Valve Software, the creator of popular game titles such as Half Life, Counter Strike, Portal, Left for Dead and Fortress, announced that that DotA 2 will be released on the PC and Mac next year. DotA 2, which takes its name from a fan-made Warcraft III mod called Defense of the Ancients, claims to expand on the combination of RTS and RPG gaming that proven to be popular among its followers.

The orginal mod was an online game that separated players into teams with the goal being the destruction of the competing squad's Ancient, a structure that is tucked away inside the base of the enemy camp. Several versions of the mod have since been released, one of the most popular of which being DotA-Allstars, which contains about 100 characters with unique abilities.

Valve Software avoided any reference to the game's original title. The company earlier filed an application for the Dota trademark. In an interview with video game news Web site Joystiq.com, Steve Mescon, one of the game's creators, said that he was "surprised that (Valve) decided to try to trademark the DotA name, because it goes against what (he) and others believed DotA means to the community."

Erik Johnson, the project lead for DotA 2, indicated that the DotA-Allstars template will mostly be the same.

In an interview with GameInformer.com, he said, "IceFrog (one of DotA's authors who was hired by Valve lat year) is one of the smartest designers we've ever met. He's made so many good decisions over the years in building the product. He virtually never makes a decision that doesn't have some reasoning behind it and a way to pick apart the logic," Johnson said.