EDIT: NDA lifted! I'll probably bling out this topic in the next few days with some pretty pics and vids.

Ever thought what it would be like to play dota without warcraft III required? Well here's your chance, Heroes of Newerth is a dota clone developed by S2 games focused on completely redoing dota in a new engine. Thus, getting rid of all the annoying kinks the original unfortunately had due to restrictions of the warcraft 3 editor.

Now there's a couple of dota spin offs out there, but HoN sacrafices a little originality for the sake of remaining true to the classic. Many old heroes return in different forms, retaining the same styles they had (some have been slightly changes, or meshed with another hero, and a few are 100% new heroes). The first map (Forests of Caldaver) is a direct copy of the original dota map, but the other 2 maps (watchtower and 3v3 map darkwood) are original. Most items are from dota but given different names. So basically you are lookin at dota recoded and with a facelift.

The game looks really good too, since it's still in beta I can't post screens or anything and my descriptive skills are shit but trust me when I say the game looks pretty sick in action.

So the game is still in closed beta but they have been handing out beta keys like it's no tomorrow, Unfortunately I only have 1 invite left (should get more soon though) but I think every account gets 3 invites each so it should be pretty easy to get everybody playing. Not to be a dick or anything but don't come in here expecting keys if you aren't that active at gw! But like I said beta keys are pretty easy to get surfing the interwebs would probably find you one sooner or later if you are unlucky with this topic.

Alright! So let's try to use this to get some people keys and try to get some gw games going on. I'm pretty terrible but I have a good game every now and then. Fortunately there's a wiki up to give you some info on the heroes and items/shops/units/etc.

http://honwiki.net/wiki/Main_Page

Edit: Bick found some really nice guides for beginners! You need a beta account to access the forums though.

Here's a few topics that give information for all heroes and helped me a lot (you have to have a beta account in order to see this topics)
Heroes of Newerth Basics - Covers the basics of the game
Big Item Guide - Goes over every item and what heroes that item is good for
Keitaru's AltTAb Guide for All Heroes - Tells you a cookie-cutter skill build and starting items for all heroes

Everyone is kind of bad at first, it's a steep learning curve due to the doucheness of the most of the dota playerbase. But don't be scurred It's pretty easy to learn the basics, after that it's all about playing!

Like I said I only have 1 invite for now but toss me a pm and you might snag it. I'm sure some more gwers got into the beta tho.

List of GW Players

GW Name - HoN Name

pig style - Fastpaced
leafo - leafo
bick - keytarhero
Jester - dhakkel
Verne - Verne
KBJGXLM - Strygwyr /// Skrimp
LordTyphoon - MrElTee
Krinsdeath - Krinsdeath
Ryan - Ryan_

Yeah pubs are pretty terrible, but some hosts are cool and use the auto balance feature. I've been a few new player friendly games where people act like respectable human beings.

Guys post your account names so I can put them in the first post and we can get some games going, I'm not too great myself but I can at least teach you the basics of how to play (without treating you like shit). Item and skill builds are a different thing, but I know my way around a few heroes.

Yeah supra mairo it can get kind of stale, fortunately there's two new maps to keep things fresh. But I agree I think some new game modes should be introduced, although I don't know what they could be!

I don't get why they just reused most of the heroes and items instead of creating new ones altogether because once this comes out, besides the improvements and such...is there a point to buying this game when you can just play dota for free?

I don't get why they just reused most of the heroes and items instead of creating new ones altogether because once this comes out, besides the improvements and such...is there a point to buying this game when you can just play dota for free?

Don't have to use battle net

edit: also there are improvements? I do not see how improvements is not a point. Improvements are a pretty big point, imho.