[Tips & Tricks] Online Game: DOTA

I’ve been pondering on what to write for about a couple of months now and since I’m a bit fan of Online Games, I’ll be starting my contributions with these in mind. Finally!

By mention of Online Game (will be OLG from this point onwards), I simply meant all games provided or can be accessed through the internet. Technology at its peak, every game in town can now be played online 24/7 and can played by friends and most of the time, strangers – since most of OLGs are designed for multiplayer capacities. A little bit of background, in the early 1990′s, software was pretty much developing and produced the possibility of tunneling the LAN protocols to be played over the internet. True enough, by the later years, OLG allowed millions of gamers from all over the world to play with one another. Servers and game rooms are brought to life serving as online lobbies for players to choose their opponents or allies. User names, passwords and even special accounts are now common words for gamers. I pretty much guess that almost everyone, every once in a while, participates and plays OLGs.

OLGs caters to a big community. By saying big, this includes a huge population count on almost all age brackets, with heavy chucks of teenagers and young adults in it. I cannot give statistics here since I have different purpose. You can check for stats at <http://www.grabstats.com> if you need so. My purpose is to share some bits of information to the Filipino Gamers especially to the DOTA players. Below info maybe useless to most addict DOTA players therefore, I would like to dedicated this to the starters, new players, and the uninformed. Hope you may find them amusing and helpful as I do:

> Pre-game:

• DOTA: ‘Defense of the Ancients’ or the Warcraft III – Frozen Throne game.
• GG Client: or the GArena client will take you to the most famous (if not the only) and the biggest gaming lobby for most countries including the Philippines. They have numerous games to offer.
• CP: means ‘Check Ping’ usually done by the Host of the game or as requested by the players. Usually, the host makes the decision of ‘kicking a player’ after checking his ping to minimize game ‘lag’.
• Ping: or the ‘latency’ or the minimum delay that will define the ‘lag’ time. Everyone have this especially if your playing network games. For LAN connection (100ms) and for Battle.Net access (250ms). This delay tends to go up to thousands all depending to the access rate to the network/host/server.
• Lag: delayed reaction of the Hero to your command as projected by your ‘ping’. Terms such as ‘stop dance’ and ‘super lag’ are also being used to signify that there’s much delay.
• Tunnel: or the act of as ‘tunneling’ to create a connection/gateway of determining the ping.

> Game proper:

• GG: can be meant as ‘Go Game/Get Going!’ if said before the start of the game (usually inside a create game room talking to the  Host) or ‘Good Game’ if said at/towards the end of the game thus given that one is team is at obvious advantage.
• P, B, K, GB: ‘Push’, ‘Back’, ‘Kill’ and ‘Gang Bang’.
• RS: ‘Roshan’, either signifying that the team are to slay Roshan or the other team is doing so.
• MH: ‘Map Hack’ which is a new (cheat) feature for the latest dota maps since it gives advantage because you be able to see the entire map!
• RM: ‘Re-Match’ if said towards the end of the game or ‘room’.
• BS, OM: ‘Blind Spot’, ‘Only Mid’,
• CD, SS: ‘Cool Down’ and ‘Special Skill’ or the last skill.
• Imba, Noob, Feed: names called to player seemed like newbies to the game. They tend to die on clashes or even on head to head.
• Pull: Usually done advance players, ‘pulling’ is done when the hero attacks the Neutral Creeps then lures them at the Normal Creeps. This will then delay the arrival of the normal creeps and delays/lessens the chance of the opponent to gain experience and coins.
• Farm: ‘Farming’ is done by attacking and killing Neutral Creeps instead of joining the combat lane. It is either they need a certain experience amount to level up or that they need a coins to buy certain items.

In the end, all of this may not matter since there are thousands of words being invented due specially while playing DOTA. But nonetheless, it may be a plus to atleast take note of them on your next game all the more when your playing in a team. Happy gaming everyone!

[If you may find anything that is not correct, please enlighten me. If you may add other interesting facts, I'll be paying my full attention ^_< cheers! Your comments will be most welcome...]