Blizzard appealing Valve’s use of the DOTA trademark

Blizzard are appealing against Valve’s use of the DOTA trademark, on the grounds that the trademark carries with it all the goodwill generated for the original DOTA mod and Warcraft III, which it was based on.

Valve are currently developing DOTA 2, which will be a standalone game available on Steam.

In the appeal, Blizzard argue that they supported the original DOTA mod, and that it was built using the Warcraft III engine, characters, items, spells, artwork and textures, and that Valve should therefore have no right to use the name.

Blizzard are currently developing their own version of DOTA: Blizzard DOTA, a custom game for StarCraft II.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx1JDEnrVK8]

Like other DOTA-style games, this is a team-based competitive game where each player controls a powerful hero with unique abilities, and must work with their teammates to invade the enemy’s base.  More information is available in the DOTA FAQ.

Sunwell Plateau

Late last night, I joined a group making a visit to Sunwell Plateau.. the hardest raid in the Burning Crusade expansion, containing the Sunwell.  We only ended up with six players including Vorlak and myself, as it seems there aren’t that many people wanting to go and chase down older content like us 🙂

I had the WoWWiki guide up on my second screen so I could at least glance over the tactics as we went through.. reading about things is not the same as experiencing them though, so I had to be on my toes to start with.  After the first few trash mobs, the other healer asked if I could heal the group by myself so he could DPS instead.. I was happy to try, though a little worried in case things went wrong and I took the blame.

The first boss, Kalecgos, proved a problem thanks to a tricky mechanic with two fights going in simultaneously, one in the regular world against the dragon himself, and the other in a shadowy world through a portal, where you must stop Sathrovarr the Corruptor from killing Kalec, the dragon’s half-elf form.

Those of us who had gone through the portal were unsuccessful in killing off Sathrovarr, meaning we were then unable to win the fight.  Fortunately we were able to solve this by leaving and re-entering the instance.  Our second attempt was much better, as all but the tank entered the spectral realm and killed Sathrovarr, then came back out to deal with Kalecgos.
So far so good though.. the group was nice enough and everyone else seemed to know what they were doing 🙂

The next bosses were found in The Dead Scar: a path made of blight leading through Quel’Thalas.. this is where the Undead attacked in the Warcraft III storyline 🙂

Brutallus, the pit-lord, kept applying his Burn ability to me, so I had to stay away from the other players to avoid passing it on to them, but fortunately it wasn’t doing a lot of damage.

Felmyst, the third boss, is resurrected from the corpse of blue dragon Madrigosa as it is tainted by the blood of Brutallus.. so she appeared as soon as we were finished with Brutallus.  This fight was a little more trouble as Felmyst’s abilities included various poisonous AOE effects.. gas, fumes, vapour..
I’d been given a heads-up to avoid these, but got caught out right at the end and was Mind-Controlled.. and the group had no choice but to attack me.  Fortunately the dragon was killed first 😉

After resurrecting our two dead players, we went back indoors, heading towards the Witch’s Sanctum and the Eredar Twins.

These two bosses work as a pair, with them both fighting in the first phase, and then after killing one Twin, the other continuing with some of the first Twin’s abilities.  Looking over the tactics, I was a little worried by Dark Touched as 20 stacks of this on a player means healing effects reduced by 100%.  I hoped this wouldn’t apply to Vorlak, as he was the tank.. but in the end it didn’t even register as a problem during the fight 🙂

M’uru was the next boss, a Naaru which I thought looked corrupted as the others I’ve seen were all bright and shining.. and didn’t want to kill us!

The group were going fairly quickly at this point and I didn’t get to check the tactics, but it just seemed to be a case of killing him quickly.. once M’uru is dead he transforms into Entropius, a void god, which again required burning down quickly.  No problem for this group!

Then there we were.. at the final boss, Kil’jaeden!

Kil’jaeden is being summoned through the Sunwell, where energy is being drained from the imprisoned Anveena.  Bit of lore here: Anveena looks like a human girl, but is actually the manifestation of the energy within the Sunwell; she sacrifices herself to weaken Kil’jaeden, which means the Sunwell’s destruction.

Tactics-wise.. the first part of the fight involves pulling the three Hands of the Deceiver away from the Sunwell.. thanks to us being overpowered and the group moving so very quickly, these were virtually dead before I’d got near the fight..

Part way through the fight, Vorlak used an orb at the side of the room to turn into a blue dragon!  This gave him some useful abilities including Breath: Revitalize, which gave me mana.. always useful.. and Shield of the Blue, providing a shield which reduces incoming damage by 95%..

As Anveena sacrifices herself, she applies a buff to Kil’jaeden meaning he takes increased Holy Damage.. yay for my use of Holy Fire letting me get extra damage in!  Once defeated he disappears back through the Sunwell..

There was more lore here too, with a conversation between Lady Liadrin and Prophet Valen about the victory, and how the heart of M’uru had been recovered, and is now a source of light energy in place of the Sunwell.   I really need to read the books so I have more of the story.. 🙂

Healing the group for this was much easier than I expected, and I was really glad I’d come along despite worrying about not knowing the tactics.  Vorlak and I both got the Sunwell Plateau achievement, and Vorlak also got Outland Raider.. I’m missing this one still!

Once the loot was distributed, the others left and we wandered around a little.  I also tried out the dragon orb 🙂

Battle for Mount Hyjal

After completing Black Temple a couple of days back, we decided Mount Hyjal would be next..

Part of the Caverns of Time, this area exists in a kind of bubble in time, with Archimonde trying to steal power from the World Tree.  I’m told this ties in a little with the Warcraft III storyline.. which I have yet to complete.  I need a bubble in time!

In the first stage, we found ourselves in an Alliance camp, with Lady Jaina Proudmoore waiting for us and plenty of Alliance troops standing around.  Talking to her set off the event.. and the first wave of zombies appeared.  Once we killed them the next wave appeared.. and in turn they were followed by more waves, including Crypt Fiends and Abominations which I imagine would have been harder if we were lower level.

There was only just enough time in between rounds to loot.. hoping for random interesting drops 😉

After eight waves, the first boss appeared: the lich Rage Winterchill..

Our tactics here were just simply “hit him”.  That was fine until he started freezing us in place and putting down a painful Death and Decay!  Once we know about that those of us who could, kept out of range.

Following his defeat, we had more waves of zombies, and I switched to using mind sear as there really wasn’t any healing to be done, and I wanted to help kill.  As before there were several waves, which were easy for our little group 🙂

The boss after this wave was the massive demon Anetheron.. we had pulled back into the town so the Alliance guards would help us.  Just as well we did.. his attacks involved putting us to sleep and then summoning Towering Infernals.. I quite honestly spent more time asleep than awake!

One of the group decided to switch to his Warlock, as he wanted to grab some of the gear drops.

While he was away, we went looking around the demon area.. after getting rid of the Abominations on the way in, of course.

I love the buildings.. especially the Slaughterhouse with the spikes on the upper ring 🙂

We made a few friends when we got too close, but fled on the bike rather than take them all on!

The next stage involved the camp being over-run with demons.. Jaina teleported away with all her Alliance troops, leaving us all to run away up the mountain.  At the top of the mountain was a Horde encampment, with Thrall waiting for us..

As with the previous area, waves of zombies started to enter the camp.. however this time, some of the waves brought gargoyles from different directions, which made it a little tricky since there were only four of us.. and then three as one of the group temporarily disconnected!

Following the ‘trash’ waves, Kaz’rogal appeared.. a massive guy with a massive sword..
Our Orc Warrior, Vorlak, looks like a mini-pet standing in front of him 😉

This boss took a while to kill as he had a lot of health.. but otherwise he wasn’t hard to fight.. no putting us to sleep, or silencing the mage or myself.

Our Warlock went to bed as it was getting late, but we decided to carry on with the next waves of trash mobs, as the raid was going to reset by the following evening.  The gargoyles and frost wyrms were no problem, but when it came time for the boss, it was a different story.

The fourth boss was Azgalor..

We didn’t last very long.. although otherwise manageable, he applies Doom, a debuff which kills a player and spawns a demon in their place.  This debuff is unavoidable.. which means we need to kill him before he casts it on each player.. clearly we weren’t going to be able to do it with only three of us, so we decided to call it a night there.

i40, a little bit late

This post was supposed to make an appearance one week ago, after returning from i40.
However, we still have no internet at home (it’s coming up on four weeks now), and some personal stuff too which meant I wanted to spend the week curled in a small ball, not interacting with anything.

Enough of that, though – i40!

We arrived just before the rain.. a fantastic start to a weekend where the sleeping is mostly done outside 😉

That wasn’t the end of the ‘fantastic start’, however, as we were then excluded from taking our machines in till way after 6pm because the temporary structure wasn’t ready.. and then when we were finally able to get in, there was no internet.  With no internet, there was also no Steam..

The first game played, then, was Warcraft III, as it was one of the few games available which didn’t need an internet connection or updates.

In amongst those games was a go at the “Run, Kitty, Run” map: you have to run along a spiral path to the centre, avoiding the ‘dogs’ which kill you on touch.  It gets harder as you progress, as the paths are narrower, until there’s barely room to get past.. for the first time in many, many attempts, we actually managed to get to the end, where it seems the reward for success is.. to start again with even more dogs on the paths!

I was also introduced to Beat Hazard, thanks to another friend.  This takes any music track you own and turns it into a simple space shooter, very like Geometry Wars.. and it makes very bright, pretty colours.. *gazes*

You start off with space-trash to shoot, but as the track progresses you face stronger enemies which shoot back.  Fortunately, you collect power-ups as you go, which makes your weapons a little more useful.. as well as more colourful.. and there are also power-ups which increase the volume of the track too.

It’s another ‘unblinking’ game which probably shouldn’t be played in a dark room at LAN 😉

After playing this, Audiosurf made another appearance, and with it, a little competition going on in terms of the scoreboard.

Minecraft became a slight obsession for one friend..  this is a 3D sandbox crafting game, with a variety of types of block: wood, coal, etc, and strange blocky life-forms, the most interesting being zombies!  I had a brief go at the game a while back, but after spending two day cycles building, and two night cycles hiding in my buildings from the zombies, I then found my trial of the game didn’t have zombies.. durrrp!
It was admittedly quite fun watching huge piles of TNT go up, though, especially when it resulted in framerates of 1 or 2, or crashed the PC :3

In the run-up to i40, we picked up Borderlands, thanks to another Steam offer.  Oh, Steam.. what would I do with all my money if not for you?

Borderlands has 4 player co-op, which is great as I do like playing with friends.. but I have to say that I found myself confused by the weapons, as per usual in this type of game.   Having to pick up ammo for the weapon I was using, while leaving other ammo for my team just added another layer of trouble.. if I don’t know the guns, I’m really not going to know what ammo they use.

Despite this, I love the game, though I want to complete the game in single-player so I know what I’m doing, and don’t feel like I’m holding my friends back next time.

We also got a couple of games of Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising in.. trying out the Free-For-All mode which I really enjoyed, especially with high resources allowing me to just pump out units.  I think I’m improving on my tactics now, using the Techmarine to fit with my defensive playstyle.  FFA made a nice change, but I think co-op is still going to remain my favourite.

The last night of i40 turned into an all-nighter, with a foxy puppet, fits of giggles, a brief foray onto the rather disappointing Omegle, and later fits of shivers.. the temporary structure really wasn’t draught-proof and by 4am I was glad of fleecy blankets and two friends to hide between for warmth.  Next time I think I’ll be voting for a warmer and quieter hall, maybe in with the WoW players.. lalala 😉

LAN wouldn’t be LAN without a massive TF2 battle between CantFitMyN and Crazy/Inv, and so on the last morning we duly had our game, though there was no victory for CFMN this time.  Next time, maybe! 🙂

New Year’s Band Hero

Heading off for a New Year’s celebration of sorts, and taking the 360 and Band Hero with us and a copy of Guitar Hero 5.   Will see how that goes down with Tim’s family.. and if we run out of energy, there’s always the Wii..

Had a very late night last night, playing custom Warcraft III maps with friends. We played Tower Defense maps mainly, but we also went for a few rounds of “Run Kitty Run” which resulted in giddiness due to the insane music!  Some maps and game types have rather a steep learning curve, but the more basic tower defense games were very easy to get into.  Saying that though, I’ve played plenty of Tower Defense games in my browser, so I had a bit of an advantage!

Only slightly regretting how late it got – 2.30am – but what are holidays for if you can’t stay up late? 😉