DotA 2: Reborn's open beta started yesterday, and with it came the "official" introduction of custom games. Now, we're only a day into the beta, so there are still tons of kinks to be worked out with custom games and their lobbies, but I'm here to focus more on the potential down the line.
From what they've shown so far, the map editor looks to be a fantastic balance of complexity/flexibility and intuitiveness. It allows for pretty much anything to be imported and animated into the game, and the possibilities for game modes that differ wildly from the core gameplay of DotA are practically endless. It will surely take some time before high-quality custom maps that are polished and fun start trickling in (most maps now are unfinished and buggy), but I think it's great that Valve is releasing some custom games of their own to show people how it's done.
Secondly, I love that they implemented a Brood War/Warcraft 3-style lobby system for custom games, complete with traditional chat rooms and everything. This has clearly been designed by people who were heavily involved in the Warcraft 3 mapping days, and I think they really get it when it comes to cultivating a communal feeling and making it easy to jump right into whatever custom games you enjoy. Basically, they went the opposite direction of Blizzard in recent years.
Blizzard is essentially dead to me for how they killed the custom maps community that they had cultivated with both Brood War and Warcraft 3 with their mishandling of the Arcade and over-complicated editor in Starcraft 2. In the wake of their bad decisions, the Use Map Settings Brood War community basically fizzled out, as did the Warcraft 3 custom maps community to a slightly lesser extent. With DotA 2's humongous player base and these smart decisions regarding custom games, I can't help but feel excited for a potential return of the types of communities scene in the days of Brood War.
What do you all think? Could we see custom maps in DotA 2 take off to Brood War or Warcraft 3 levels?
Links and Resources:
- DotA 2: Reborn - Custom Games - Official announcement page for custom games
- Overthrow Video - First official custom map from Valve, themselves
- The Curse of River's End developer thread - Very promising custom map in development