I upgrade from stick to sword and suddenly I can cleave apart giants who once seemed invincible. Dragon’s fire is noticeably less deadly after swapping leather armor for steel. In some games I apply poison to arrows to kill more effectively from afar and insert gems into armor to spike bigger critical hits, in others I read moldy tomes to learn new ways to cripple and crunch enemies under blocks of magic ice. The constant tease of augmented power is, for me, one of the most compelling motivators in video games, where the opportunity to build myself up from flimsy rat slayer to world stomping juggernaut chatters through my waking imagination, ensuring I load back up as soon as the day’s work is done.

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The process is rarely brief. With over 100 hours sunk into games like Diablo III and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and even more spent in World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online, my path to power is always a long one, and the reason I stop playing is always the same. Rewards are eventually stretched out over such extreme distances that the excitement of powering up disintegrates. I move on to another game and yet another heavily armored manifestation of my ego is marooned in an electric graveyard. Dota 2 and games like it condense that entire path to power into an experience that usually lasts less than an hour. I start out as a squishy nothing, with a few paltry items. The only things I can kill consistently are trees with my Tangos to replenish health. Otherwise I must cower behind lines of friendly creeps I can’t even control, waiting for them to deal damage while I stalk in the background and dart in like a coward to land kill shots. If my enemies close in, my best option is to run and let Dota 2’s automated elements do the work for me. I am nearly useless, but the potential to grow into a force of awe-inspiring destruction pushes me forward.A few minutes pass, I acquire a modest sum of gold, purchase a few items and level a few skills and suddenly I’m a modest fighter. I can more confidently attack the other team, take greater risks and begin to assert my influence. With boots to increase my movement speed I dart rapidly into range to last hit creeps. I can sense nervousness building in the enemy as I deny their kills and harass their health bars. My team gains confidence as we combine skills to drive up kill counts, and we begin to swing the experience and gold accumulation rates in our favor.It’s the same sense of publicly acknowledged power that makes playing MMOs so alluring. All can see my progress, all understand the value of my accomplishments. Yet in Dota 2, it’s only taken 20 minutes to impress, not 300 hours of item grinding against the same dungeon bosses to earn that set of mythical armor that glows in a few spots and includes a really cool hat.Fully appreciating the appeal of the leveling experience is only really possible when I’m killed. A huge chunk of gold I’d worked so hard to accumulate is ripped away. I’m barred from respawning for a short while or over minute if I’m high level, forcing me to watch, embarrassed and stripped of all my power, while the other team continues to kill and collect with a one man advantage.Returning to base to heal has the same effect. Even seconds spent removed from the unrelenting competition to build experience and gold can be agonizing, even though sometimes such action is necessary. The drive to level and kill as efficiently as possible is crucial to victory, which is why so many ways exist to bypass the associated penalties. Scrolls return me almost instantly to the base or towers, I can burn an obscene amount of gold to respawn with the speed of a mouse click, couriers can be purchased to circumvent the need to return to base to scoop up new items, and with an Aegis of the Immortal I can respawn in the field seconds after I die with full health and mana.Perhaps that’s part of the reason players get so upset when things go badly. Dota 2 is a hypercompetitive game where a team with better coordination will usually beat a team with a single exceptionally skilled player. Such a setup magnifies every death and every mistake. Chaos Knight might yank me behind a hostile tower with Reality Rift, killing me with Phantasm before I’m able to react. Disruptor might snare me within his Kinetic Field, giving the enemy enough time to drain my health bar three times over. Riki might emerge from the Shadows, silence me with a Smoke Screen and backstab me into oblivion. Moments before any of this I may have been peacefully farming neutral creeps or defending a tower. Quick and catastrophic change is only ever a moment away.Such dramatic swings in momentum, when everything seemed to be going so well, when I was able to acquire Aghanim’s Scepter and Phase Boots before some even completed their Power Treads, can gut punch pride and boil fury through fingers with alarming efficacy. In a team fight a teammate might flee early, another might cast the wrong spell, and within seconds I’m bulldozed and bewildered by the enemy’s sudden might. Almost instantly I’m poorer and forced to watch while opponents tear down my towers and last hit my creeps. The advantage is gone, along with my sense of strength.The chat field is filled with insults and accusations. Those who clearly made mistakes are ripping into those who made bigger ones. The especially angry complain about their teammates in all chat, appealing to the enemy for sympathy over how Valve’s cruel matchmaking service put them in a group with the criminally unskilled, instead of admitting that they may not be playing very well either. Some drop from the game after unloading a storm of insults, making it four on five after 25 minutes have already passed. Even then, with the right style of teamwork, victory is still possible. Sloppy play could be the difference between actually purchasing a Butterfly to significantly boost killing power and evasion or staring at its shop icon for the match’s entirety with a sense of futile longing as the opposition flattens Barracks.Maybe I reach level 25 and outfit my hero with rare items and take pleasure in how my under-leveled enemies flee as soon as I emerge from the fog of war, or maybe the match is brought unceremoniously to an end just after I amassed my core gear. My prior progress doesn’t matter when the next match begins, because I start the process all over again. Maybe I try the same hero and experiment with different item and skill builds as I level, maybe I go alt-aholic and try out everyone until I’m familiar with everything in the game. There’s never a point when the rewards are too far away to seem worthwhile. Every hero has such a distinct style of play and so much depth considering the possible team configurations that nothing ever feels like a wearying grind. Inside Dota 2 sits the entirety of the role playing experience, balled up and sublimely meshed with a relentlessly competitive, publicly viewable arena.That’s always been the DotA formula, and with Dota 2 Valve presents the most polished version, where all heroes are free to use, with detailed stat tracking, a microtransaction system with no effects on actual gameplay, bot support and a robust way to spectate others, most of which helps you learn what works, what doesn’t, and how best to refine your path to power. It’s why I’ve so far put 125 hours into the closed beta test, and look forward to investing many more.