"Why are you so addicted to it?"
"I feel second hand to a game!"
These are the various, and oft repeating questions that i have been asked. Some of them who are gamers themselves. Often, they said, we are playing dota because we have so much free time, and that's all there is to it. DoTA was never just a game. In fact, Gaming itself was never just about the game.
There is so much more, oh so much more.
DoTA is the glue that brought us together, that to an extent kept us together. It is the reason why we spent countless hours in strange rooms whose owner's names we didn't know. What we new were their True names... their gamer names. Names aren't chosen randomly. You have one that is your True name and then it comes to you.
There is a lot in name, it prisms our personality and what was hiding behind the depths is suddenly out. In time, when we ready, we were worthy of our True names, I became MiSFiT, K became hUmtydUMty, A became Bleed, S was sLUdgy, D was well... for most of the time something that started with D, the other D finally settled on {FD}Merlyn, Ki will always be Mental no matter what his current name is, P was SadismRox at the time we didn't realise how prophetic he was being, Sa was Ter, you'd think that this is the only one which doesn't have a story, but the lack of a "name" gives in itself a perspective.
We EARNED those names, through sleepless nights, through heated fights on the Map and off the map.
And this was the Beginning.
I don't want to paste a timeline of when things happened. I'm not a good chronicler and there are many things i dont' know about. But the important thing is, it happened.
What DoTA meant to us, no MEANS to us, is not something that can be put in words. But, through words, those who were there, will have the privilege of feeling the bond we share.
I can Honestly say that the best freinds i ever made, and on whose strength and support i managed through my four years are those who play DoTA. And i wouldn't trade them for anybody else in the world. Yes, Merlyn included.
I can honestly say, that i made my most significant friends in the corridors of B-Block, and in that mecca G-451. In the early days, everyday wasn't short of magical. Literally.
Right from our P breaks, which included mega strategy discussions. And much jumping around corridors in the middle of the night through to the cold calculations we had to make in-game while playing for pride.
Gaming was where we turned when we were disillusioned with the cruel unpredictable world outside, which never played by the rules. We went instead to a world, with rules, with Rules that weren't written but honored and those who didn't were swiftly dealt with.
Rivalries in real life were dealth with much easily on the map. And no matter what, we always came back. Because that was the power of the game.
It wasn't wasting time, it was bonding... because the game brings out not only the anger. It brings a wide variety of all your traits, everyone's job in the game was they were, TRULY in life. I played support. hUmty played carry. and so on... although it did happen that our roles often changed. But our best results came when we stuck to our inner charactersitics.
But, i had to make a choice, a choice to leave behind what had for a greater part of my life defined me. I had to leave one thing i loved, for someone else i loved. And there was no question about what was more important to me.
See, DoTA isn't timepass, it isn't something like going to a hairdresser, you go once a week and its done, it is an intense effort to keep getting better, keep being ahead of the game. And when i wasn't doing that, i had a moral obligation to my Clan to not make it hard for them. This came out in a particularly intense game in Saadhana. Where we ended up third. And involved me dropping an Infernal on an image of tb.
There always have been three aspects to my life, my work and projects, my love, and Dota. There was time for only two of these. And i had to make one of the hardest decisions i ever had to make. But i wasn't a martyr i made the decision because my self interest. DoTA doesn't have feelings, but the girl i loved did. Maybe she'll never understand what DoTA is to us. But that has always been the case with us, with the true followers, we were never understood. We were always misfits in the real world...
P.S: The Brain Damage Line.The following graph is an indication of how balanced your life is. As long as you are above the line, you'll proabably be the kind of person who will call DoTA a "video game", and if you are below the line you'll never manage to keep it together.
