Dota 2 and me

I started playing Dota (a very old version of it, at least) when I was about 12 years old. A friend handed me a USB with a pirated copy of Warcraft 3, and the ambience, gameplay and sounds of the game had me hooked.

A Dota hero beside the iconic logo.

My first real experience into the world of MOBA's, Dota 2 and the coveted LAN experience was at a birthday party about 5 years ago. Back then, birthday parties would be hosted in these places called "LAN cafes".

They're basically remodeled homes fitted with a whole bunch of computers and the owners would charge you a certain fee an hour to use those computers. They were dirt cheap too - you'd get about 2 hours from what a dollar cost back then. So I guess there's no surprise that the majority of the customers there were kids - 14 to 18 year olds who came with their friends to play a multiplayer game together.

LANs were fucking magical.

The hectic screams of a game where one too many stupid plays were being made, horrible, horrible music being blasted through terrible rattly speakers and people screaming to be heard over it all.

A typical LAN cafe.

I'd visit LANs all throughout my highschool, ditching classes and fighting with my family for some Dota with my friends. I was on it like crack, and I really couldn't - and didn't - want to stop.

A lot of this changed, however, with finishing school and starting university. Right at the end of my high school, I'd gotten kicked out of school for cheating on an absolutely irrelevant subject. I had no choice but to focus more on my studies because I really couldn't afford another mistake with all this education bajazzle.

The year between finishing school and leaving for university stopped me from playing Dota 2 for a while - where I'd been playing for 30, 40 hours a week before, now I'd be lucky to put in one tenth of that. I'd still talk about Dota with my friends and watch streams of some of my favorite players like Arteezy and AdmiralBulldog, but to be perfectly honest, I'd been disenchanted with the game by then.

During university, I still wasn't playing much for the first few months. I'd log into the game, maybe play with bots for a while, then I'd quit because I wasn't feeling like it. It wasn't just with Dota, however, as I didn't really have a passion for anything back then.

One day during class, I was reading a book and it included a section on "Video game addiction" and the dangers of it all, how it can distance a "budding youth" from their peers and turn them into a "social recluse". And Dota was the example the author decided to run with.

I absolutely loathe reading things like that.

Funnily enough, that's what got me back into Dota. A small excerpt about the hazards of being addicted to Dota was what made me want to play again.

These days, I still play Dota. Nothing like what I used to, however - I know my reflexes are complete garbage, and very often I see things a bit too late to be what anyone would consider decent at the game. But every night that my friends and I get together for an hour or two of screaming and screeching at each other, I'm happy that I get to play this masterpiece of a game.