd. The result wound up being a highly polished, intricate strategy game that didn’t just cement the foundation of the MOBA genre, but also managed to stand the test of time and continue to thrive even years after its release.
The first Dota (which stands for “Defense of the Ancients”) originally began as a mod for Blizzard’s WarCraft III and was one of major pioneers for the genre, but Dota 2 ditched the mod route in favor of a standalone game built from the ground up, improving on everything that came before. There are all kinds of competitive online games on the market, but one of the biggest genres is the multiplayer online battle arena, or MOBA, style.