How to get Dota

But first here's the answer on what is DOTA..

What is DotA? (Defense of the Ancients)
The first thing to remember about DotA is that it is a map, not a game. DotA runs off the Warcraft III engine, which is produced and maintained by Blizzard Entertainment.
DotA is not a single-player game and is designed to be played by 2 teams of 5 players each. As such, DotA is often played on the internet, as well as at your local LAN venue.


To start playing DotA, you need to get yourself a copy of the Warcraft III game. This is avaliable from the Blizzard Online Shop or from your local computer dealer.
DotA runs on the Warcraft III Expansion pack, "The Frozen Throne" (often called 'TFT'). You will need to purchase both the "Reign of Chaos" and "The Frozen Throne" to play.



How fast must my PC be?

* Computer: 400 MHz Pentium II or equivalent, or a 400 MHz G3 processor or better.

* Operating Systems: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. Warcraft III requires Mac OS? 9.0 or higher, or Mac OS X? 10.1.3 or higher.

* Memory: Warcraft III requires 128 MB of RAM. Virtual Memory should be enabled on computers running pre-Mac OS X versions of the Mac OS?.

* Controls: A keyboard and mouse are required.

* Drives: A hard drive with at least 550 MB of free space (in addition to your Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos installation), and a 4x speed CD-ROM drive are required for installation and play.

* Video: 8MB 3D video card (TNT, i810, Voodoo 3, Rage 128 equivalent or better) with DirectX 8.1 support. For Mac OS? systems, a video card consisting of an ATI Technologies or nVidia chipset with at least 16 MB of memory is required.

* Sound: A DirectX-compatible 16-bit sound card is recommended. Warcraft III will work with the built-in sound features of the Mac OS?.

Installing Warcraft

Installing Warcraft
Installing Warcraft is fairly simple. The game and the expansion ship on 1cd each.
- Insert the Reign of Chaos CD
- Autorun will pop up the installation screen
- Enter your CD Key (found on the box or manual)
- Select an install location (usually C:\Program Files\Warcraft III)
- Wait for install to finish
- Insert the Frozen Throne Expansion Pack CD
- Enter your CD Key
- Wait for it to install

Now what?
Unfortunately, you're not quite done yet. Warcraft needs to be patched to the latest version.
At the time of this article's composition, the latest patch was 1.21 http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=mwr0744p

Download the patch and double click it and it will install itself.



Right...can I play now?
Not quite yet, but you're getting there. As I said earlier, DotA is a map that gets added onto the Warcraft III engine.

Download the latest version of the map from www.getdota.com and save it to your desktop..

Save the map into your Warcraft III map download folder. This is usually in :
C:\Program Files\Warcraft III\Maps\Downloads\

If you find the Maps folder, but no "Downloads\" folder inside it, create one.



The game is launched from INSIDE the game, not from Windows. Load up Warcraft 3 TFT by clicking on the Desktop shortcut for Warcraft 3 (The Frozen Throne).
If there is no desktop shortcut, load the game by launching "Frozen Throne.exe" (which will be in your Warcraft III folder).

*Click on Local Area Connection and then on Create Game
*Double Click the Downloads folder
*Click the DotA AllStars map (choose the latest version) and press Create Game
Get some friends to join the game (via LAN) and then click play!

Get a friend to help you learn the basics.
From there on, its for you to learn. Nobody wants to spoon feed you!

I hope you enjoy playing DotA and this tutorial was of help to you!