For those of you who are
rarely involved in gaming whatsoever and for those luckers who really have a
life. MOBA(Multiplayer
online battle arena) is
currently one of the most popular(if not the most popular) gaming genre of
video games. That involve mostly 2 teams with 5 players on each team.
Although the roots of the genre can be traced back to the
1989, I myself consider the rise of the genre with the release
of the Warcraft III engine, which allowed a certain
modder known as Aeon64 make
a custom map named Aeon of Strife (AoS). The aforementioned map was then
used to create DotA(Defence
of the Ancients). Since its original release, DotA has become a
feature at several worldwide tournaments. Despite low graphic settings the game
is still played.
With the rise of a new gamemode, ideas arose and in the
year of 2006 an American video game publisher Riot Games was
established, it has produced only one game. On the 27 of October,
2009 LoL(League
of Legends) was released. It's a free-to-play game
that is supported by micro-transactions and inspired by the DotA mod. According to SuperData, LoL generated $946 million via
in-game spending between january and september of 2014 and it is more money
than World of Tanks, Counter-Strike:GO, Dota 2 and Heartstone make
combined.
At this moment i'd like to point out that
game is FREE-TO-PLAY and in game purchases do not affect gaming experience.
Each year is held a World Championship which is broadcasted via Twitch.tv,
Esl.tv, Youtube.com and many other e-sports broadcasting websites. According to RiotGames.com the 2014 world championship, which was
held in Taipei, Singapore and final in Seoul(at Sangam Stadium), the
peak for concurrent viewers(the highest number of fans watching at once) was
11.2 million and overall total unique viewer count for the finals came at 27
million. The prize pool for 2014 CS was $2,130,000.
Now don't get it wrong. LoL is not the only
MOBA currently live. There are many others, some are even good but not so
popular.
The biggest rival of LoL is indisputably DotA
2. Development of DotA 2 began in 2009, when the developer of the DotA mod, IceFrog, was hired by Valve
corporation as lead
designer. DotA 2 was the long-awaited sequel to DotA and was praised by critics
for its gameplay, production quality and faithfulness to its predecessor.
However, the game was criticized for its steep learning curve and inhospitable
community. Finally in the summer of 2013 DotA 2 was officially released. Valve
did not want to waste any time so althought the game was still in the beta
testing the first International tournament was held allready in 2011. Later on
the tournament became annual world championship with prizepool getting bigger
each year and peaking at $10.9 million during the 2014 championship, which
is the largest prizepool in the history of electronic sports.
Many
players prefer Dota 2 over Lol and vice-versa. Both games are free-to-play.
Dota 2 has slightly better graphical settings and requires more time to get
used to it. League of legends imho is slightly easier and therefore requires
less time for learning.
Another possibly promising game would be Smite, it's a third
person action multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and
published by Hi-Rez
Studios. It's a quite a fresh game since it's released on the 25, March
2014. I personally haven't played it but what makes it interesting is that
although it's a MOBA, the player controls the god in a third
person perspective, which is a unique characteristic of this multiplayer
online battle arena game, as other games of this genre are typically
played from a top-down perspective. According to Hi-Rez Studios COO Todd
Harris
"At the game's release in late March, we were at three million players, and we are now well over four million."compared to 27 million active daily players of LoL, Smite has a long way to go before it can become more of a threat to Riot Games.
Although these examples are quite promising
not allways developers come out with ideas that are led till the victory. A good example would be Dawngate, it's a multiplayer
online battle arena video game developed by Waystone Games and published
by Electronic Arts. It was meant to be a free-to-play
game, likely to be supported by micro-transactions. Unfortunately due
to slow progress that the game had during its beta testing it was shut down and
taken off the development.
Dawngate
aimed to separate itself from LoL and Dota 2 by implementing new game style.
Although there are different variations to playing a match, in MOBA genre the
meta rarely changes and Dawngate wanted to introduce a new way. At the start of the game you would chooce a
role and your playstyle was defined by your personal choice, not the champion you
picked. While in Dota 2 and LoL your role is mostly defined by the champion you
pick. Other than that Dawngate brought some interesting ideas about improvement
of ingame player behaviour. By the end of each match all players would have to
vote for the so called "MVP"(most valuable player) which, in turn led
to postgame bonuses(ingame currency, bonus exp, unlocked champions).
I
believe that despite the failure of the game leading MOBAs have something to
learn from Dawngate and from each other.
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