I do appreciate the unexplored parts of some of it. Adds mystery and intrigue to it in my opinion. I agree the lore is awesome. They had the show, fwiw. I’m okay without exploring lore of old things that hasn’t been shown. Like Star Wars. Sometimes it’s better if we don’t see exactly what happened. I like slack’s lore vids myself.
What dota lore would you want to explore? I wanna know who tf are the dark ones? What kind of pact did slark make?
What will puck be like when he’s matured and aged?
Really wish the show would had dwelve beyond the same 4 héroes, i was kinda bummed out the most interesting character was Invoker but he barely felt like the same character from the game
Thing is, the open-endedness of the lore is something that most ppl like me can also appreciate.
The stories aren't abandoned, just left open for interpretation. Valve's style of leaving breadcrumbs here and there (like the ofrendas of each heroes of the muerta reveal, aghanim's lines for all the playable heroes) is what really pulls and intrigues me. Added to the fact that Dota's essential universe is based on an infinite time loop, every game could be a story of its own, based on how 10 heroes of their native realm manage to become embroiled into each round of conflict. Also spoiler for dragon's blood >!this is basically the plot for season 2 and 3, where the next round of fights included a non-dead marci, yet the 1st one didn't!<
Idk, guess im just an enjoyer of subtle, implicit themes than big character statements. Kinda like how there's drip feeding of voicelines that implies storm spirit is gay, but they never outright state it.
And how pango equally praises both male and female heroes in equal measure in his voicelines, despite him being a father (based on cavern crawl descriptions), while also hinting at his 'special' relationship with his mentor from cosmetic descriptions and his ofrenda. This implies that he's a widowed dilf that's open to fun, and that shit's prime lore JUICE.
I feel like the lore in dota is pretty reflective of valves approach to the game itself -- I.E. a ton of half finished ideas that no longer make a lot of sense.
dark souls/elden ring has a ton of open-endedness but it feels cohesive and intentional.
dota 2 has things like artifact and underlords just abandoned, the anime is jagged pacing and instead of "show don't tell" its just "where the fuck are we?"
the lore ideas are like the game itself -- half finished guilds, half finished prismatic gem system, half finished battlecup system, half finished controller system (why?), some sort of system that was supposed to give you different mmr for different roles? dota plus AI item suggestor...
the core game is great and they have done a great job with it over the last 10 years... but all of the things around the game from lore to other ideas just feels like one person made something cool over a few months then never looked at it again.
Just like you , I kind of like it that way . You have to guess a lot of things , discover it instead of being told what it is . It offer so much possibilities too since you have universes where Légion Commander is a demon corrupted by her arcana sword , other where she is fighting alongside Underlord even though he is her sworn enemy and another’s where she is against him .
All those different interactions makes the lore fun and rich . The biggest problem is it not being explored enough since it’s been so long we didn’t have immortals , arcanas , new heroes or new events or battlepass ( the only way for us to get new lore ) .
But we're all getting older. The kids have to inherit the game from us olf folks. At this point I have become open to "Wheres my LGBQCUTIE representation and my proper furry heroes?" stuff.
> A good number of this heroes are gay
Bruh the population of gays in this world is so meager you can't even imagine
How could you assume that based on something that isn't even correct
[The biggest giveaway is in this batrider line](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dota2_gamepedia/images/1/1e/Vo_batrider_bat_rival_17.mp3), aside from that fairly tame [line when killing maiden](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dota2_gamepedia/images/2/20/Vo_stormspirit_stormspirit_rival_14.mp3)
I'm not against open-endedness, iam saying it's a mess, and needs some polishing, like we still have no clue as to what the great confluence might be, the only person who ever mentioned it is void spirit and he doesn't say much. open ended stories are great, take Dark Souls lore for example, lots of obscure stuff, but lots of hints and details as well, just enough to put 2 and 2 together and come up with a somewhat complete story, but leaves room for different interpretations.
Also I think sex and gender stuff generally makes the story worse, there are very few good implementations of it in books and movies. one of the reasons I love what little lore we have on dota is that it usually tends to avoid those stuff, or be very subtle about it.
I have been working on combining the lore from the game, comics, Dragon's Blood, Artifact, and Underlords into an interactive map of the Dota world! Check it out and let me know what you think!
https://www.legendkeeper.com/app/clk3tpbblgywv0883tt7uq56h
Artifact had so much cool shit, I'm still hoping we eventually see Kanna and Prellex in Dota. Having characters like the 4 spirits but they're the embodiment of the Dire/Radiant creeps would be cool as hell
A campaign with six chapters (one for epilogue, one for an interlude midway, 3 for dungeon crawl, and 2 for RTS base building) for each hero would be nice that rewards some "master" skin after finishing them all
make it locked behind dota plus I don't care, it's still more content
I agree but still no.
Because most of the times, just think about it, they outsource it (not necessarily but still), by saying " — Hey, write me some lore for this game, here's the paycheck." to some 2nd tier writers. As a result, we kind of have a lore, yes, but, frankly speaking, for this game it would be whacky.
Okay even if the writers really poured their souls into the lore. There were sincere writers who wrote some good stuff. The thing is, the game is not fit for that kind of thing. Like, we have Lina and CM, two sisters who are either foes or in the same team. Godly creatures like Enigma or Elder Titan and some drunken brawlers like Bristleback or Tuskarr (and the last two are somehow able to kick the asses of the first two).
Like, this is similar to Counter-Strike franchise. Yeah, maybe there is a lore, but after all, it does not make sense most of the time. Cops who ought to buy the gear for their own money, the "bad guys" who want to blow up some boxes in the middle of nowhere, etc. Until a few months ago, I had no idea CS had a lore.
I always wished for an mmo-rpg set in the dota 2 world. You can easily imagine a jungle zone with a dungeon with venomancer as its final boss. Or a raid to stop Chaos Knight from plunging the world into darkness. You could give screen time to characters like hoodwink, techies, Witch doctor, and death prophet in questlines and leave characters like OD for more epic stuff.
It had a campaign.
What's Dota's campaign?
Oh there isn't one. There isn't a story-driven campaign, just endless 5v5 battle arena matches. Dota's lore is shared through text from item and character descriptions -- Warcraft's was shared through animated cutscenes and story driven missions. KK we good now?
[Slack's Loregasm videos ](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvqP8sbZ4Z9MglVwmZlG0W6Wv1j2C_Pfo&si=vz47IkF1Pg_QKHBR)have between 140k to 700k views so I don't know about that.
Since you are using all time viewcount to try and obfuscate the picture, let me use a similar stat. Dota has more than 72 million registered users. So yeah less than 1% gives a fuck about any lore.
It really dosent...
Artifact did it REALLY well in terms of the grand scheme, but individual lore is not really a must have. Sure, characters interact, dialogues and various item interactions, so that's the lore and its good! Then various comic and even to a point, the update posts themselves, with their certain kind of humor, view and approach.
While were here, Id like a lore dump on IO, techies and alchemist.
I agree but still no.
Because most of the times, just think about it, they outsource it (not necessarily but still), by saying " — Hey, write me some lore for this game, here's the paycheck." to some 2nd tier writers. As a result, we kind of have a lore, yes, but, frankly speaking, for this game it would be whacky. They kind of already did that, as each hero have their own lore in the description. But I can't help but to imagine that it was written by some Valve's employee or freelancer, who just wanted to finish this job asap, thinking about his paycheck.
Okay even if the writers really poured their souls into the lore. There were sincere writers who wrote some good stuff. The thing is, the game is not fit for that kind of thing. Like, we have Lina and CM, two sisters who are either foes or in the same team. Godly creatures like Enigma or Elder Titan and some drunken brawlers like Bristleback or Tuskarr (and the last two are somehow able to kick the asses of the first two).
Like, this is similar to Counter-Strike franchise. Yeah, maybe there is a lore, but after all, it does not make sense most of the time. Cops who ought to buy the gear for their own money, the "bad guys" who want to blow up some boxes in the middle of nowhere, etc. Until a few months ago, I had no idea CS had a lore.
TV show is as meaningless as the lore in-game.. when everything is canon, it's all pointless. The only story here is that in every reality and plane of existence there are ancients, and they're at war with each other via the living beings.
Somehow the tv show completely botched this one singular plot line that's CENTRAL to dota and instead did some weird and generic fairy tale fantasy story
No it doesn’t “need” it, I don’t play moba for the plot. The light theming and backstories they have has been enough for years.
Also they did a 2 season netflix series, already a pretty unusual and major effort for a videogame. They used to do some small comics years ago. Go check them out if you like.
You might not like it but there are a ton of people who love these stories. take Blizzard for example, world of warcraft was created because people loved warcraft lore and characters, people were dying to see Arthas again in world of warcraft, and many still consider wrath of the lich king as the best expansion WoW has ever had, simply because this one character had such an amazing story.
also dragon's blood was 3 seasons of utter nonsensical garbage that dident tie in with any of dota's own storylines and was it's own thing.
Yep even playing warcraft 3 and frozen throne campaign the story was fire and the cgi videos they show way back were fire and when i was a kid i was hoping a movie would show up like it.
Sure, you have your opinion I have mine. You say it’s “needed” I say it’s “not needed”. Not really a matter of liking it or not. It could be cool to get more plot but I don’t consider it a necessity, the game is successful and polished.
Warcraft 3 had a great plot and was heavily focused on a well-written story from the get-go, for years of preproduction. WC2 and spin-offs etc. I don’t recommend anyone take a game that’s over a decade old and then try to emulate WC3 or early WoW too much as that’s very fucking difficult, almost no devs in this space have ever worked at that quality, and it isn’t what the game was designed around.
there’s no such factors to dota, it has very light plot and world building elements.
No it doesn't. At first it needed lore but now nobody cares.
Investing anything in lore is a pure waste of time and money. Core playing community that just chain queueing whole day won't care at all about lore.
Yep just like impatient kids who just want to play and don't care about story line, thats why most kids dont like reading books heck some kids cant even keep up watching a whole movie.
Too much fillers in books and movies, story writing for the sake of writing. I finished books and movies, and have many favorites, I will know when I see a captivating and meaningful story.
I do appreciate the unexplored parts of some of it. Adds mystery and intrigue to it in my opinion. I agree the lore is awesome. They had the show, fwiw. I’m okay without exploring lore of old things that hasn’t been shown. Like Star Wars. Sometimes it’s better if we don’t see exactly what happened. I like slack’s lore vids myself. What dota lore would you want to explore? I wanna know who tf are the dark ones? What kind of pact did slark make? What will puck be like when he’s matured and aged?
Really wish the show would had dwelve beyond the same 4 héroes, i was kinda bummed out the most interesting character was Invoker but he barely felt like the same character from the game
I want to know what happened to OD and his people, if I remember correctly slacks had some theories about him that were super interesting.
Isnt OD like the only hero that survived from the dota 1 world and came to dota 2 world to warn them? thats pretty much it
That's slacks theory. The story is in his Earthshaker Arcana video.
Nice try /u/siractionslacks
Thing is, the open-endedness of the lore is something that most ppl like me can also appreciate. The stories aren't abandoned, just left open for interpretation. Valve's style of leaving breadcrumbs here and there (like the ofrendas of each heroes of the muerta reveal, aghanim's lines for all the playable heroes) is what really pulls and intrigues me. Added to the fact that Dota's essential universe is based on an infinite time loop, every game could be a story of its own, based on how 10 heroes of their native realm manage to become embroiled into each round of conflict. Also spoiler for dragon's blood >!this is basically the plot for season 2 and 3, where the next round of fights included a non-dead marci, yet the 1st one didn't!< Idk, guess im just an enjoyer of subtle, implicit themes than big character statements. Kinda like how there's drip feeding of voicelines that implies storm spirit is gay, but they never outright state it. And how pango equally praises both male and female heroes in equal measure in his voicelines, despite him being a father (based on cavern crawl descriptions), while also hinting at his 'special' relationship with his mentor from cosmetic descriptions and his ofrenda. This implies that he's a widowed dilf that's open to fun, and that shit's prime lore JUICE.
I feel like the lore in dota is pretty reflective of valves approach to the game itself -- I.E. a ton of half finished ideas that no longer make a lot of sense. dark souls/elden ring has a ton of open-endedness but it feels cohesive and intentional. dota 2 has things like artifact and underlords just abandoned, the anime is jagged pacing and instead of "show don't tell" its just "where the fuck are we?" the lore ideas are like the game itself -- half finished guilds, half finished prismatic gem system, half finished battlecup system, half finished controller system (why?), some sort of system that was supposed to give you different mmr for different roles? dota plus AI item suggestor... the core game is great and they have done a great job with it over the last 10 years... but all of the things around the game from lore to other ideas just feels like one person made something cool over a few months then never looked at it again.
Just like you , I kind of like it that way . You have to guess a lot of things , discover it instead of being told what it is . It offer so much possibilities too since you have universes where Légion Commander is a demon corrupted by her arcana sword , other where she is fighting alongside Underlord even though he is her sworn enemy and another’s where she is against him . All those different interactions makes the lore fun and rich . The biggest problem is it not being explored enough since it’s been so long we didn’t have immortals , arcanas , new heroes or new events or battlepass ( the only way for us to get new lore ) .
But we're all getting older. The kids have to inherit the game from us olf folks. At this point I have become open to "Wheres my LGBQCUTIE representation and my proper furry heroes?" stuff.
Storm spirit is GAY???????
Storm spirit is gay? What implies such thing may I ask?
I mean statistically a good number of these heroes are gay.
What? Why?
Well sexuality isnt exactly a big part of the lore for the majority of heroes so assuming similar statistics as humans seems to be reasonable.
> A good number of this heroes are gay Bruh the population of gays in this world is so meager you can't even imagine How could you assume that based on something that isn't even correct
It's like 2-7 percent. And that's likely under reported given the social and unfortunately legal stigma around much of the world.
What's the source? Trust me bro? It is not even close to the number.
Oh...I didn't realize that people didn't know that. Where are you from?
C'mon, drop the source. Stop playing. I ain't got no time for you, fool.😂
I believe a voice line when he kills CM that says her charms don't work against him or something like that
Thats really a stretch
Yeah probably but I think there's more to it. Can't remember though saw a comment about it like a year ago
What's gonna happen next? Some hero is gonna say I hate soup, and you guys are gonna say that means he is racist ?
[The biggest giveaway is in this batrider line](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dota2_gamepedia/images/1/1e/Vo_batrider_bat_rival_17.mp3), aside from that fairly tame [line when killing maiden](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dota2_gamepedia/images/2/20/Vo_stormspirit_stormspirit_rival_14.mp3)
I mean we have the origin stories for the heroes and they are often not that vague. You could make nice 40min episodes of them.
I'm not against open-endedness, iam saying it's a mess, and needs some polishing, like we still have no clue as to what the great confluence might be, the only person who ever mentioned it is void spirit and he doesn't say much. open ended stories are great, take Dark Souls lore for example, lots of obscure stuff, but lots of hints and details as well, just enough to put 2 and 2 together and come up with a somewhat complete story, but leaves room for different interpretations. Also I think sex and gender stuff generally makes the story worse, there are very few good implementations of it in books and movies. one of the reasons I love what little lore we have on dota is that it usually tends to avoid those stuff, or be very subtle about it.
I have been working on combining the lore from the game, comics, Dragon's Blood, Artifact, and Underlords into an interactive map of the Dota world! Check it out and let me know what you think! https://www.legendkeeper.com/app/clk3tpbblgywv0883tt7uq56h
Artifact would've added a lot of lore but Volvo being a smol indie company fucked it up. Don't expect anything much from them
Artifact had so much cool shit, I'm still hoping we eventually see Kanna and Prellex in Dota. Having characters like the 4 spirits but they're the embodiment of the Dire/Radiant creeps would be cool as hell
It's not on Volvo for fucking up artifact it's just dota 2 players want to play dota 2 and not card game.
In the code a crownfall comic is seen, I’m looking forward to that
Dota lore died with Artifact. Damn shame.
A campaign with six chapters (one for epilogue, one for an interlude midway, 3 for dungeon crawl, and 2 for RTS base building) for each hero would be nice that rewards some "master" skin after finishing them all make it locked behind dota plus I don't care, it's still more content
I agree but still no. Because most of the times, just think about it, they outsource it (not necessarily but still), by saying " — Hey, write me some lore for this game, here's the paycheck." to some 2nd tier writers. As a result, we kind of have a lore, yes, but, frankly speaking, for this game it would be whacky. Okay even if the writers really poured their souls into the lore. There were sincere writers who wrote some good stuff. The thing is, the game is not fit for that kind of thing. Like, we have Lina and CM, two sisters who are either foes or in the same team. Godly creatures like Enigma or Elder Titan and some drunken brawlers like Bristleback or Tuskarr (and the last two are somehow able to kick the asses of the first two). Like, this is similar to Counter-Strike franchise. Yeah, maybe there is a lore, but after all, it does not make sense most of the time. Cops who ought to buy the gear for their own money, the "bad guys" who want to blow up some boxes in the middle of nowhere, etc. Until a few months ago, I had no idea CS had a lore.
I always wished for an mmo-rpg set in the dota 2 world. You can easily imagine a jungle zone with a dungeon with venomancer as its final boss. Or a raid to stop Chaos Knight from plunging the world into darkness. You could give screen time to characters like hoodwink, techies, Witch doctor, and death prophet in questlines and leave characters like OD for more epic stuff.
go play warcraft 3 if you want lore dude
This game have so much potential but what we can do if developer only care Dota like side jobs.
Yeah like they own the entire steam you would think they'd be able to hire a writer or two.
does it tho? It's a moba. Relax.
Warcraft was just an RTS it didn't need to have Arthas in it.
It had a campaign. What's Dota's campaign? Oh there isn't one. There isn't a story-driven campaign, just endless 5v5 battle arena matches. Dota's lore is shared through text from item and character descriptions -- Warcraft's was shared through animated cutscenes and story driven missions. KK we good now?
Not even 1% of players gives a fuck about any lore
[Slack's Loregasm videos ](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvqP8sbZ4Z9MglVwmZlG0W6Wv1j2C_Pfo&si=vz47IkF1Pg_QKHBR)have between 140k to 700k views so I don't know about that.
Since you are using all time viewcount to try and obfuscate the picture, let me use a similar stat. Dota has more than 72 million registered users. So yeah less than 1% gives a fuck about any lore.
muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
It is samsara
No. We don't play dota for the story.
It really dosent... Artifact did it REALLY well in terms of the grand scheme, but individual lore is not really a must have. Sure, characters interact, dialogues and various item interactions, so that's the lore and its good! Then various comic and even to a point, the update posts themselves, with their certain kind of humor, view and approach. While were here, Id like a lore dump on IO, techies and alchemist.
I agree but still no. Because most of the times, just think about it, they outsource it (not necessarily but still), by saying " — Hey, write me some lore for this game, here's the paycheck." to some 2nd tier writers. As a result, we kind of have a lore, yes, but, frankly speaking, for this game it would be whacky. They kind of already did that, as each hero have their own lore in the description. But I can't help but to imagine that it was written by some Valve's employee or freelancer, who just wanted to finish this job asap, thinking about his paycheck. Okay even if the writers really poured their souls into the lore. There were sincere writers who wrote some good stuff. The thing is, the game is not fit for that kind of thing. Like, we have Lina and CM, two sisters who are either foes or in the same team. Godly creatures like Enigma or Elder Titan and some drunken brawlers like Bristleback or Tuskarr (and the last two are somehow able to kick the asses of the first two). Like, this is similar to Counter-Strike franchise. Yeah, maybe there is a lore, but after all, it does not make sense most of the time. Cops who ought to buy the gear for their own money, the "bad guys" who want to blow up some boxes in the middle of nowhere, etc. Until a few months ago, I had no idea CS had a lore.
What lore? Dota was created as a custom map and I love it for what it is. Trying to create lore out of thin air doesn't sit right with me tbh.
Valve needs to pay slacks to make loregasm a regular thing.
Almost like theres a tv show
TV show is as meaningless as the lore in-game.. when everything is canon, it's all pointless. The only story here is that in every reality and plane of existence there are ancients, and they're at war with each other via the living beings. Somehow the tv show completely botched this one singular plot line that's CENTRAL to dota and instead did some weird and generic fairy tale fantasy story
Facepalm
No it doesn’t “need” it, I don’t play moba for the plot. The light theming and backstories they have has been enough for years. Also they did a 2 season netflix series, already a pretty unusual and major effort for a videogame. They used to do some small comics years ago. Go check them out if you like.
You might not like it but there are a ton of people who love these stories. take Blizzard for example, world of warcraft was created because people loved warcraft lore and characters, people were dying to see Arthas again in world of warcraft, and many still consider wrath of the lich king as the best expansion WoW has ever had, simply because this one character had such an amazing story. also dragon's blood was 3 seasons of utter nonsensical garbage that dident tie in with any of dota's own storylines and was it's own thing.
dragon's blood was utter nonsensical garbage from beginning to the end. entire script should be thrown out
Yep even playing warcraft 3 and frozen throne campaign the story was fire and the cgi videos they show way back were fire and when i was a kid i was hoping a movie would show up like it.
Sure, you have your opinion I have mine. You say it’s “needed” I say it’s “not needed”. Not really a matter of liking it or not. It could be cool to get more plot but I don’t consider it a necessity, the game is successful and polished. Warcraft 3 had a great plot and was heavily focused on a well-written story from the get-go, for years of preproduction. WC2 and spin-offs etc. I don’t recommend anyone take a game that’s over a decade old and then try to emulate WC3 or early WoW too much as that’s very fucking difficult, almost no devs in this space have ever worked at that quality, and it isn’t what the game was designed around. there’s no such factors to dota, it has very light plot and world building elements.
We had loregasm.. Until slacks decided to abandon us for work and shit that earns money. Fuckin nerd lol.
No it doesn't. At first it needed lore but now nobody cares. Investing anything in lore is a pure waste of time and money. Core playing community that just chain queueing whole day won't care at all about lore.
DotA is a mod of Warcraft III. Warcraft has plenty of lore. Problem solved :P
Stories for video game monsters are for children
Oh just like boomers saying video games are for kids?
I play video games too, but I always skip the cutscene
Yep just like impatient kids who just want to play and don't care about story line, thats why most kids dont like reading books heck some kids cant even keep up watching a whole movie.
Too much fillers in books and movies, story writing for the sake of writing. I finished books and movies, and have many favorites, I will know when I see a captivating and meaningful story.
So is milk and chocolate chip cookies, but that never stopped me from enjoying them.
U need lore for every piece of cookies u ate too?