Dota 2 is by no means a new game. While major updates give the title a new coat of paint or an awesome new mechanic that can change how the game is played, older features that are lost to time used to defy the metagame of the MOBA. Some of these features date back to the Warcraft days of the early 2000’s.
It’s the memory of these features that define a player’s veteran status in Dota, with many fans coming together in a June 8 Reddit thread to discuss some of these long-lost mechanics or quirks.
Most responses in the thread pointed to the mid-2010s and would be totally foreign concepts to players of today, such as the inability to buy Eye of Skadi on heroes with orb attacks, or getting extra gold for randoming a hero—all staples of yesteryear in Dota 2.
However, there were some old wolves in the mix, as one fan recalled a time when Invoker had to wait until level six to unlock any of his spells. Despite sounding off, this version of Invoker was considered to be broken as he would start raining down spell after spell via Invoke.
Another fan reminisced of a time when players could share some of the early game items like Ring of Health. Laning partners would often move around the item to effectively use its healing powers, which can’t be done in today’s Dota 2 world.
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While these mechanics don’t exist in the game anymore, they continue to live on as symbols that define specific eras. These were the type of mechanics that players had to get familiar with and master to improve their rank, and removing them meant finding new alternatives that could take their place.
As Dota shows no signs of stopping, even the newer mechanics introduced only recently may eventually become relics of a bygone era, with only the players of today recalling further down the track. One thing’s for sure—most of today’s fans will still be sticking by Dota for years to come.
