flew him to Irvine for a meeting. But Icefrog, a reclusive designer who avoided using his real name, arrived with a list of requests that Blizzard’s executives considered unreasonable. “He wanted full creative control,” said Richard Khoo, a designer on Team 1. Plus, World of Warcraft demanded everybody’s attention, so DOTA seemed like a trend they could safely ignore. “My recollection is that Blizzard wasn’t in a place to start building the game at the time,” said Icefrog in a statement through his agent, “so discussions never really got far at all.”
