I. What is a MOBA?
a. Definition
b. Origination
c. Current Generation
II. The New Games
a. League of Legends
b. Heroes of Newerth
III. Comparison
IV. Conclusion
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I. What is a MOBA?
I.a. Definition
What is a MOBA? Well, MOBA stands for Massive Online Battle Arena. When you think of this, you make think of things like Call of Duty, or Halo, where you fight in an arena. That would be the wrong assumption. An example of a MOBA is Defense of the Ancients (DotA).
I.b. Origination
You may be wondering now, what is DotA? DotA was an map modification for the classic game Warcraft 3 for PCs. In DotA, you play as one of many heroes, and you attempt to destroy the other team and their base. Since it used the Warcraft 3 game, you had to own Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos and Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne Expansion. Using Warcraft 3 also meant DotA was limited to the standard array of graphics and abilities that were hard coded into Warcraft 3. DotA is still in development, and will be for a long time. DotA was the first Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, but was not the last.
I.c. Current Generation
DotA is not a game even though it is played by thousands across the world. DotA is a map for a game, so it is limited. In order to remove these limitations, people needed to create standalone versions of DotA... So they did! DotA started the MOBA genre, and 2 games picked up after it, League of Legends (LoL), and Heroes of Newerth (HoN). These new games, produced by different companies, are competing rivals. Heroes of Newerth is directly based off of DotA while League of Legends takes the MOBA genre to a different style. We will cover these more next.
II. The New Games
II.a. League of Legends
League of Legends is created by Riot Games and is slated for release on October 6th, 2009. They are currently beta testing with a couple thousand testers, in order to work out the bugs for release. League of Legends took DotA to a different area than it was. Much more simplified (yet still complicated) and new person friendly, League of Legends is a completely different game than DotA. They share the same genre and map style, but Riot Games completely redid everything. Instead of copying over heroes and items into a standalone game, they made a different art style, made new heroes, and made new items. From the view of a beta tester that is bad at DotA, it is an amazing and easy to play game compared to DotA.
II.b. Heroes of Newerth
Heroes of Newerth is created by S2 games, the same people who made Savage and Savage 2. It is currently in beta with no official release date yet. Straight up, Heroes of Newerth is standalone DotA. They took the same heroes, same items, same skills, and renamed them. Completely new graphics, new shopping system, and extra maps, make it different. If a DotA player started to play Heroes of Newerth, they would easily pick up on how to play, they would just need to get used to the graphics and controls. Not very new person friendly, or easy to use yet due to lack of helpful community and no tutorial. It does have integrated voice chat and clan system though. From a HoN tester that is bad at DotA, it is not fun.
III. Comparison
Comparing Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends is like comparing Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2. They are both essentially the same game, League of Legends just has a more cartoony style to it and is easy to use. I am going to get biased here, do to my enjoyment of League of Legends. Heroes of Newerth is not fun at all if you can't play DotA. The community is not nice, and in-game they will swear and demean you to the point where you don't want to play. League of Legends however is very easy to use, especially when you are no good at DotA. I personally sucked at DotA and once I started playing League of Legends, I became good in the MOBA genre. The big difference in the games however, is the fact that Heroes of Newerth is DotA remade, League of Legends is a new MOBA game. So if you are good at DotA either work, but League of Legends is more new person friendly if you haven't played a MOBA game.
IV. Summary
That was my comparison and history of the MOBA genre and the two new games. I hope you found this review useful to your future gaming. If you find an error, please feel free to correct me in the comments below. Thanks!
a. Definition
b. Origination
c. Current Generation
II. The New Games
a. League of Legends
b. Heroes of Newerth
III. Comparison
IV. Conclusion
-------------------------
I. What is a MOBA?
I.a. Definition
What is a MOBA? Well, MOBA stands for Massive Online Battle Arena. When you think of this, you make think of things like Call of Duty, or Halo, where you fight in an arena. That would be the wrong assumption. An example of a MOBA is Defense of the Ancients (DotA).
I.b. Origination
You may be wondering now, what is DotA? DotA was an map modification for the classic game Warcraft 3 for PCs. In DotA, you play as one of many heroes, and you attempt to destroy the other team and their base. Since it used the Warcraft 3 game, you had to own Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos and Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne Expansion. Using Warcraft 3 also meant DotA was limited to the standard array of graphics and abilities that were hard coded into Warcraft 3. DotA is still in development, and will be for a long time. DotA was the first Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, but was not the last.
I.c. Current Generation
DotA is not a game even though it is played by thousands across the world. DotA is a map for a game, so it is limited. In order to remove these limitations, people needed to create standalone versions of DotA... So they did! DotA started the MOBA genre, and 2 games picked up after it, League of Legends (LoL), and Heroes of Newerth (HoN). These new games, produced by different companies, are competing rivals. Heroes of Newerth is directly based off of DotA while League of Legends takes the MOBA genre to a different style. We will cover these more next.
II. The New Games
II.a. League of Legends
League of Legends is created by Riot Games and is slated for release on October 6th, 2009. They are currently beta testing with a couple thousand testers, in order to work out the bugs for release. League of Legends took DotA to a different area than it was. Much more simplified (yet still complicated) and new person friendly, League of Legends is a completely different game than DotA. They share the same genre and map style, but Riot Games completely redid everything. Instead of copying over heroes and items into a standalone game, they made a different art style, made new heroes, and made new items. From the view of a beta tester that is bad at DotA, it is an amazing and easy to play game compared to DotA.
II.b. Heroes of Newerth
Heroes of Newerth is created by S2 games, the same people who made Savage and Savage 2. It is currently in beta with no official release date yet. Straight up, Heroes of Newerth is standalone DotA. They took the same heroes, same items, same skills, and renamed them. Completely new graphics, new shopping system, and extra maps, make it different. If a DotA player started to play Heroes of Newerth, they would easily pick up on how to play, they would just need to get used to the graphics and controls. Not very new person friendly, or easy to use yet due to lack of helpful community and no tutorial. It does have integrated voice chat and clan system though. From a HoN tester that is bad at DotA, it is not fun.
III. Comparison
Comparing Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends is like comparing Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2. They are both essentially the same game, League of Legends just has a more cartoony style to it and is easy to use. I am going to get biased here, do to my enjoyment of League of Legends. Heroes of Newerth is not fun at all if you can't play DotA. The community is not nice, and in-game they will swear and demean you to the point where you don't want to play. League of Legends however is very easy to use, especially when you are no good at DotA. I personally sucked at DotA and once I started playing League of Legends, I became good in the MOBA genre. The big difference in the games however, is the fact that Heroes of Newerth is DotA remade, League of Legends is a new MOBA game. So if you are good at DotA either work, but League of Legends is more new person friendly if you haven't played a MOBA game.
IV. Summary
That was my comparison and history of the MOBA genre and the two new games. I hope you found this review useful to your future gaming. If you find an error, please feel free to correct me in the comments below. Thanks!
by: alainbryden on 2009-08-27 at 13:08:22ID: 3011
lmao. Very interesting read, but I still have no idea what a MOBA or DotA is. Take another stab at the definition. Why is it different from Call of Duty online. Is it just because it's not an FPS?
From what I gather, it's a Multiplayer Real-time Strategy game. Is there a long term role-playing aspect like in WoW? Is it really 'massive' multi-player? Are we talking thousands of simultaneous players, or just a few dozen? About how long to games take to complete. Compare this to other online multiplayer games where games are minutes to an hour long and don't see a large percentage of players leaving or joining between the beginning and ending of a match.
Finally, does this MOBA term have any legitimacy. A google search of the Acronym's use for "Massive online battle arena" only produces 54 results. Is this simply DotA player's attempt to make their world seem less small? When you really look into it, it's a term used to describe two would-be games that haven't even been released yet, and one Map in one Game. Seems like a discussion fit for a wikipedia article or gaming forum more than a computer experts site ;)
Nevertheless, I enjoyed this. Thanks.
Alain