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.
rip old silencer aura
most situational and disgusting spell of all time
Luna could not use maelstrom and mjollnir is something that comes to mind with also batrider and phase boots.
u guys forgot -rickroll that made random comments
You still can Uber-blink in TF2... You can even get it on three people at once...
or Ogre Magi just hide together with ogre in the jungle until the moment the enemy realize he was hitting a hero xD
Would be cool to see some of these features return in a different gamemode
I miss Barathrum with basher =/
What has remained the same throughout all the iterations of Dota is the need to make decisions involving trade-offs. Do I build offensively or defensively? Do I push hard or simply jungle? Travel as a ganking pack of hunters or spread out and farm? This is what makes this game so challenging and rewarding, as your judgement can win or lose the game.
I thought blur was some kind of invis passive before but called it worthless because ppl could still see her
i was dumb as a potato
It was ALT + Q + X that quit the program :) ALT QQ only quit the game.
Did you forggot the nice voices? LOL!
Phantom assasin was unable to see! blur made her invisible to the human eye!
TR -APEM ONLY PRO #134
Missing -ha and -aa
Hook and arrow accuracy, good stuff
^i think it is -st
INVOKER 30 кнопк за 1 сек на инвокере
INVOKER 30 кнопк за 1 сек на инвокере
ELEMENT TD IS THE BEST TD EVER MADE!!!!
gj i remember my DotA times
I still remember using Dazzle's old Shallow Grave, it was broken as hell, but fun to use because it was great for a support. My friends would go carry heroes like SF, and i would make sure he was buffed with that whole game.
Come to think of it, it was really funny to me, because if you go to dota forums, any QQs about OP heroes would be met with the reply: 'Gank him and you'll be fine'. Well good luck with that bro, because my carry could be ganked over and over again, and still come out with 3 core items by 20 min lol. The respawn time reduction was ridiculous too. It felt like seconds.
Ogre magi looked exactly like the neutral ogre creep, and creeps didn't agro at night. Great ambushes :)
How do I buy wood?
No mention of deselecting your hero? Played recently again, that was honestly the hardest part in my opinion.
Many, many things were different. No recommended items, you had to know or actually think before you buy something. You had to know every recipe if you don't want to spend a lot of time searching for stuff. Dagon couriers :) They could also be 6 slotted, with radiance, hexes, dagons, ethereals, etc... xd Played it since 6.12, the good ol' times :)))
^i think it is -st
-thats for checking the stats gain, for silencer and pudge
Ogre magi looked exactly like the neutral ogre creep, and creeps didn't agro at night. Great ambushes :)
-Centaur also, the small Scourge camp had centaurs, you kill the big one and just stand in his place with the small one beside you (he won't attack while its night) and wait for your pray :)
"#SPEEDY 10MB -apso +1" and pre-game chatting.
oldies but goodies 10 years of Dota :D
Nice post! It is always good to remember the origins
When I was playing Dota 1, I got almost any game unfair cos of the leavers.There was at least one leaver in almost any game.
The best was morhpling's old ultimate which let you morph into a hero on the enemy team and talk as if you were that person in their team chat. Then you attacked someone on their team, which stunned them for I think 4 seconds.
most op dota 1 solo mid heroes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVF0vANXLn4
i play dota 1 since wc3 reign of chaos, when the heroes barely had any changes. just some buffs. the juggernaut at the time had spin as ult, his omnislash did not exist, he just had windwalk (invis), crit, mirror image, and spin. the oldschool wc3 mods basically focused on one hero instead of all the creeps and base you normally had. and that idea was multiplied into different dota mods.
frozen throne? yeah then all-stars came. dota all stars was for the longest time the most played wc3 mod. (although i seriously want legion td in dota 2 mods). most banned hero of all time? DOOM. most picked hero of all time? SHADOW FIEND. even more than pudge.
when invoker came out? imagine if qqw gave a different skill than qwq. yeah invoker had 21 skills.
oh and most heroes people hate now, people hated back then as well. its a good thing dota 2 has some dota 1 glory in it.
Still a better shop system than dota 2.
axe nonstop spin? sure
why would you always position your fingers to what are the hotkeys are? i have legacy myself in dota 2 and i just lay my palm on a and s and if i need to cast i hit that button.of course its memory game but if you did this that way you would need another 20 finger to play starcraft
quote from marty" if things were really good back then it wouldn't have gone to shit
For me the romance of Wc Dota old days lies on the clash between the top teams.
I still remember the game where ZSMJ lost his sacred relic and farmed a new one in 7 minutes with PL.
I remember the day when MYM and SK played for titles.
I remember when EHOME won ESWC 2010 without losing a single match, best team ever. They went to win like 10 titles on 2010.
I remember classic clash of EHOME vs LGD, it's always came down to Burning vs ZSMJ show, and the heroes were either Medusa, Alchemist, or Drow Ranger.
I still remember how Yaphets make Shadow Fiends looks so strong and invincible.
Back then watching replays was not as comfortable as it is now. We didn't have rewind button so if you miss anything (kills, clashes, etc.) then we would have to restart the replay from the very start. Also patches keep changing, I had to use warcraft version switcher to play on b.net and watch replays. Can't really say anything about technical things like skills or items cause they are still changing even now, but to me when I saw old names on screen, like Burning, Loda, Fear, Kuroky, Iceiceice, Mushi, etc they always remind me of the old days. I think Valve has done good with developing DOta, but to be frank, I still like DOta 1 interface and heroes. It was a pity that Blizzard didn't take this game under their wings, but if they did we may not have it as a free to play game then.
COURIER CAN USE ITEMS AND HAVE AURA STACKS ON EARLIER VERSIONS
ARCANE RING, RoB, MEK, SOUL BOOSTER AND DAGON MADE COURIER AN EXTRA UNIT HAHAHA
sdadda
IIRC the item that changed the attack animation was quelling blade, not battlefury.
Damn good oooooold days :) good job dota buff :)
in "old" wc3 dota you were able to kill the fountain.... THATS what i (and my mates) want back :D biggest challenge ever :P
^
Yeah, cm was quite good for fountain destroying since frostbite would froze fountain so it couldn't attack.
Also the old Aghs buildup was the same the OC has today (soul booster+ mystic staff) but back then most of the int heroes had aghs upgrade.
Well breaking was fun. Buying gg branches and putting it in and out of the circle/stash made the game lag so hard.
I still remember that time in my high school, whoever could remember the receipts for each items was considered PRO.
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.
HMMMM HMMMM... New bloom 2015 confirmed?
the good ol times