Valve Software's latest free-to-play project is nearing its completion and PC release. Defense of the Ancients 2, currently in its public beta stage, is no longer under non-disclosure agreement and is set to take a few multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) competitors out of the picture.

Before I delve into quality, you should know what a MOBA is. It plays like a real-time strategy game such as Starcraft or Age of Empires, except you only control one unit for nearly the entire time. This unit is your hero, your champion, whatever you want to call it. Heroes gain experience and gold by destroying enemies. Experience is used to level up and learn new abilities, where gold is used to buy items that have a wide array of effects. It's starting to sound like an MMORPG at this point, so here's the catch: At the beginning of every match, heroes start over at level 1 and with a very small amount of gold. You carry little or nothing over from previous games.