The most annoying thing in the dota 2 community is the massive inferiority complex. We always look down on ourselves and jump at any form of recognition by others.
"Look! XYZ newpaper (contributor) is covering us!" "Wow TI(Insert number here) is in the Guinness Book of world records for most prize money" “Fuck man, soccer has a higher prizepool than us” “Look at Riot’s Customer support, look how much better it is than valves?”
No shit ESPN wants to work with us. We are the 'untargetable demographic', 15-30 year old male group who browse the web with Adlbock and doesn't have a reason to watch TV. We are the post college singles with a large amount of discretionary spending. We are the teenagers who will remember the flag sponsor of our favorite team forever. Our Chinese community is huge, our South Americans proud, we are the medium that builds a global brand.
The most amazing thing to me is how the Dota community handles the language barrier. Yes there are complaints, hatred and racism, that is the nature of the largest divide in the history of mankind. Dota forces you to work together if you want to win, for inner strife will only lead to collapse. And when we come together to pursue a common cause successfully, it teaches us that there is more to communication than just language, more to a person’s worth than their nationality.
I believe that dota is here to stay. We have eleven long years of history and the best balance developer ever. Valve remains immensely profitable and has been good to us through the years. As I grow older and my mechanics dull, I’ll still tune in to watch a few games, buy compendiums to reaffirm my love for Singsing, and lose more MMR. After all we are a game created by the community for the community.
Yes I am arrogant. Yes I understand the irony of posting this on a starcraft forum. But dota isn't just a game.
I understand what you mean by inferiority complex, how we are afraid of being too proud of any acheivements the community has had.
I can't speak for anyone else, but for me I think it's in self-defence. If I'm not too proud of what Dota 2 has achieved, then I won't be too crushed if it fails to acheive all I'm hoping it could be.
I don't understand why someone would ever want "esports" to be similar to traditional professional sports.
Niche competitive sports make it okay to be quirky and different and care about something that other people don't. The NFL/NBA/FIFA are to a large extent culturally homogenizing organizations created by wealthy people for the sake of making money.
Like you said, this is a community created game, for the community. There's no reason to go mainstream.
I think the racism and rage in DotA are kind of overrated/exaggerated. Sure, I complain as much as the next English speaker about Russians/Brazilians/Peruvians/Filipinos/whatever who play on NA servers and don't try to communicate with the chat wheel, pick moronic heroes, play stupidly, etc. But that's basically just the normal level of foolishness in DotA pubs plus a language barrier, and people who want to play DotA more than they want to bitch at their teammates will remember getting carried by four dudes who all spoke a different language (I got carried by a team of Spanish speakers yesterday when I farmed poorly as AM but the supports and offlane got our SF to 5x beyond godlike).
Besides, anyone who's played HoN, or suffered through bnet WC3 DotA, or spent any amount of time on Garena knows that rage can be ever so much worse than it often is in DotA 2. In my experience, the community in DotA 2 is far less toxic than any of the other 3, and even when people rage and bitch it seems to be more based on quality of play and contain more tips for improvement than I typically got before DotA 2.
TL;DR OP is right and if you want a "toxic community" try HoN or anything on XBL.
People want esports to be like traditional sports for many reasons.
They want pro players to earn real salaries and have nice lives. So they can dream about that. They want the game to be around forever and be part of that. They want other people to see its legitimacy, so they can be validated as part of that society.
Reddit (and by extension websites out there) are not good ways to judge what the Dota community is thinking at any given time.
believe that dota is here to stay. We have eleven long years of history and the best balance developer ever.
I remember when I said that about BW.
Brood war was never that big though. By the time that SC2 was released, most players had already left (aside from korea). And SC2 was no where near as good as the original. Dota 2 feels more like a natural continuation and an improvement in many aspects.
EPT
