When S2 Games made Heroes of Newerth, a spiritual standalone successor to Defense of the Ancients, it split the character - some of her abilities went to Arachna, while the general look was applied to Forsaken Archer. But when some DotA developers split off to make League of Legends, one of the game’s earliest characters was Ashe - an archer with a bow, frost arrows, long hair and a hood. Traxex retains her name in Dota 2, though she is often simply referred to as Drow Ranger or simply Drow instead. She’s an archer that produces a hail of frost arrows, slowing her opponent. A hero in the Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III, her model is the undead version of Sylvanas Windrunner.

Traxex, the Drow Ranger, is an easy one to trace.

One interesting result of this lineage has been the descent of characters from Warcraft 3 to Dota 2 to Auto Chess, not to mention the proliferation of lookalikes across games like League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. In doing so, it’s taking a similar trajectory to its own platform, a spiritual sequel to a mod for another game entirely. Last week, Drodo Studio announced it would be making a standalone, mobile version of Auto Chess, a mod for Dota 2. The framework and map editor allowed anyone with enough grit and determination to design their own battlegrounds, yet they were robust enough to facilitate the birth of genres and the flourishing experimentation of dozens of amateur devs, most notably in the Defense of the Ancients map - a mode that would go on to spawn the entire MOBA genre and several successors, including Dota 2. Warcraft III was a landmark game in the real-time strategy genre, but its most profound legacy is the lasting impact of its modding tools.

Mods for warcraft 3