Blizzard DotA “flattened”, “rebooted”

Announced at last year’s BlizzCon, Blizzard DotA, one of four StarCraft II mods, was originally expected to be out sometime this year – reportedly on the latter half of it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

In a statement to Eurogamer, Blizzard senior game designer Jonny Ebbert said that Blizzard Dota as it was shown at BlizzCon last year has been “flattened”.

“What we showed at the original BlizzCon, we’ve completely flattened it since then and completely rebooted it because we just thought, there’s more we can question on this,” Ebbert said.

For example, Blizzard wants to make the mod as accessible as possible. As any newcomer to a MOBA-style game can attest to, be it with Heroes of Newerth, League of Legends or even the original DotA, they’re not particularly easy to just dive into. Blizzard wants to change that, applying their philosophy of “easy to learn, difficult to master.”

“One of the important things to note with that space is the DOTA everyone plays on Warcraft 3 is not particularly accessible to the novice,” said Frank Pearce, co-founder of Blizzard. “One of the game development philosophies we have at Blizzard is, easy to learn and difficult to master. That mod for Warcraft 3 doesn’t really fit that description.”

Blizzard still isn’t willing to say just when Blizzard DotA is expected to release, but it is looking like a 2012 release is more and more likely – possibly around the launch of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. With BlizzCon coming up in just a few short months, we could be hearing (and, if we’re lucky, seeing) more soon.

Source: Eurogamer