Dota began as a user-made modification for Warcraft 3 and has grown into one of the most played online games in the world. Following in the tradition of Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Portal, and Alien Swarm, Dota 2 is the result of Valve hiring the community developers who built the mod and giving them the chance to finally build a full product out of their idea with the help of a professional team of developers and artists at Valve.

As for the gameplay, it’s a little hard to describe. The camera is set in the traditional RTS perspective, but it wouldn’t be fair to call Dota an RTS. And while each hero starts at level 1, and many times hits the level cap of 25, it wouldn’t be fair to call it an RPG.

Lots of people have tried to assign various genre names to Dota, but we think Action RTS is probably the most descriptive. And while we don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out what genre the game is inventing, we can’t stop playing it internally!

It's still under beta testing, but its already a perfect game.

I believe with sudden mass beta key spams by Valve, they are in their final beta phase already, where they do stress testing on their server.

Eh, perfect? Have yet to try the beta (no luck with the beta keys spam) but it is really going that well so far?

Eh, perfect? Have yet to try the beta (no luck with the beta keys spam) but it is really going that well so far?

just realized it is cool you can watch your steam friend play dota for live.

Those aren't live game, there are 30-60 seconds delay from what your friend is playing, to prevent ghosting.

To be exact, 120 seconds