no it's a fact. just look at garena, in the philippines there's like 94 rooms for dota and some more for shop to shop dota. and how many for other maps? not even half of that, and only 1/4 of those rooms gets populated, some doesn't even have players at all.
sorry for double post.
Not true. That's assuming that if these players didn't play DotA they wouldn't play WC3, but there's nothing supporting that at all. I'd say on the contrary, if there was no DotA, they'd simply play other maps - Starcraft is from the 20th century, doesn't have DotA, yet it still has plenty of activity [even excluding the Koreans, the normally non-Asian servers like US East are still active].
I've said this quite a few times [even once on hive but it looks like that thread was deleted]:
The most prominent reasons for DotA's popularity is the roots and base it established through Reign of Chaos. Back then, DotA had some "nifty" features like custom abilities and skins/models despite the fact that the ordinary Reign of Chaos editor did not have this capacity, setting it apart from the RoC crowd. Couple this with the fact that the earlier creators started tournaments involving monetary rewards, and you then have the gathering of a large player-base which dominated near everything else in the Reign of Chaos days, and thus created the trend we see today, the large pre-existing base establishing itself.
Now don't get me wrong, DotA isn't of crappy mapmaking quality or anything like that - however, there's more to a game than mere technical production; the overall fun that you pump out of it is key. But yes, many of you enjoy it and find it plenty of fun. On the other hand, the way it's designed brings up an issue - the whole of it essentially revolves around background knowledge.
But I know what you're gonna say - all maps are like that! Not at all, DotA is uniquely premised on it - for example, in LotR maps like WotJ and RW, or historical-strategy maps, like Shadows of the Confederacy, WW1, Rise of China - I can get the concept of it, and past experience with one map in the category provides sufficient capability to perform decently in any other map of the genre. That's different with DotA. It doesn't matter if I've played Tides of Blood or a few dozen other AoSes, I'll still have absolutely no idea what item-sets and hero-combinations are the best way to go, and for DotA, that determines near everything. There's simply no time to sit there and stare at shop vendors and item recipes. Add this to an increasingly elitist crowd, the combination proves an even greater concern. A lit match by itself isn't particularly disastrous. Nor is a bundle of dynamite. Put the two together, and Harvey Dent's face don't got nuthin' on you...
My beef ain't that DotA "sucks." It's just that it's overrated, and what results because of that.