~Prologue~
Wanna get a grasp on the first-hand experience of an ex dota-addict? Read on or find any other things that will interest you in this page or just click the X button. Feel free to recommend this page to your dota-infested friends =)
My memory always fails me so I just want this post to be a reminiscence of dota's good times and... bad times. But before we start, please be warned that it's some long text coupled with heavily-loaded images ahead.
Now, shall we begin?
~Confessions of A Dota-holic~
One hundred and sixty-five;
1...6...5... days without dota.
For 5 years, the popular LAN/online gaming at any particular point of time will be either
- DotA & WoW,
- Dota & CS (yes it's my initial),
- DotA & COD or
- DotA & L4D.
From v5.84c till v6.xx now, DotA's fad never dies. It has never failed to live up to expectations and has never, ever, been out of popularity. And just by hearing Lich, CM, SA, stuns, blink or any other dota heroes and skills, chills would be sent down the spines of all dota players, me included (okay, i know i'm exaggerating lol).
It feels so so good to play dota. I played for 4 freaking full years and i loved it so so much that i could literally call dota (and books) my gfs. They argued kinda often. But me being me, my time-management skills (ss detected) allowed me to devote enough time in both. so they could actually still live in harmony lol.
I still miss this loading screen. Talk about memories!I had looked at this for at least... a few hundred times?
And people asked me, how did i stop dota so easily?! well, there is obviously a motivation behind my stopping dota but too bad, it is the only part of the full confession that will be kept a secret. Seriously, it is that simple. Just stop playing, tell your mind to stop and you will!
The 'uninstall warcraft' trick won't work if your mind is not engineered to uninstall it. In fact, one of my friends (ek hem, L&F lol) have reinstalled many times but they are still playing it! lol. And you may be surprised to hear that I still have war3 in my hard disk, and as a matter of fact, the garena and ventrilo icons still appear on my desktop! swt
Now moving on to confessions.
I was a disciplined kid (i still am =p). In fact, I was so disciplined that i woke up at 7-7.15 every off day (no-class day) just to play dota. Cool? I would sometimes dream of dota and my heart would be beating so fast that I had to wake up and cure this addiction lol. And no, u won't understand what no-life is. But at least, the everlasting effect of this symptom is good: now i can wake up early at any time! ask anyone around me? =)
On top of that, I would spend hours on forums to study dota. We even had formulae to calculate what items you should buy at what stage, which skills to learn before which and/or which skills to throw at the enemy first.
Apart from causing mental disruption (as some would call it because we need dota drug) and time-wasting that could seriously damage your life, almost all other aspects of dota are good if you know how to control yourselves!
First, it is a stress-reliever. Killing people in-game, assisting teammates and dying (and shouting profanities) bring some feel-good factors. But okay, there is a bad side to it as I have encountered three separate incidents where my good friends actually argued with each other over ks (kill-stealing) issues. lol but another upside is that you would learn anger management along the way too =p
Second, it improves your typing speed. When the game develops so fast and backstabbing happens every other minute, you would have to learn to type fast. What i enjoyed the most was scolding people (non-friends in pub games) while i was being revived. Just imagine when the death timer starts ticking and you would have 30-90 seconds to scold as much as you want. lol syok like crazy.
Third, it improves your vocab. Being someone who had 1 year of malay (and jawi!) education in tadika and 10 years of education in a chinese school, and without much exposure to english-speaking people around, you would have guessed how my english vocab's like. Limited, yea that's the word. DotA taught me a lot of words that I would otherwise not have encountered elsewhere. And seriously, those non-gamers who think that most games use low quality english, I am here to tell you that you're wrong! =)
December 08 - January 09 was the best and worst dota period of all. The best part? I met three pro and nice kaki's (not sure whether i should list their names here but the initials are L,F,H lol. u know who u are.) Those were easily the most enjoyable dota sessions that i have ever had for 4 years - no offence to those who teman me play before that.
We actually had a clan (yea Xn.C) and played clan wars almost every night. And we even installed software so that we could speak to each other in real time. I enjoyed the arguments we had on picking roles and heroes but the best thing in a team game was that we knew that we could count on each other and that each of us would be willing to sacrifice anything in-game to win as a team.
Caption: Wee, i have the highest number of assists here... and just for the records, I always had the most team assists in clan games because i don't ks! =)During that period of time, my normal working hours were from 8.30 to around 8.30. I would get home immediately after work, have dinner and sit in front of the pc waiting for my kaki's to come online. The weirdest thing is that even though i often slept at 2+ and woke up at 7, i felt energetic all day long even when i was working. I did yawn a lot while working but my mind was as sharp, and that my commitment to my work never diminished. Quality of the work was assured too, so much so that the partner and director liked it a lot. =D
'Quality in everything we do'. Does it ring a bell?
And I don't know whether this is normal but the best part of dota that I like is to start things afresh. Each game brings something different and will rarely be the same. Events are different, actions are different so of course, the outcome will be different too.
For those who have played with me for a long time, they would have noticed that I love to play the opening 10 mins and that I suck especially at late game. I am not sure why either but I guess the reason is that I like to start things out in the best possible way? It's similar to the Pokemon's concept when you save and load the game every 10 seconds just so that you will meet rare pokemons instead of the same old boring ones in the bushes or that you can hypnotise or use ultimate skills successfully every time. lol
My all-time signature heroes: Chen, the Holy Knight, and
Boush, the Tinker.
Where I dominate and own early game, and then feed all the way to heaven =)
Last month's exams were really a special testing time for myself. While in the previous years, I would have struggled a lil bit to stop dota, I had never failed to motivate myself to get good results. But remember that i said i was disciplined? Right, i would stop dota 1 week before exams without failure everytime, almost everytime i mean, okok i meant most often that not or err... maybe 'a simple majority of the time' is more accurate lol.
And you know what, I thought about this critically and I think the real reason could be attributed to the fact that while I was going for personal achievement in the prior years, my subconscious mind had been telling myself to get good results to justify the view that all the hours spent (most poeple read it as 'wasted') on dota do NOT affect one's results!
Fortunately, I think the exam for this sem went okay eventually. But it's most probably because i'm lucky to have open book exams for 3 out of 4 papers!
~Epilogue~
Dota is not a bad thing after all but unless u know how to find a balanced lifestyle, please leave it alone. I was not good in handling it, and that was why i stopped.
I have been wanting to write out my thoughts about this a long time ago and I guess this is the time to release it. For those who want to stop dota addiction (namely L, F, H and others), please contact the hotline: 999. =)
I have taken a big step and I am set for more. But before that, I just need a day some time soon to hibernate and recollect all my thoughts. Self-renewal is in the list.
* Some parts are fictional but most are facts. haha.
