It's also important to remember that we haven't seen the general type Demigods yet; or maps with more flags to capture that do other things. Both of those may make it varied enough from DotA for it to stand well on its own. Plus it has alot less emphasis on microing, no last hitting, juking etc, which may tick some people off, but on the other hand gives the game a shorter learning curve so makes it more accesable which could help its appeal. Ditto for the amount of heroes.

Do not begin to compare dota to demi until it is finished or at least in balancing stages

I think things we'll see later are:

1. Generals Heroes, and how their playstyle meshes with Assasins. Has anyone here played the WC3 map "Super Summoners"? That duality exists there, albeit in a broken and imbalanced form.

2. Different maps, gameplay modes. Take the underlying concept of DoTA (Heroes that level, creeps) and apply it to free-for-alls, capture-the-flags, etc. Probably not the latter, but you get the general idea.

3. Better engine, pathfinding, AI, etc. This game is newer, and can do newer things with the meta stuff like server finding, clans, UI, backends, etc.

4. They've probably got some other tricks up their sleeves. We know GPG, and we know what they can do.

Because Warcraft 3 introduced the RPG style hero units who gained experience from attacking creep camps, allowing you to customise thier abilities and the items they were carrying.