The first public word of development of DOTA 2 began with an informal announcement made by DOTA's anonymous developer known as IceFrog, who said to have been leading a development team at Valve.[1] Several unofficial observations were made, including a Twitter post from Duke Nukem's voice actor Jon St. John[2], followed shortly by a trademark filing claim made by Valve on August 6, 2010.[3] Shortly thereafter, Riot Games director of community relations Steve "Pendragon" Mescon filed a conflicting trademark for "Defense of the Ancients" on behalf of the DotA-Allstars company, in order to prevent Valve from proceeding with the DOTA brand and to gain ownership of the Warcraft III scenario from IceFrog.[4] No official word was given until its unveiling on October 13, 2010, when Game Informer announced specific details about the game and its development.[5] Later that day Valve released the official press release for the game.[6]
IceFrog has explained that development of the game started after a trip he made to Valve's office, having received an email from them that invited him because they were big fans of the original DotA game.[7]
In the Game Informer reveal DOTA 2's director Erik Johnson explained that game mechanics such as gameplay, items or skills from Defense of the Ancients will remain largely unchanged. Many other aspects of the game will be preserved such as the 100+ roster of heroes and the cartoony art style. The bulk of improvements in DOTA 2 will be focused on the community aspect of the game. The Defense of the Ancients community is infamously hostile to new players due to the game's heavy reliance on teamwork. Valve plans to ease this by rewarding more experienced players for helping new players in various ways.[5]
