There’s now an animated Dota show – no, Netflix, I will not call it an anime no matter how stubbornly you insist it is one – and judging by the revamp to Dota 2‘s new player experience, Valve is hoping a whole lot of newbies will hop in as a result. That doesn’t really seem to have happened, but players are playing a lot more of Dragon Knight now.
Dragon Knight (or Davion, if you’re on more familiar terms) is the star of Netflix’s Dota: Dragon’s Blood, and he’s a playable hero in Dota 2. Take a look at Dragon Knight’s pick rate over on DotaBuff – see that spike starting on March 24, where Dragon Knight goes from a 7.23% pick rate to a 9.20% rate? As the unofficial Dota 2 Updates Twitter account notes, that’s rather conveniently timed with the launch of the Netflix show.
While you might expect Dragon Knight’s win rate to have dropped as a result of all those presumably-new players picking him up, that doesn’t really seem to be the case, as his win rate hasn’t dropped below 51% since the launch of Dragon’s Blood.
The Netflix effect hasn’t really translated to the Dota 2 player count, though. As SteamDB shows, Dota 2’s daily peaks have been pretty much flat over the past month. Compare that to The Witcher 3’s player count, which hit its biggest peak of all time after the success of Geralt’s Netflix adventure.
If Dota’s not your thing, there are plenty of other MOBA games for you to check out.