DotA Wiki : Development

Warcraft III is the third title in the Warcraft series of real-time strategy games developed by Blizzard Entertainment. As with Warcraft II, Blizzard included a free "world editor" in the game that allows players to create custom scenarios or "maps" for the game, which can be played online with other players through Battle.net.These custom scenarios can be simple terrain changes, which play like normal Warcraft games, or they can be entirely new game scenarios with custom objectives, units, items, and events; Defense of the Ancients is one of the latter. Created by a mapmaker known as Eul, Defense of the Ancients is a custom scenario based on a previous StarCraft scenario known as "Aeon of Strife", and is the best known of all the DotA variants. After the release of Warcraft's expansion The Frozen Throne, which added new features to the World Editor, Eul did not update the scenario.

Numerous variants were created based on the original, but Allstars is the version that made Defense of the Ancients popular; this scenario was developed by an author under the alias Guinsoo. After version 6.x, another author by the name of IceFrog took over development of the scenario. With successive versions, IceFrog fixes bugs and adds or updates features. Each release is accompanied with a changelog.IceFrog is notoriously reclusive, refusing to give interviews; the only evidence of IceFrog's authorship is the map maker's email account on the official website and the name branded on the game's loading screen.

Defense of the Ancients has strong community support, maintained via official forums. Users can post ideas for new heroes or items, some of which are added to the map.Players have contributed icons and hero descriptions and created the artwork displayed while the map loads, and suggestions for changes to existing heroes or items are taken seriously; IceFrog once changed a new hero less than two weeks after the new version of the map was released.Versions of the scenario where enemy heroes are controlled by artificial intelligences have also been released.

Because Warcraft III custom games have none of the features designed to improve game quality (matchmaking players based on connection speed, etc.), various programs are used to maintain Defense of the Ancients. External tools ping player's locations, and games can be named to exclude geographic regions. Clans and committees such as Team DotA Allstars (TDA) maintain their own official list of rules and regulations, and players can be kicked from matches by being placed on "banlists".

Form : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_the_Ancients#Development

Cr.Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_the_Ancients#Development