Legion vs. Hellbourne Win Percentages for Players in Competitive HoN Clans

Data gathered from http://stats.maide.ca/clans/index/

MSI

Bring back vote kick?

Removing the vote kick function from HoN is one of the most worthless decisions S2 has ever made. They think they have it covered with the “Report a player” function, which is bullshit. No one is afraid of losing their account. S2 wouldn’t even take away people’s accounts if they were out of control. Case in point, KingRaven. This guy is a total asshole and flames everyone every single game yet will never lose his account no matter how many times he gets reported. No one signed a contract when they paid their 30$ saying they would be nice on the internet, and S2 isn’t going to steal anyone’s 30$ dollars by taking their account away for such reason. The “Report a player” function is a useless placebo that doesn’t get anything done.

The only way to prevent moronic behavior is to have an quick fix like vote kick. “Hey moron, stop feeding or we’ll kick you.” That takes care of things pretty fast, and if it doesn’t, you just kick them and play it out 4v5 and your game isn’t ruined. Instant solution. Worked fine and it’s mind-boggling that it would get removed.

There are all kinds of idiots in HoN that can ruin your game whether they are just plain terrible, feeding on purpose to boost Milkfat’s stats, illiterate, or just some vindictive troll who gets off on wasting your time (read: 30% of the HoN community). There’s absolutely no reason they shouldn’t be kicked from your team if a unanimous vote passes.

Anyways lets see how the rest of you feel and if its a landslide maybe S2 will have the sense to bring vote kick back.

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Pendragon confirms Icefrog’s S2/Heroes of Newerth Involvement, takes petty jab at Icefrog; Dota-Allstars.com site is discontinued

Pendragon left a post today on his dota-allstars.com site confirming Icefrog’s involvement with S2 Games.  He also has discontinued the site which was basically a massive forum for DotA players.  The site traffic had been dwindling for over a year since playdota.com (Icefrog’s site) made its debut.

Pendragon’s message (see below) is basically a stroking of his ego combined with a petty jab at Icefrog and a plug for his game, League of Legends (LoL).  He tries to make his two competitors, Icefrog (Dota) and S2 (HoN), look bad while painting himself and his own game (LoL) in a good light.  His spiel: essentially, he and Guinsoo created the “real” Dota successor in LoL, while dishonest upstart Icefrog and S2 designed the ripoff HoN.  He says: “I chose to be transparent and honest about the project that I was working on, and the direction my career was going”,  which is to imply that Icefrog is not.

Whether Icefrog and S2 were involved, while an interesting story, frankly doesn’t matter.  Icefrog and S2 have been dedicated and honorable game designers and can do whatever they want with their money and ideas.  No one can deny the quality of Icefrog’s contributions to the Dota map and no one is making anyone shell out 30 bucks for HoN if they don’t want to (though Pendragon loves pointing out that LoL is “free” except for micro-transactions).  Pendragon tries to sell that S2 and Icefrog are guilty of collusion.  Just because they didn’t tell us something doesn’t mean they lied to us, and if anything, the fact (if it’s true) that S2 consulted with Dota’s developer while designing their own next-generation Dota game only adds credibility to Heroes of Newerth, especially with regard to the whole popular “ripoff” debating point.  Hey, look, Icefrog ripped himself off!  Right.

Anyone above the age of 14 can see through Pendragon’s rhetoric, which sounds like something straight from the Jeff Hunter book of douchery and manipulation.  What a fucking tool.

His message:

Some of you may know me; many of you probably won’t these days. This website was born on October 14th, 2004. It was a mere 2 months after I turned 18, and it was the first website I’d ever made. Guinsoo was the lead developer (before Icefrog), DotA had no competitive scene and maybe 5% of the players that it does today.

In the years that followed, the site turned from a small forum with only 30,000 users to a massive community with over a million visitors every month, a million page views every day, and a staff of over 100 volunteers. It’s been incredible discovering the generosity of individuals who selflessly donate their time to create a positive experience for others.

In the summer of 2008, I met Guinsoo in real life for the first time. He and his boss were in town and they wanted to meet up and go out for a steak, (how could I say no!?). I soon learned that they were working on a game based on DotA, free from all of the limitations of the Warcraft III engine and Battle.net. Several months after meeting them and after several trips to their offices to learn more about the project, I joined the Riot Games team working on League of Legends.

When I first joined the team in September of 2008, my original intent was to work on League of Legends full time and continue to build DotA-Allstars.com into an awesome thriving DotA community after Icefrog’s departure.

While I originally intended to leave this out of this letter, in light of the fact that this information is now out in the open, I think it’s important to set the record straight. Many believe that Icefrog left because I wanted to commercialize, and he did not. In reality – I had learned that Icefrog had been secretly working for S2Games after conducting a series of meetings where he was attempting to sell a full DotA game concept to a number of companies (including Riot). The differences of opinion that we had were merely that I chose to be transparent and honest about the project that I was working on, and the direction my career was going.

After working on and launching LoL, I began to realize that – in addition to having no free time anymore – with LoL available to play I no longer possessed the passion for DotA which once drove me.

The traffic on the website slowly began to decline, settling where it’s at now (about 50% of where it was a year ago), and I recently realized that I had a decision to make. I could either continue to say that I would rebuild the website as a strong DotA community, knowing that my heart wasn’t really in it, or I could archive the site, ending an almost 6 year chapter of my life that I’ve invested thousands of hours into. Ultimately I believe that the right decision here is to not trick myself into thinking that this site will be rebuilt into what it once was, and to shift my full focus and time to my new project, with an eye towards the future.

This website and the DotA community will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s been an amazing experience working with so many wonderful people and gaining so much insight about communities, people, and ultimately myself. There are more people deserving of thanks than I could possibly remember – so rather than leaving anyone out, I’ll simply thank everyone who has volunteered or contributed to this site over the last few years, and everyone who helped make it one of the premier DotA websites in the world.

The website will be offline for the next week or so while the database is moved to its new permanent home where its contents will remain archived and available to the public for the sake of historical preservation.

In the meantime, I hope some of you will join me and over 3 million other players for a game of League of Legends (it’s free!)

Should you wish to contact me, you can reach me at:
AIM: Gippis
MSN: DotA-Allstars@hotmail.com
Email: Pendragon@dota-allstars.com

Sincerely,
Pendragon

Icefrog Helped Develop HoN, S2 not confirming, possibly paid large sums of money.

Mario Mader of SK gaming posted the following:

A well respected ex-professional DotA player DoP.Emperor (HoN: brized), who has since then switched to HoN, contacted SK Gaming with the idea of publishing information that is sure to attract a lot of attention from both the HoN and DotA communities. He says he was not happy with the negative and uninformed comments made by DotA players and fans with their claims that HoN is just a bad/stolen DotA copy, while they are not aware of what was going on behind the scenes of the development of LoL, HoN and DotA. Here is what he has to say:

“Basically, I’m getting sick of the zealous supporters of IceFrog who bash HoN, or label S2 Games as thieves for “stealing” IceFrog’s work. My peak was during the ESWC livestream, where MadMortigan portrayed IceFrog as an amazing selfless developer who never accepted donations or money for his time on DotA, and slighted S2 for stealing IceFrog’s work. Though I no longer play DotA, I still love and follow both games — I just think it is time for people to know the real story.

In the Summer of 2009 I was called to the Riot Games (developers of League of Legends) office as part of an advisory panel of DotA players to give our input on making LoL a more competitive game. During my time spent at the office, as well as in private conversations with several high ranking Riot employees, I acquired a fair amount of info about IceFrog and what actually goes on behind the scenes.

During the early stages of 2006, Ice was fresh out of college and interviewed at Riot Games for the position of head developer for League of Legends. He wanted a few hundred thousand dollars, his share of profits, seat on the board of directors (next to several VERY highly renowned and experienced folks in the game industry, where as Ice was merely the developer of a single WC3 custom map), and 100% full creative control. While relations were cordial, I was informed that he was basically laughed out of the office for his ridiculous demands.

Shortly after this period, he secretly went around bidding the idea of developing a DotA clone to various game companies, accompanied by an agent who’s name I cannot recall. It was not long before he was hired at S2 games. He worked there for a few years –based on the information I received from Riot Games, I believe sometime not long after his interview at Riot (2006) to sometime before the 2009 beta launch at which point he and S2 split ways due to unknown complications.

Given my experience as a beta tester and the fact that IceFrog would be on the beta forums all day long working on and releasing DotA beta patches, it is not hard to speculate that he was paid a significant amount of money to work on HoN and to continue developing DotA in the meanwhile. It was hardly a “free project” for him if he got anything close to what he wanted from Riot. If this is indeed the case, DotA would not be the game it is today without S2′s employment and funding of IceFrog. Mind you, Ice reassured his beta testers that he was not involved in ANY other projects(blatantly false). His involvement in HoN went WAY beyond simply the blessing he gave to the game in a post on his blog back in the Summer of 2009. HoN was developed by IceFrog to be the next-gen version of DotA for the community, not some cheap copy made by developers trying to cash in on the game’s popularity.

Several other details about IceFrog were also shared with me during my visit, including his real name. I have no interest in revealing the private information of someone who has his own reasons for long staying under the radar, but considering how ridiculous the HoN vs DotA argument has become, I felt I should shed some light on it.”

WaC two-timing or just whipped?

WaC hasn’t been seen in weeks, this after flirting with offers from a number of top clans including tSm, Milk, and BRAH.  Has he finally been seduced by a chance at actually winning something or will he stick with DRD till death?  WaC said something about moving in with his girlfriend and so he couldn’t play as much.  Is it possible for one man to be that whipped?  HIS LIVELIHOOD SNATCHED AWAY FOREVER??  Or is he secretly playing with other clans on a new account to chase that glory?  What do you think?

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