LoL nerds reaching for the excuse book after Chu big bury

After this big bury, the fat sons are little piling over here by the thousands and crashing our crap web hosting.

Just look at some of these small son whimpers over at their forums:

“he was #1 for like 20 minites”

“Didnt Chu play when all of the top players were at dream hack……. If so i dont see much here to warrant any attention nor call him a good player.”

“no one cares about solo queue so he shouldn’t think he’s mastered the game”

Bro chu is insane at gaming.  Just accept it.  Only took till page 2 of the thread for one of their own to sort this one out.

Guys He topped the ladder with Maokai No one does that. No one tops the ladder with Maokai

There is merit to what he is saying. Him climbing the ladder in 1 month just proved his own point. Try climbing the Hawn ladder in a month, see how far you get.

The next 20 pages of the thread boiled down to kids admitting LoL has terrible gameplay because of the flash ability ruining everything and then calling DRD trash HoN fanboys.  Funny thing, you can’t even say HoN over there — it’s actually censored — so Lolnerds have to call us Hawners.

Kids lets set this one straight though, since we ain’t no S2 fanboys.  LoL is trash game supported by a solid company that takes care of their shit.  HoN is a solid game supported by a trash company that has no idea what’s going on.  So take your pick.

You’ll probably have more fun playing HoN, but at the same time you’ll get a headache from random server lag, games not recording, massive regular downtime due to DDOS attacks having their way with the servers, TMM games failing to load, Valkyrie model disappearing at random mid game, random flickers of hidden wards/heroes in fog you’re not supposed to see, bugs in new heroes that take weeks to fix, a buddy list that is full of blank names that it doesnt let you remove to add new friends since there’s now a cap, a vote kick system that doesn’t work since it requires the other team’s approval to get rid of a griefer on your own team, and countless other glaring mishaps that boggle the mind and frustrate the loyal player.  This type of shit wouldn’t last two seconds at Riot where each issue would be tossed in the dumpster one by one until people were getting a quality product again, even if it was a hopelessly boring quality product that feels like you’re playing Gunbound with 12 year olds.

Just this week S2 managed to break games from recording and couldn’t figure out how to fix it for 2 days.  When [S2]Idejder works on code he literally just slams his keyboard like the cookie monster until the problem fixes itself.  No wonder shit takes so long.  It’s a fucking disaster over there, people.

Riot Games talking big about new Dominion game mode

League of Legends has introduced a new map called Dominion that has King of the Hillesque gameplay aimed at creating shorter, more action-packed games. Basically the goal is to get more hero on hero fighting and less nerdy shit like trilanes, ricing forever, jungling, counter-warding, etc. You have to like what they are going for here, but do you think people will actually play it? HoN tried to promote the same type of thing with Casual Mode and new maps. When’s the last time you played Grimm’s Crossing or Darkwood Vale?
I honestly hope this type of thing catches on in a big way.  Sometimes you just want to grab a quick game and not commit yourself to some hourlong nergin marathon that is going to give you an ulcer from raging at your teammates.  I always liked the Warcraft 3 map Warlock Brawl because it was like DotA boiled down to just the fighting in an arena with out all the rest of the nonsense. But I’m sure other people will argue we have games like Counterstrike and Unreal Tournament if you just want to do that.

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

HoN vs LoL vs DotA vs DotA 2.0 Part II

HoN v LoL

HoN v LoL v DotA

So why is League of Legends surpassing Heroes of Newerth as a replacement of DotA? It’s been widely criticized for it’s messy game design, it’s stupid japanophile graphics and overall just being a watered down content version of DotA that has totally been removed from the AoS style of game, which may not totally be a bad thing.

Could it be that LoL has Pendragon, a mastermind of a businessman that rivals even Hunter_ without the shadiness? I mean he still has the TDA forums up & running even though TDA exists no more but it makes him so much moolah it’s not funny at all.  Does this have something to do with the $100,000 Season 1 prize money? The fact that it, for the moment at least, is Free to play? Another huge lure from the $$$ costing HoN?  Lastly this impressive Season 1 trailer is so much eye candy but as a lot of people have pointed out, they are upset that Riot Games have spent time on making a video to attract new players as opposed to updating new content to keep the already playerbase.

Or is it that S2 games still has major issues with balancing? I mean we still have the same 5 heroes being picked/banned in EVERY competitive game and it seems you either ban or pick those heroes or your doom is neigh.  Or it’s somewhat unstable servers? It’s been widely noted that the USW servers are horrendous even for some USW players, spiking from 200 to upwards of 800ms ping in a single match.  Now don’t get me wrong, the gaming industry is a business but it does seem like S2 gaming is just a money grabbing scheme over and over.  First of all the price to buy a HoN account is $30, to buy a sub-account (or AKA or Alternative account) is $20 and to reset your stats is another $20.  That’s right people if you get shit on early in your HoN career and don’t want to shell out $20 to have another chance at people not kicking you from every game then you are pretty much S-C-R-E-W-E-D.  What’s more they this past weekend let all the smurfing return for a one time weekend only (for now at least).  All old pre-retail accounts were once again active and allowed to play to test HoN, why? So that players who didn’t pay will hopefully be enticed to buy HoN.

And what of DotA?  The competitive scene has somewhat recently lost one of it’s most prominent names for ages to come, Merlini.  New faces are emerging from Asia and the European teams are starting to pale in comparison of teamwork and skill.  What this spells for DotA tournaments is yet to be seen but thus far they are holding strong.  DotAcast I have to say is being run by a bunch of shmucks who throw out swear words like candy, very professional for what is suppose to be a very prominent e-Sports media company. And what of a new version? The versions take an absurdly long time to come out unless it’s a quick fix to a bug (usually resulting in a .b/.c version etc.)  I mean I know firsthand how stupid the WC3 editor is but with rumors swirling of DotA 2.0 being worked on one question remains, is it time for Icefrog to hand over the reigns of DotA to someone who can focus 100% on WC3′s DotA?

Which brings me to DotA 2.0, not much news has surfaced since my last rant although  there have been questions of release dates in which the president has stated “soon but we are not 100% set on a date”.  Yeah OK you might as well have said fuck you we’ll release it when we want to.  Perhaps the suggestions that DotA 2.0 is not Valve’s #1 project as some people had suggested and due to E3, I think we can all confirm that a slight bit.  So again the usual questions arise, What is valve doing, what is icefrog doing, when will it be released, why am i a fat ugly pre-pubesc– oops that ones for Dr Phil.   As of right now all I can tell you for sure is that … well nothing since LITERALLY no new news has arised since my last rant, either Valve is keeping a tight tight lid on things or there literally is nothing new to say.

AND AS ALWAYS