Its because of how they portray the game, the render of the bigger picture becomes void, thus dissociating the mass from the actual story or criteria.
I remembered Warcraft III did not became a good pop-culture among the filipino community or in the Philippines back 2000-circa 2004 (yeah, my psychic mind can travel through the globe with the blink of an eye), its mostly the rising peak of Ragnarok, Counter Strike 1.3, and the conflict boom fest of Battle Realms and StarCraft and other more. And through gameplay, they rely or turn into "Pioneers", its a gaming slang from a filipino RPG that means "players stay long, true and locked into a specific game"
When Dota 1 was in its younger stages, it started out as a free-time playable custom maps, while it keeps updating and more people are getting along with it, that is were the game diffuses the original from the custom.