Meet Aurora. Aurora is a wolf-pup that comes packaged with an upcoming skin for a Dota 2 character called Crystal Maiden. Aurora costs twenty eight dollars.
It’s not as if the package, which is releasing as a part of an event that celebrates the Chinese New Year, only gets you a wolf puppy that can follow you around in battle. It also includes the following, according to the official Dota 2 website:
Custom spell effect for Freezing Field
Aurora, wolf pup of Icewrack
Animated wolf pup chat
emoticon
All new animations
Custom base skin with special ambient effects
Custom death effects
Custom loadout pose, effects, and pedestal
Custom hero and ability icons
Also includes ability point bonuses:
2400 Ability Points for the Year Beast Brawl event
Allows you and your team to earn Ability Points for each victory in a regular match during the Year Beast Brawl event.
Not bad! But let’s be real, anyone purchasing this will probably be interested in the puppy most of all. The other stuff is just a bonus. I mean, look at this thing:
So is a puppy worth 28 dollars? That’s for you to decide, I suppose. Contrast this to the hottest new League of Legends character skin, which radically changes what a character looks like, as well as alters League of Legend’s entire soundtrack for 25 bucks. It’s curious to see how the two big MOBAs handle these sorts of things.
Also worth noting: the upcoming patch will also add a new character, called Winter Wyvern. Winter Wyvern is an ice dragon….
…which you can read about over here. Frankly, adding a dragon to Dota 2 feels kind of boring, especially when compared to a cute wolf puppy. Sorry, Winter Wyvern.
So I’ll pose this question to you instead: which is better, World of Warcraft’s fire corgi, or Dota 2’s ice wolf? Choose wisely.
Comments
14 responses to “Dota 2’s New Puppy Sidekick Is Cute, But Expensive As Hell”
“So is a puppy worth 28 dollars? That’s for you to decide, I suppose. Contrast this to the hottest new League of Legends character skin, which radically changes what a character looks like, as well as alters League of Legend’s entire soundtrack for 25 bucks.”
Except you get much more than just the puppy. Just because you say thats the main thing people care about doesn’t mean thats all you get.
Also completely changing how a character looks is a BAD thing. It makes MOBAs much harder to play and follow.
How do you put a price on cuteness though?
Give up your soul.
That’s the Shadow Fiend arcana, not the Crystal Maiden.
You should see the amount of hate this article is generating over on the Dota 2 subreddit.
Quite amusing, really.
Maybe the Heroes of the Storm community can stop complaining about the price of heroes and skins now
I disagree with having to pay for new heroes. I like the Dota 2 model – there is absolutely no difference in terms of meaningful gameplay between someone that spends $10,000 on items and someone who spends nothing. At the end of the day, it’s just costumes for existing characters, and more recently it’s new game modes that, while fun, have no impact on more serious players.
Dota 2 is the only moba that gets it right in my opinion. Unlike every other moba I’ve played the micro transactions change absolutely nothing in terms of gameplay. Having heroes locked through a paywall is a joke. A joke that many people seem to fall for.
Smite has a fairly good compromise. $30 for all the heroes, current and future, but if you still want to spend money, there are skins to buy.
While it’s not DotA 2 generous, not everyone has infinite money like Valve and is using DotA as a way to get people on Steam.
Certainly a valid point however Valve is making a fortune from Dota 2, however I guess the itself lends to that.
Looking forward to Smite coming out on Xbone so I can play on the couch!
You still get free weeks and you can unlock stuff with gold. Progression is important. Dota2 has zero progression. I never feel like I’m achieving anything in dota. The heroes model might need a few tweaks, but overall I think it makes progress interesting.
In heroes, in a month I’ve unlocked about half of all the heroes…. Fairly casual playing too.
Even though you have access to all the Dota2 heroes… how many do you use? How often?
I don’t see a problem with a small pay wall, especially in beta when things aren’t locked down yet and the player base is smaller.
Don’t forget that Heroes doesn’t have hundreds of vanity items, random drops, chests and a market place.
That’s how dota2 is able to give out free heroes. Blizz doesn’t have that, which I honestly prefer, since it’s just a source of frustration. Therefore they need to fund the game in another way.
They recently started doing weekly 50% off sales. Diff hero every week. I see no problem with dropping $4 each week on a game I get many hours of enjoyment out of. Skins and Mounts don’t interest me so those prices could be $100 for all I care.
I have been playing dota for over 10 years now, and I am comfortable playing any hero. To be honest, I play probably 80 of them fairly regularly, and there are only maybe 5-10 that I can’t play at all (stupid Meepo… why won’t you let me love you!?)
The fact that Dota is so well balanced, and so many heroes are natural counters to other heroes, is one of the reasons the game is so great. I can only imagine the enemy team picking a particular hero, and I just know that another one is perfectly suited to shutting them down, but is locked behind a paywall.
Gameplay should never be P2W in free-to-play competitive games. Your success or failure should be determined by your skill on the battlefield (and possible a bit of favour from RNGesus), not how much cash you have dropped on the game.
I get what you mean about progression, but I think progression in terms of skill is enough to keep me playing Dota.
I can’t really explain why but winning a game of Dota is just the best feeling I’ve ever had playing a game. Maybe it’s because of the huge investment of time required for each game.
My main issue with Hots (which I’m actually playing at the moment) is the prices. They’re incredibly high, if it was $2-3 a hero I’d be more inclined, however at >$10 there’s no chance. My other issue with Hots is the way it’s basically designed as a nanny moba. The lack of all chat is ridiculous, especially in such a competitive scene.
Also the fact you can search for a lobby after picking a hero is ridiculous, the vast majority of solo games I play my team has no composition at all. Basically squishies for days.
The one thing about heros that is awesome is the time per game. 15-30 minutes is so much more viable that the 40-90 mins an average dota game takes.
Well I don’t think the price is worth it but that is one cute puppy at least