What is the site about?
This site helps you play the old version of Dota 2 online. We offer Steam login, convenient game search, a link to the client, support, and helpful materials by version.
We give everyone the opportunity to play the old Dota online for free. If you break the rules, we may disable access to the service.
Why old Dota?
The game now looks completely different from 10 years ago. Some people like the changes, some don’t, and we’re not saying that the old version is the best. But trying the original can be interesting for everyone. Here is how they differ:
- The old map has fewer neutral creep camps, Roshan in the river, and side shops.
- Heroes have much less health and mana and deal more damage - having 700 HP by the 15-minute mark is normal. Any ability on the lane costs a lot of mana, but also deals a lot of damage. Spending an ability to last-hit a creep is a much more important decision.
- Original heroes and their abilities - many abilities that in the current version either do not exist or have changed a lot. For example, Pudge, which here is tied to the second skill.
- A strict separation of roles: the support needs to gank to earn money. There are far fewer creeps on the map, and kills give a larger reward.
How much does it cost to maintain this site?
The project has 3 expense items:
- Mandatory: server rentals for hosting the website and other infrastructure services (storage, analytics, databases). This part is nearly fixed and costs about 2000₽ per month. In case of large surges, this part also needs to scale up, with costs increasing to 2000₽ per month.
- Scalable: depending on online activity, we need a varying number of game servers so that everyone has enough slots to play. This expense is easy to predict: one optimal game server yields 3-4 parallel games and costs ±520₽ per month. If online is high, like during Pari Rivals 6.84, with around 180 parallel players, we get about 30 parallel games, so the server costs will be ±520₽ per month.
- Advertising: the most flexible part of the expenses. Here we depend heavily on market offers (which YouTubers are willing to collaborate for how much, for example), and, of course, our financial capabilities. We are always open to new collaborations, and we do not refuse cheap advertising :)
Total, you can expect approximate maintenance costs: at low online of 5-10 parallel games, around 3500₽ per month. If online activity increases, advertising or publicity events trigger, costs can rise to 10000₽.
Who is working on the project?
Classic Dota has gone through many hands: Western enthusiasts were the first to host games in 2019. After that, there were two communities for quite a long time: Western and CIS in the form of Discord servers. Then from 2021 to the end of 2024 all games were on the site https://dota2classic.com. Since September 2024 to the present, all games are hosted on this site, developed and supported by:
- Itachi / Psychology Professor - the main developer of the site
- RX - "community manager", liaison with public relations, advertising, reading long texts and generating smart phrases
- V - developer of the wiki on items and heroes, the main scapegoat for matchmaking experiments
List of people who contributed to the development of classic Dota:
- Ancient678 - created a CIS server for classic Dota
- Samovar Man - it was thanks to him that many players first saw Classic Dota
- SittingBull - built the first automated host servers via a Discord bot, wrote the first server plugins
- DeathTBO - has kept the dota2classic.com site up for years
- Alison - wrote many useful server plugins
- konakonaqq - helped in writing server plugins
- Many others - whom it's hard to remember now, but they certainly were and helped
What is the ultimate goal of the project?
Stable online that allows roughly within 10 minutes to find a balanced game with players of similar level almost any time of day. A cozy place where everyone will enjoy playing: both newcomers to old Dota and seasoned veterans. The project's upkeep is fully funded by players, and there is a positive outlook for a stable flow of advertising.