Valve has, as expected, announced a new title it currently has in development, Defence of the Ancients 2.

Rumours that Valve would announce a new DOTA game were sparked this morning when developers working at Valve, and who had previously worked on other DOTA games, hinted at an upcoming announcement.

According to a sparse press release from Valve, Defence of the Ancients 2 will be a RTS / RPG hybrid released for PC and Mac. The release date is set at 2011.

Icefrog, the anonymous developer behind Defence of the Ancients: Allstars will be leading development of the new game, which Valve bills as "a massive sequel to one of the most played games in the world." Serious Sam voice actor Jon St. John has also been linked to the game.

The Defence of the Ancients genre started as a small mod for Blizzards Warcraft games, but the unique blend of avatar-led strategy soon caught on and spawned a litter of copy-cat games.

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