HoN - Death of DotA in EU/NA

Source: Fnatic.com
HoN - The death of DotA in EU/NA?
By Crofteh

A strong comment to make, I know but looking at the current climate in the eSports scene, is 2010 is going to be the year that everybody forgot about DOTA in the competative eSports community in the western world?

When HoN arrived on the scene, there was a lot of hype from some corners, saying that it was going to be the successor to what DotA had built with an abundance of people trying to get their hands on a beta key to start their HoN journey. On the other hand though, we still have the massive DOTA community who have always and probably will always see Heroes of Newerth simply as a copy of DOTA that doesn't deserve any recognition as an eSports title. This view can be seen throughout any DOTA community portal, the shear defiance they have and somewhat hatred for the game runs deep.

"Worst dotapickup TP application. Dotapickup wont need HoN. If dotapickup goes down, we go down with pride."

-Quote from a dotapickup.euro member (recently banned) after a member wanted to became a Trusted Player (admin of sorts) to try and further the branch of dotapickup, honpickup.euro.

This cuts deep through the community, with people seeing Heroes of Newerth as a rival rather than a successor, but it seems its time, at least in Europe and North America as the game that's going to be replacing DOTA on the competative eSports scene.

This week, Dreamhack, arguably the biggest LAN event in Europe announced their game list for the upcoming Dreamhack Summer event and there was a noticable difference, Heroes of Newerth had been picked up and DotA had been dropped. The same goes for the i-series, the biggest LAN event in Great Britain, taking on Heroes of Newerth and DOTA nowhere to be found. It can't be said that Heroes of Newerth, still in its beta stages, isn't taking the reigns somewhat from DOTA.

This doesn't take into account the smaller events and tournaments that are going on in the Heroes of Newerth community at the moment with communities such as Gamereplays.org and HoN-League being extremely active in its hosting of tournaments to nurture the community and bring out the players and teams that will more than likely begin to form the basis of the competative side of Heroes of Newerth on the bigger stage. Now of course, DOTA still has this and it is still a thriving community with regular leagues and tournaments, but couple this with the game itself becoming dated and the big LAN events choosing Heroes of Newerth over it, can it really come back from this body blow? And does this not show you need more than a big community to make a eSports title viable in the long term?

If you had a Ferarri and a Nissan Sunny sat in front of you, lets be honest, we all know which you would be most likely to pick unless you were in the Nissan Sunny collectors club. Now my analogy might not sit true with some people, but the shift in momentum is happening and it can't be denied, professional teams in their bunches have been dropping DOTA teams as of late, the latest being Fnatic, are these teams getting ready to bring on Heroes of Newerth teams? Who knows, only time will tell but thus far the future of DotA is looking very foggy.