Blizzard: StarCraft DOTA mod "completely rebooted"

Blizzard has said that its "completely rebooted" the DOTA mod its developed for StarCraft II since it was last properly shown at Blizzcon last year.

"Getting it right and just meeting the Blizzard quality bar, and questioning a lot of the assumptions behind the genre, which is what we do at Blizzard," senior game designer Jonny Ebbert said to Eurogamer.

"What we showed at the original BlizzCon, we've completely flattened it since then and completely rebooted it because we just thought, there's more we can question on this."

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce added that it would try and make the mod approachable.

"One of the important things to note with that space is the DOTA everyone plays on Warcraft 3 is not particularly accessible to the novice," Pearce said. "One of the game development philosophies we have at Blizzard is, easy to learn and difficult to master. That mod for Warcraft 3 doesn't really fit that description.

"That's a big challenge for us: taking this concept that doesn't really fit that philosophy and adapting it to a philosophy that's important for us."

Blizzard said last week it was aiming to launch its version of DOTA alongside StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm next year.