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League of Legends: The WoW of MOBAs?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
League of Legends is a game that is taking the online world by storm. Called a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena), League of Legends recently expanded with Dominion. MMORPG.com's Joe Sanicky has a comprehensive new review of League of Legends. Check out why Joe thinks that LoL just might be the WoW of MOBAs. Leave us your reactions in the comments.
Whether it is to laud or condemn them Riot’s vocal fans are quick to judge their multitude of trend-setting decisions which include but are not limited to: a player-powered banning system, bi-weekly champion releases, various e-sports offerings, oft radical balance changes, and most recently a new map and game mode. Never has the time been better for League of Legends players to take to the Fields of Justice to exactly their deadly plans, however, does the game hold up the scrutiny of millions or is all the success just an enormous, hype-driven fluke? It’s time to find out!
Read more of Joe Sanicky's League of Legends: The WoW of MOBAs?
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Comments
In before the "But this isn't even an MMORPG" whining.
Curse you! It does, however, follow the trend for gratuitous F2P coverage here.
I feel like this site is pushing it at us. Outside of MMORPG.com I would have never heard of the game. Definitely can't say that about WoW.
Everywhere I go I read about League of Legends
I find it a very boring, highly repetitive game. If I was generous I would give it a 4 maybe. Personally I can't believe people waste their time on a game like this.
you obviously don't understand the meaning of an e-sport...
Guild Wars 2 Youtube Croatian Maniacs
My Guild Wars titles
Ozmodan : the first few games can seem boring, but you need to give it a little more time to grow on you. Once you know the heroes well, the tactics... it's like chess with team dynamics : you don't complain it's always the same map, each game becomes deeper and deeper.
LoL : from a former HoN player (HoN copied Dota completely), I must say I like very much what Riot did there. They innovated very cleverly and made a game fun and accessible to casual pvpers (HoN and Dota werent), as well as very competitive for the more dedicated players. That's probably the key of its success. The game still misses important features like replays though, and their lobby can be very laggy (I guess that last point is the result of too much success...) LoL is a great game, and a step forward in the series of the MOBA games.
Just my opinion
Check my blog on mmorpg.com.
League of Legends is simply my favorite out of all the MOBA's aka MMORTS.
If you just want to kill a hour or two, you will find out that these BG's take time to complete (30 minutes to 1 hour).
I usually qued up for the 5 players vs computer scenario till I got the hang of the game, then I went into 3 vs 3 and 5 vs 5. You thought the AI was tough, wait till you try agaist other players. (However when I was a noob and still am, I made my own game and it was me and my 4 NPCs troops agaist the 5 other NPCs).
The game to me is very competitve and find out my right hand starts to hurt after a few games, but other than that, it is a unique game with many characters to choose from, skills trees, leveling system, runes for extra attributes and lots of back and fourth action.
The game is not for everyone that likes the traditional MMORPGs, however if you like the BG's in MMORPGS on a 2D scale with WoW type graphics, you might just like it.
And one last thing, its free, but Riot Games does intends to make the Cash Shop enticing. I am level 12 now and have avoided the cash shop to buy XP, IP boosts and characters. All characters can be unlocked the old fashion way by leveling and getting IP, but it will take sometime to collect all the characters this way, but hey, I am in no rush to level cap 30.
Legue Of Legends is just a lot of fun despite the horrible raging community but i think when dota 2 comes out legue of legends will loose ALOT of its playerbase
You hear about this game everywhere, every game magazine or site has at least one story on it. I personally have been playing it for 2 years now and am still enjoying it. Dominion is fun but in no way will it ever replace the basic map-Summoner's Rift.
I love this game. Only thing that I play nowadays without getting bored. At first I hated it, thought HoN was far superior. But I was so wrong, I gave it one more shot and now Im stuck with it, and its awesome. All my friends play it aswell nowadays, makes it ever more fun.
Give it more than just one shot and you will love it. People that say its repetive is bad. They dont just understand the game and no game is the same. It's always a different outcome and that is why I love it. There are so many different things and ye, it just pure fun all the way through.
Go play it!
I wouldn't count on it. As other people have said, HoN has copied DoTA almost completely. In that sense, HoN is in fact DoTA1.5, yet is a struggling company.
People who like LoL, won't necessarily like DoTA or DoTA2. Personally, I like HoN/DoTA, but I never got into them like I did with LoL. There is just alot to LoL that leans more on the "fun" aspect, rather than strictly to be competative. That's not to say that LoL isn't highly competative, it's just that those "Anti-fun" aspects were in fact "anti-fun" and only geared towards highly competative professional level of play.
I am not looking forward to DoTA2, nor is anyone else I know. I am looking forward to the next champ in LoL moreso than I am looking forward to DoTA2. Even if that next champ is another champ like Skarner.
I also find it funny that you talk about the "horrible raging community", then immediately talk about DoTA2. If DoTA2's community is ANYTHING like HoN or DoTA, then it will overshadow LoL's community for being vile, ugly, and all around just down right shitty. HoN is free and DoTA is cheap. You should check them out if you don't believe me. You'll think that LoL has the best community of any game on the market, after just a few matches of either game.
Enlighten me, whats the difference between HoN, LoL and DoTa ?
This article is true. The characteristics of LoL is similar to WoW:
Easy noobish style play.
Cartoon Graphics.
Not a harsh penalty for death.
Butchering the original Dota game by not having denyable creeps.
Take a HoN or original Dota player and they will rape in LoL because its way too easy.
Yes LoL is the WoW of MOBAs. It is a community of casual non competitive gamers.
-I am here to perform logic
I thought it did a pretty good job of explaining the differences.
So nothing major then ? Just some gameplay tweaks ?
Well.... they are different games, where as DoTA and HoN are pretty much the same game. Those things I quoted above are pretty drastic changes.
x1?
Thanks for clearing that up. I just had to ask since I tried playing one of the three MOBAs with my friend many times and could never understand the appeal. Then I saw the DotA 2 tournament with the 1 million dollar prize money and was kind of shocked, and I was wondering is there a stripped down version of the MOBA games which would be more fitting to be an e-sport game.
LoL is very competitive and the most popular of the e-sports. WoW is also extremely competitive both in PvE and PvP that's why you see arena tournaments with money prizes, not many MMO companies can claim that.
I really do like LoL. I play at minimum 3 games a day, usually more since I get hooked. It's a fair review, except the comments about community. There isn't really a way to talk with alot of people at the same time, however, I have alot of friends that I met just while playing LoL, and friending after a fun game. I also have alot of friends that I've invited from previous games (I got Vandal Twitch skin from it hehe)
I've tried this game a handful of times and each time I play I remember "Ok, now I remember why I quit playing this before." Matches take way too much time for my taste, plus a number of players I've ran into were VERY rude. Trying to learn the game and get used to stuff and cause you're not as good as them yet "Geez, you f"ing suck! Why don't you just quit this game?" and other crap like that.
But I do know of people that love this game... just not for me I guess. Might give it another chance sometime tho.
I currently play LoL but think HoN was the better game. It is definitely the more popular game as of now but I think that is largely due to the inaccessibility of playing HoN. HoN is unquestionably the better game but is not nearly as popular for a couple of reasons.
1. As somebody already mentioned the community in HoN is not nearly as forgiving as the community in LoL. HoN is a hell of a lot more competitive than LoL is and the skill level requirement is a lot higher. Any well put together HoN team will destroy an LoL team in either game. This has led to a very snobbish attitude in the HoN community who will tear apart any new player simply because they haven’t learned how to play. So basicly HoN = Really steep learning curve and snobby community v.s. LoL = newbfest easy mode food goes here, community can't issolate you from playing games because your new.
2. The matchmaking system in LoL is excellent it (until you hit the cap) so it takes about 2 minutes at most to get into a game. HoN on the other hand you can wait anywhere from 2 minutes to 25 minutes to get into a game via their matchmaking system. The HoN community seems more inclined to go to custom games, if you are good enough and fall in a decent category (at least until they broke everything) you can get into a game pretty quickly. But when you are starting out and more than likely destroy your account rating people will just boot you from every game (good thing the game is free now so you can just create a new account once you understand the game so you can have a decent account rating). So second point summary, LoL = less time waiting for a game v.s. HoN = broken matchmaking system, almost a graveyard for games. GJ TROLLS!.
Enter DOTA 2.
With the hype surrounding DOTA 2 my hope is that they combine the match making system of LoL and the diversity of the HoN system (more dimensions to the game). So basically Rebrand heroes of newerth with a better and more stable engine and slap the LoL matchmaking system on top of it. From the videos it looks like they have improved on many ares of the HoN map but ultimately the same layout as HoN (originally dota 1), this is good. What I haven’t seen is if they have a better matchmaking system. As we saw with LoL vs HoN, HoN is clearly the better game but the cost to play a game was to much for HoN (lag, poor matchmaking system, poor newbie community, steep learning curve) and that is why LoL is coming out on top at the moment.
If you really don’t think these games are anything special than I strongly suggest you look up some of the tournaments and see the hype around them. Starcraft eat your heart out. Furthermore if you haven’t played one yet I would strongly recommend playing LoL (simply because it’s a better game to play right now)
Edit :
its a better game because its easier to access and you don't have to wait nearly as long to get into it. Try getting past level 10 if you are waiting a while games start popping a lot faster after the first four levels.
It's also make news. They have to have one new article everyday to bring people to the site.
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