Neutral Creeps - Dota 2 News From Around The World

Pendragon was recently caught and we got a little interview from the admin behind the DotA scenes - Pendragon.

We all know that you founded and run DotA-Allstars.com, but who really is Pendragon?
I think I'll answer this question in two parts; first - who I am as a person and second, who am I in the DotA world.

Who I am as a person is pretty easy for me. I'm 22 years old. I'm a pretty hardcore gamer - I got my gaming start in MMOs playing Everquest, moved on to Diablo 2, then DotA, then WoW, then DotA again. Professionally - I've spent the majority of my career working in Customer Service Management, and Community Management with companies like DirecTV, and Zappos.com. I currently work with an independent game developer and publisher called Riot Games.

My DotA Allstars life began in early 2004 when I first played DotA Allstars v5.40, which at the time was being developed by the original creator of DotA Allstars, Guinsoo. I had played all of Eul's original versions, and a bit of DotA: Darkness Falls, but at the time I was spending the majority of my War3 time playing Tower Wars. However, after one game of Allstars, I was hooked on DotA again and started playing 20+ games per week. Shortly after that, I discovered TDA and began working with the DotA Allstars team.

So you made DotA-Allstars.com? Can you tell us a little bit of history behind the website?
Sure! In September of 2006 there was an existing DotA Allstars on RTSGames.com, but the website had gone offline for some time and wasn't being properly maintained. I and a few of the other TDA leaders, (Syl-la-ble and Dankys) proposed that a new DotA site be created to replace the one that had been offline for over a month. On October 14th 2004, DotA-Allstars.com was born. The website and forums grew at a rate that I don't think anyone was expecting, and we began recruiting our staff of volunteers which has been instrumental to the success of DotA-Allstars.com, and DotA as a whole. The current dota-allstars.com has over 3.5 million forum posts, over 1.5 million registered members, and gets over a million unique visitors every month.

Wow! That’s pretty exciting. So what’s in store for the future of DotA-Allstars.com?
I’m glad you asked, because this is a pretty exciting time for me, and for DotA-Allstars.com. For the last year or so, I haven’t been able to put the amount of time into the website and community that I’d have liked to. Recently, however, I’ve sat down and evaluated what’s important to me in life, and I’ve realized that I miss the work that I’ve done on the DotA website, and with the DotA community, and I’ve decided that I need to make time for what’s important to me.
The first thing I did is bought 23 brand-new servers for the website which means the slow-website problem that we’ve had is in the past! I also now have a team of two full-time web programmers, and one web-designer working on rebuilding the entire DotA site from scratch. Some of the great stuff that we’re working on includes:

* A Complete redesign of the entire website, which will make things faster – and hopefully a little easier on the eyes!
* A DotA patcher, that will automatically update to the latest version, show you the changelog, and then launch Warcraft III, or your favorite DotA helper programs
* A brand new guide system designed to make guides easier to write, and easier to find
* A reputation system, to encourage contribution and useful posting
* A redesign of the replay system, including being able to tie replays to your account
* A Learning Center that has all the information you’d ever want to know about DotA, including guides for new players
* A portal for competitive DotA news, coverage, events, announcements, etc. Including player and team profiles
* RSS & E-Mail subscriptions, and a monthly newsletter, to keep you constantly updated with important information

League of Legends has made quite a name for itself in the Media and such but not a lot of people know that you are involved with it, can you tell us a little more about it?
Well, I started working with Riot Games in 2008 after meeting Guinsoo in Vegas. After the first time visiting the Riot in Los Angeles, and seeing what they were working on – I was hooked. Their first game, League of Legends, was something that I myself as a DotA player had wanted someone to do for quite some time. It’s a game that’s similar to DotA, but without the limitations of Warcraft III and Battle.net.
It only took a few meetings with the founders of Riot to realize that they understood the importance of community in an organization, and really wanted to revolutionize community in the gaming world. From then on, it was clear to me what I had to do – I joined Riot because I want to build a strong global community of passionate gamers using what I learned from my experience building and growing DotA-Allstars.com
League of Legends itself borrows the most fun elements of DotA, and makes them much more accessible, and then wraps them in built-from-scratch multiplayer services and support, including matchmaking, stat tracking, teams & clans, etc. For more information about League of Legends, you can get more information about League of Legends at:

• Main Website - http://leagueoflegends.com
• Community Forums - http://forums.leagueoflegends.com/board
• Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/League-of-Legends/82061850555

Thanks for all of that insider information, is there anything else that you’d like to add?
I’d like to give shout-outs to some of the people who have helped me with DotA-Allstars.com since it was originally created – Trystero, Citus, Mafaga, 28awg, too many to list individually. I’d also like of course to thank the people who made DotA what it is today, Eul, Guinsoo, Icefrog; they are a group of people who have done a great job and dedicated countless hours to bring a great source of entertainment to millions of people around the world.

For exciting updates about what’s going on with DotA or League of Legends, as well as chance to win prizes like DotA T-Shirts, or League of Legends Beta Keys, you can follow Pendragon on Twitter! http://twitter.com/RiotPendragon