"A Decade of Dota" is a beautiful love letter from Riyadh Masters 2023

Dota 2

4 Aug

Otomo

During the final day of Riyadh Masters 2023, the tournament organizers released a video celebrating the game. The aptly named "A Decade of Dota" is a love letter to one of the most prominent esport titles in the world.

The video features a lone Lion being teleported to different patches of Dota 2. A Decade of Dota highlighted the biggest changes the game has gone through, along with iconic moments from the pro scene.

Our favorite references from "A Decade of Dota"

The opening scene

That's an impressive friend list! (Credit: Gamer8)

The video opens with a look at the old menu Dota 2 players started with, including a reference to the infamous 322 in Dota, as well as 17% players online, a nod to Spirit Breaker's bash.

After that viewers can enjoy the former pick screen for heroes, which showcased them as cards and a look at Lion's former model. The old Storm Spirit also makes a brief appearance, before he started hitting the gym.

Lion buys a courier, which in the old days had to be manually purchased by players and shared among the team.

We then see Venomancer and Storm Spirit both trying to use the one courier to deliver items to both of them at the same time. We lived in dark days back then and this was a traumatic memory to remember.

A flashback to Dota 2's most iconic moments

Sylar to fall, Liquid are doing it! (Credit: Gamer8).

Lion begins his time-traveling journey and the first thing we see is Diretide, considered to be one of the best Dota 2 events we've had.

After that, we get glimpses of iconic moments in professional Dota 2 matches, including "The Play" from The International 2, The final moments of LGD and Liquid's match in The International 3 (which includes Beyond The Summit's iconic opening to their videos), and lastly Gustav "s4" Magnusson's million dollar Coil that won Alliance their Aegis from the same tournament.

After that rush of adrenaline, Lion takes a moment to breathe at which point his model gets updated and he lands in a field full of mines. For new Dota 2 players, Techies was the most obnoxious hero to face in pubs, due to his ability to stack bombs and one-shot heroes, with no counterplay available. Luckily for Lion, he gets whisked away before experiencing that.

A Decade of Dota brings back the "Spin to Win" meta

Ho-ho-ha-ha! (Credit: Gamer8).

From one awful mechanic to another, Lion teleports to a new field and this one features an infamous Dota 2 patch, 6.83.

During that time, Sniper could damage buildings with Shrapnel, allowing him to safely siege structures and forcing defenders to leave their high-ground defense to engage him.

Sniper wasn't the worst part of that patch, as several heroes with spin mechanics, such as Juggernaut, Troll Warlord, and Axe, were extremely overpowered. Most games in 6.83 featured these four heroes. Dark times, dark times indeed.

If you weren't there for the countdown to Dota 2 patch 7.00, you should check out the trailer immediately and I mean right now. Patch 7.00 introduced talents for heroes and changed support life forever by giving all players a courier.

Talents weren't completely original in the start, as several heroes had some form of extra experience, more gold per minute, more cast range, or reduced death-timer talent.

Reducing respawn time, along with Bloodstone allowed some heroes to play very aggressively and return to battle near instantly when killed, as Lina does in the video, getting up the moment she is killed to resume the fight in a blink-or-you-miss-it moment.

When Dota 2 launched, it didn't feature every hero from Dota 1. Instead, heroes were introduced gradually over time. After all heroes were ported, IceFrog began work on completely new heroes, with Monkey King being the first original champion in the game, complete with his own trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guGFT27SavM&pp=ygUabW9ua2V5IGtpbmcgZG90YSAyIHRyYWlsZXI%3D

A decade of Dota concludes with the New Horizons patch

This image hit hard. (Credit: Gamer8).

The story continues with moments from the last few Internationals, such as Owen "ODPixel" Davies's great call in The International 8, and highlights of Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov's amazing Magnus performance in TI10 which had to be seen to believed at the time.

The video ends with Lion looking at the Dota 2 map, as the landscape changes for the New Horizons update.

The music, the walk down memory lane, the biggest moments from The International, this was a beautiful love letter for Dota 2.

Riyadh Masters 2023 concludes the video with a message, wishing for more decades with Dota 2 and we here at Strafe Esports couldn't agree more.

Thank you IceFrog and Valve for this wonderful experience.