Our clan plays a lot of Defense of the Ancients (DotA).  Most of our evenings are consumed with getting people together on Battle.net, finding a host, and sucking it up for a few hours.  We’ve been playing this game for over a year, and despite marked improvements in our gameplay, there is an utter lack of teamwork among us that even complete strangers seem to be able to pull off.  Most of our mid and late game is spent arguing over whether we should push into the enemy’s base or not, how stupid a teammates items are, or even how much dumb shit one of us managed to pull off in the early game which is now the direct cause of our loss.

Somehow, whether it be the fact that nothing spectacular has come out to draw us away, or that it’s just a really great game, we still play it, and we still play it regularly.  The fact that really good play requires a high level of teamwork draws us into the game and at the same time is the very thing that prevents us from being really good.  We have our moments certainly, those rare games when everything falls into place and we completely demolish the opposing team, but those are often over-shadowed by our losses.  We, five players on Ventrilo, somehow manage to lose to five people who can only communicate through type, and often do not know each other at all.  Maybe there is a certain strength in the unfamiliarity.  Thrust into the world of DotA alone, one must learn to play, or one will be tagged a noob.  In order to be seen as someone who doesn’t suck balls, you have to know what the hell you’re doing.  In the safety of our gaming clan, fairly poor to mediocre play is looked over, and ridicule is only reserved for the truly bad.  Perhaps each of us should strike out on our own for awhile and learn to play with people who aren’t our friends.  Unfortunately doing so would pretty much negate the reason we do play.

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