Old Days of Dota
In the comment section for the previous Blog Post the community expressed interest in the old days of Dota, before it became an international phenomenon it is now. The game was quite different at the time but to be perfectly honest a lot of it had to do with how we, as a community, perceived it, rather than how it was balanced. Today I will go through the various quirks and trends which are mostly gone at this point. It is not going to be a history of competitive Dota kind of blog post, instead focusing on the pub gameplay.<!--END_PREVIEW-->
Warcraft 3
Warcraft 3 was a masterpiece for many reasons - it had an amazing core strategic gameplay, interesting campaign, multiplayer, suitabile for professional play and, most importantly, it had modding support. If it wasn't for this game, Dota would never even come to life.
But it had a lot of downsides as well, which became more and more apparent as the Dota began to develop.
If you have never played Dota 1 you might be very interested as to what "legacy" layout in the Dota 2 client means and why is it even there - after all, the QWER layout is logical and easy to use. We, on the other hand, have spent almost 7 years playing Dota with our left hand becoming stiff in the weirdest positions imaginable - just imagine playing 
Invoker with each of his 10 spells having a separate button on top of Quas/Wex/Exort and Invoke taking the QWER slots (incidentally, he was also the first hero, who got this really neat layout for his primary abilities) or 
Naga Siren with buttons on R/E/G/D and your pinky on A/S for denying/last hitting.
The inventory was also far from being easy to use - it was bound to Num 7/8 4/5 1/2 by default and it could not be changed. What it meant is that you either had to constantly jump with your left hand from one side of the keyboard to the other (returning it to the previous weird position in the heat of a battle) or use your mouse clicks to use items. At the time a very small amount of people had mice with side buttons and even smaller amount could rebind them to the Num keys.
The shopping experience was also quite different - you did not have a dedicated "Shop" tab for all your items. Instead, you had a multitude of NPCs standing at your fountain and secret/side shop which sold recipes and components:
The circles on the left were the "Stash" and there were 2 extra shops selling consumables/wards south of Shadow Fiend.
Compared to the learning curve one is facing today starting Dota 2 for the first time we had it rough. Over the course of the development the Shops were changed several times, with different reasoning behind their grouping. To understand how annoying it was remember the first time you were trying to purchase the 
Ultimate Orb at base in 6.84 and multiply the frustration by 10.
Finally, the main problem I personally have with the WC3 Dota after playing Dota 2 was how much less responsive it feels - after playing Dota 2 for several years now I can't go back any more since there is an extra input lag on your commands on top of the usual ping - something that makes the games quite different even within the same patch. And I think the engine level reduction in this input lag as well as layout/gameplay convenience is what made a lot of heroes receive a nerf as soon as they got ported to the Dota 2 client.
The Heroes of our Time
There were a lot of broken beyond repair heroes in Dota history. Gambler and the original Invoker are the first to come to mind. And while their impact on the game was huge, they never got past the initial introduction stage.
Some heroes, on the other hand, were very different when they were introduced, but have retained most of their qualities and are now a stable part of the Dota2 hero roster, after careful and calculated changes. And these are the heroes I would like to talk about.
There were a lot of small changes to the hero abilities - for example, 
Tidehunter's Anchor Smash used to be a passive which did not reduce the damage output from the enemies. Getting Attack Speed on the hero seemed like a viable idea and he was often played as a carry (to be honest, almost every hero was played as a carry at the time).
The Spin Web of 
Broodmother used to reveal invisible units AND wards - imagine if she had the same functionality now.
The rather "new" Aghanims upgrade on 
Treant Protector is actually one of his oldest abilities, which got removed for being OP. And it did not even extend the radius of Overgrowth to the area it revealed - it was just available come level 1, albeit on a 300 seconds cooldown. If I recall correctly, it also provided true sight.
Lifestealer used to be a broken beyond repair kind of hero with level 3 ultimate providing him with 20 seconds of Magic Immunity. That is unless you were laning against 
Silencer, since Lifestealer had no active skills except for his ultimate.
Shallow Grave from 
Dazzle used to be an ultimate, which lasted 6 minutes and prevented an ally hero from losing gold on death as well as making him respawn 60% faster. It also dealt some negligible damage to the enemy hero who got the last hit on your ally. I don't remember there being a limit on the amount of buffs you could place at the same time, apart from the obvious cooldown restrictions, making it possible for at least 2 heroes on your team to have the buff at the same time.
Lycan's wolves could bash at one point with a 15% chance. In fact a lot of things in this game could bash at one point or the other. Worst part - these effects used to stack.
Permabash
I hope no one will ever have to experience this - a 
Faceless Void, 
Troll Warlord or 
Slardar with 2 bashers was the go to strat in a lot of local matches. Not only did the effects stack, they also did not have a cooldown or any kind of restriction. They simply bashed.
Provided the hero had enough Attack Speed it usually resulted in one or even two targets in a fight being completely useless - if you've played the early versions of Team Fortress 2 where Medic could Uber two targets switching between them fast enough, you can grasp roughly one third of the frustration the players experienced.
To this day a lot of old Dota players still overvalue the Basher, especially on the Russian server and we believe the concept of permabash is to blame.
-ARDMEMSCID
At the start of the game Host had to choose a mod. For the most part people played -AP or -SD/RD, but there were a lot of other mods which were quite interesting.
-EM turned the game into a more casual passtime - no gold loss, higher gold gains and a lot of other things which made game more accessible for newcomers.
-SC stands for Super Creeps, where every now and then each ancient produced a supercreep - Murloc, Golem or Hydra for one of the lanes. In most cases the supercreep required attention from most of the team to be dealt with. They also varied in their strength, making the game incredibly unfair but quite fun.
-ID is on a whole different level of unfairness - Item Drop meant that once you die, one of your slots will drop an item - it can be an empty slot, or it can be a slot with your core item. Allies could pick these items up and give them back to you, so there was an extra layer of forced coordination, but to this day I think this mod is unplayable.
-random agi/str/int - random from a pool of agility, strength or intelligence heroes. "-random str" is the perfect response to "we need a tanker" in a pub match.
-roll 100 (1000) gived you a random number which is visible to everyone - perfect for deciding who is going mid. This feature should seriously be implemented in Dota 2.
-so - Switch ON. This mode meant that host can never lose the game - he either gets an enemy carry switched to his team or leaves the game resulting in a disconnect. If you see host adding -so in the end of the mod and you are not on his team you might as well just leave the game.
-water and -weather: we are paying for the stuff which was free in the original Dota. With these commands you could change the weather and even the colour of the river.
Random stuff
Standing in the fountain and quickly tapping F1 (hero select) will speed up the regeneration process - probably the biggest myth of the game. What it did, is increased the frequency with which the HP numbers refreshed, but it had no effect on the actual regeneration.
"Tunnel Me!" came from the times of Garena, where host had to use the "tunnel" option on all connected players to decrease their ping. I am not sure it worked, but we still did it.
There was no glyph of fortification in the earlier versions of Dota - instead, the TP scrolls provided the tower with invulnerability.
"If you press Alt+Q quickly several times, you will start gaining gold," - got rid of newbies in your games (Alt+QQ quitted the program).
Getting
Battle Fury changed attack animation on many melee heroes. Might be the reason a lot of people got so used to this item and keep on building it on every melee hero. You could give items to your teammates.
Keeper of the Light used to be incredibly strong for this reason. 
Black King Bar did not degrade. It was always 9 seconds.Orb Effects (UAMs) did not work on Luna (except for lifesteal). She completely lost the ability to attack with Skadi/S&Y and Mjolnir.
Diffusal Blade was a part of 
Manta Style. You could build
Aegis of the Immortal from the shop. It had 3 charges and transported you to your fountain on death.
Radiance used to give the bearer a 8% evasion chance.
Closing Comments
The whole "Reborn" thing coupled with the community asking for Old Days of Dota Blog Post have forced me to install and replay the original WC3 Dota, hence the delay between the posts. Despite all my claims about how uncomfortable the game felt, it was a really nice experience with a lot of nostalgia. Interestingly, there are still a lot of Dota 1 games going on and it wasn't hard to find a lobby - I really wish all these people would switch to Dota 2, but it might take a while.
On my trips to the old days, I also found inspiration for a couple more Blog Posts. First of all, there are still 2 heroes to be ported into Dota 2 - Pit Lord and Zet and one of my next Blog Posts will be focused on them to keep the readers prepared. I will also speculate on the probable nerfs the heroes will face.
Secondly, there is a massive persistent community which plays custom WC3 maps. With Reborn in open beta, I think it will be interesting to have a look at the most popular mods which are supported and/or played to this day - it could also serve as a guideline for the new generation of modders. Personally, I can't wait for the remake of Elemental Tower Defence on Source 2.
Finally, eggs is working on the second pair of TI5 Wildcard Teams Blog Post, so stay tuned. This type of articles can certainly help with getting grasp on who is who after the post-TI4 grand reshuffle.
no dl
kick pls
Good old dotka times :)
I played it once, took a few minutes to buy a magic wand in the store. Never again
I remember the most annoying for me was looking for a game. And that feeling when you are the best in game and host decided to quit a game. SHIIIIIITTTTTTTTT
There was a bug with ancor smash and battlefury making it proc 100%
good old days
Switch was the worst mode ever. I don't how it became one of the default must-have modes. I hosted games with "NO SWITCH" in the game name and people were like "wtf, why no switch? Switch on pls".
With switch, when my team is winning, the enemy team will always go "switch pls, make it fair". Then when they get the most farmed carry from our team and start winning, it's fair. If they're losing, it's not fair. When they're winning, it's totally fair.
Remember Pudge used to summon Carrion flies ( nyx nyx nyx ), Nightstalker had Sandkings Ulti and most importantly Razor had a passive Ulti that damages at random times. Woah, Good old times
I remember PA was a decent pick back in the original Dota because she was practically invisible with her blur and the only thing that gave her away was the slightly bigger red numbers that appeared above her when she got a critical hit off. Blur literally made her hard to see, but now she's a flashy firework and when she gets that crit off, EVERYONES gonna know about it.
^turning off the shadows made it impossible to see her at all (otherwise she was a dark blob on the ground).
there was no cool down on HoT so Axe with two heart was literally invulnerable
oh and aghanim build was the same as octarine. a waste of money on non-intelligent heroes
but the most amazing thing about dota1 was destroying the fountain. best troll in the game funny thing is you could get lifesteal of it
host pidr!!!!!
I always played HLW hoping my favorite hero was in that server i joined. And yes the delay is so frustrating in dota, you have to predict everything. I tought it was just my old pc that was doing that.
i play since 2005 6.11
You forgot to mention, that the one who bought a courier had to give a control over his units for his team in order to make it work. And there was a button that randomized a courier into one of the animal creeps - we are paying for this stuff also atm.
Yeah, there was a lot of crazy stuff.
Super tanky Visage with an army of birds which got turned into a weird kind of tank/carry Visage still with an army but who would heal and gain damage for every unit that died around him, which got switched again for the current Visage.
Nyx with the permanent weaker Blade mail for melees meant that you either picked a range hero or you were fucked, because a blade mail back then worked the same as his passive and they totally stacked.
I think Ursa couldn't even build Basher back then without screwing up his passive, same for Weaver.
And there were tons of heroes which shared a spell. Viper and Razor both had a MoM's madness without the lifesteal as a skill, I think there were like 3 heroes with Chain Lightning, Lich and CM both had Frost Nova, etc.
gj commended
And also "Nerubian weaver"s ghosts that could run around invis and give vision. Those days...
"-roll" is the best thing ive ever heard
"-roll" is the best thing ive ever heard
-roll must be implemented in doto
Good old days, there were so many absolutely random oddities in the game and that was part of what made me get onto dota. Nowadays I stay for the competitive side, back then it was hard to even find out there were people playing competitively.
And yeah totally concur that -switchon was dumb as f***. Once the enemy team had someone leaving the game, they'd start begging nonstop for your carry to switch over, and if it didn't they started flaming you for being a "pu55y" who wanted "unfair games". Needing to actually search for dota lobbies is another thing I do NOT miss. No matchmaking meant that you got about 1 fair game for every 100. Most of the time there was someone so obviously more skilled than the rest.
Thanks for taking me back, good old times! Pit used to be one of my favorite heroes! :)
aahh good days, they were. Despite of all the issue and difficulties you mentioned, DOTA was best game of its time. I remember I was introduced to DOTA when I was in 9th grade and I failed in 9th grade because of too much DOTA, and now I'm an engineer and I still play DOTA2, that's how addictive it is. Thanks icefrog and thanks old DOTO.
and i still use f1 while waiting for regen got habituated to it :D
"Space Cow" is a pretty weird nickname for Spirit Breaker, since he has nothing to do with space - until you learn that he uses the same model as Astral Trekker, an old, absurdly powerful Hero. He could keep people immobile for 15 seconds while enjoying 80 seconds of near-invulnerability. I swear, playing as old Heroes makes me think that they went out of their way to make the game as unbalanced as hell.
> if you've played the early versions of Team Fortress 2 where Medic could Uber two targets switching between them fast enough, you can grasp roughly one third of the frustration the players experienced.
You can still do that--it's called flashing--but your uber drains twice as fast.
For those who still think battlefury cause anchor smash to bug out - It did not. It just happened to have the same attack animation with anchor smash.
For those who still think battlefury cause anchor smash to bug out - It did not. It just happened to have the same attack animation with anchor smash.
The idea of switch was that when 2 players from the losing team leave, one player from the winning team can switch. That's why it became popular. The abuse followed afterwards and ruined it for everyone :(
Great article, was fun. Never played the first DotA, but it seems like it was a little bit more complicated and unbalanced as the 2nd DotA.
Switching if 2 people on the losing team left is still bullshit. Memories of my team playing perfectly and then our super-fed spectre/medusa switching over just to appease whiny noobs
damn looking back at this , dota came a long way now
GAMBLER <3
old STORM SPIRIT </3
how do i get wood ?
tinker bkb and could refresh allies items
Pretty sure it was quelling blade that changed attack animations.
/nitpick
Old Ezalor was nice with his previous ultimate! Love that army of priests.
There are some false statements in the first section entitled "Warcraft 3".
You could very well change any hotkeys for not only your spells but also your inventory. (That's why I am still using completely different keys than probably most Dota players - QWER doesn't even exist for me).
Moreover, you only had that delay when you were playing via Battlenet. Dotalicious-gaming was by far the best place to experience Dota 1. No delay, no lags and there was the option to reconnect a game for the first time ever. (Plus tons of statistics that would really go into depth - much like dotabuff, just that it was implied on the site).
Apart from that, it is always a pleasure to read these threads. #Nostalgia
God.. Panda Spirit... 8 years played dota.. Dat times..
That feeling when you can't click Riki or Slark..
Those great days when fighting 3v1 was considered unfair and rat doto was punished by ban..
That moment when enemy accuses you of using maphack cuz there is no way you had wards there..
omg... the throwback!!
nice old dota times <3
cent ult 35 bonus str passive :D
Enchantress had Impetus(ult) at lvl 1.Its like laning against 2 silencers:) Only she could stop me abusung other stuff at local games back then. Or 4 blademails ... Like 120% return dmg passive
eul was a part of hex
blink wasn't cancelled by an attack
buyback had no cd
old passive blademail
old weaver's ghosts and dark seer's shield was like WTF WTF??? with newbies
omggg weaver, patrol river with watcher, u nob!
YOU FORGOT THE TROLLS HIDING YOUR ITEMS WHEN YOU DONT PUT IT INSIDE YOUR CIRCLE OF POWER. HAHAHAHAHA