Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs) have nowadays become a quite fundamental part of the MMO genre and titles such as League of Legends (LoL), maybe one of the world’s most played games, have truly done their bit to move this type of game into the limelight.

These games generally allow players to choose the character (hero, champion, etc.) they want to take control of from a wide selection of available options, each of which presents its own set of special attacks, to engage in team-based combat against other gamers, trying to complete the base defence/attack objective. The maps are normally made up of 3 "lanes" which directly link both opposing bases and are rimmed with defensive watchtowers that will attack the opponent. These lanes are moreover populated by waves of AI controlled minions which constantly spawn and move along their lane to attack any enemy that comes their way (opponent minions, towers or even players). The main goal is to reach the opposing base with the use of a cooperative team strategy while simultaneously preventing the other team from attacking yours. The match is over as soon as one team succeeds in destroying the opponent’s base.

While the success of the MOBA genre is for the most part ascribed to League of Legends (launched 10/2009), its origins can be traced to more than another 10 years back, which only emphasises for how many years this sort of games has been around.

The birth of MOBA games is frequently credited to the well-known MMORTS StarCraft from Blizzard Entertainment. Though not a MOBA as such, the title provided players with specific tools, enabling them to create their own maps for the community. One such creation, the Aeon of Strife (AoS) map (created by "Aeon64"), gained a considerable amount of popularity due to its 3-lane-based layout where players were only allowed the control of one single unit on the battlefield, which was a striking difference to the regular StarCraft game.

2002 was the year of launch for Blizzard’s Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, which featured a map editor that allowed players to lean on the success of Aeon of Strife. The original StarCraft map was modified and converted into a Warcraft III map, which marked the beginning of the MOBA sub-genre shaping process. The aforesaid map, Defense of the Ancients (DotA), offered a significantly increased complexity and enhanced gameplay while the community enlarged the selection of playable characters. Defense of the Ancients continued its evolution with the launch of the expansion Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, evolving into the genre’s dominating and most popular map. It went through the hands of several modders to carry on the game’s development and ended its being as DotA: Allstars.

When League of Legends debuted in 2008, the title officially coined the "multiplayer online battle arena" (MOBA) acronym and, heavily inspired by DotA: Allstars, benefited from the increasing interest in this sort of games. LoL launched with huge success and was well-received among the gaming community. Its large array of playable "champions" players may select from, the more casual gameplay that is easy to pick up as well as the continuous development and updates turned the title into the greatest of its kind while the others are only competing for second place. Riot released the game as a free-to-play title with a digital copy also available for purchase, which includes the first champions, a few limited-edition skins plus some additional bonuses. They decided to restrict the access to their characters in some ways, only providing a narrow selection for free, which is rotated each week to allow players to eventually test all the 100+ champions. However, players are able to permanently unlock or purchase champions to always have access to them.

In 2009, Valve hired the major contributor to DotA: Allstars, "IceFrog", the one who kept the game alive, in order to develop a standalone follow-up. They succeeded in securing the IP rights of the DotA trademark and finally announced Dota 2 as an "action real-time strategy" game (definitely NOT a "MOBA"...)

S2 Games initially released Heroes of Newerth (HoN) in 2010, the development of which had already begun in early 2007 with their own game engine, which nearly took a whole year, followed by another 2 years of development to create artwork, heroes, maps and so on. Though hot on the tail of League of Legends, it seems that HoN, just like LoL, also is a spin-off of DotA: Allstars and merely changed the genre’s style while still being tremendously popular and hugely successful. At first, players hade to purchase Heroes of Newerth with a one off payment, which was, in addition to its sheerer learning curve, generally regarded as an extra gateway for players when having the choice between the free-to-play League of Legends and HoN. The MMO was re-launched in December 2010 with a more casual mode and an overhauled interface, doubtlessly with the intention to appeal more LoL players, before eventually adopting the free-to-play system in July 2011. By offering a total of 15 playable heroes for free that rotate on a weekly basis, HoN once more mirrored LoL, the popularity of which was swiftly increasing. In July 2012, developers finally removed any restricted access from the game, allowing gamers to freely use each and every hero for their matches.

Dota 2 was launched as free-to-play in July 2013, sticking to the unadulterated traditional structure of the game with its single map and multiple game options, the alteration of which allow for different "game modes" revolving around the order and type of selecting your hero. This single map aspect is what separates the title from League of Legends, which provided several game modes and maps at that time. Not restricting access to their characters, Valve decided to follow the example of Heroes of Newerth tough. As all heroes are available for free, micro-transactions focus on cosmetics, which had already been a huge success with Team Fortress 2, another Valve title. Dota 2 maintained the rather steep learning curve, resulting in generally more complex combat and battles, which is the most distinguishing difference in comparison to League of Legends, a key aspect that often divides opinions between both games.

If we made a survey among gamers which MOBA games they think are the biggest titles, we’re pretty certain those mentioned above would be on top of the list: League of Legends, DOTA2 and Heroes of Newerth. However, MOBAs are continuously evolving, as developers seek to follow a faintly different direction with their games in order to deliver something new in a genre entirely dominated by those 3 giants. It has to be mentioned that a few others use the MOBA terminology in a wider sense to appeal an audience of committed users, this way departing a bit too much from the traditional 3-lane layout that is nearly synonymous to the MOBA genre. Nevertheless, some studios have successfully put a nice twist on their games in doing so are therefore worth mentioning.

Launching in October 2013, Prime World considerably stepped away from tradition in primarily offering a strategic castle/ empire building gaming experience with MOBA styled combat. Players are tasked with constructing buildings and increasing their population to be able to erect more buildings, which consumes resources and takes a specific period of time, ranging from minutes to entire hours to complete depending on the player’s level and the building type. Combat is pretty certain only a minor feature and not the core of the game, which provides an interesting twist on hero development. Some of the game’s micro-transaction options have been the target of severe criticism, as well as trying to be too many things in one, therefore lacking focus and somehow getting lost between genres.

Infinite Crisis is soon to be released and takes the cast of the DC multiverse (not Universe, the game takes different variations of the same heroes and villains from different parallel universes) in all star action-packed MOBA. Infinite Crisis takes a leaf out of League of Legends book focusing more on providing multiple game modes each with their own tailor made map, of which there are currently three ready for the release; Gothan Divided which is a classic three lane map, Coast City which offers a 2 lane map and Gotham Heights which is a control point capturing game. As well as this each map has unique sub-objectives that result in battle changing events such as launching the Doomsday device or battling the opposition to try and fire off an Orbital Cannon.

Most MOBAs focus on building up a nice variety of heroes to keep the game fresh and give the community something new to try, each playable character having their own powers, stats and, most importantly, roles. Roles have been around from the first MOBAs, characters that are built to serve a specific purpose such as tanking minions, fighting players or "jungling" (going into the jungle areas between lanes to kill AI creatures for bonuses). When it is finally released, Dawngate proposes to change that altogether with their "roleless" characters, each of which is able to fill any of the traditional MOBA roles and when players join a game they get to choose which role they wish to fill and gain bonuses for doing so.

Of all the MOBAs in development it’s probably fair to say that none have been so anticipated since the announcement of Heroes of the Storm from Blizzard Entertainment. The main selling feature of the game, apart from it being a Blizzard MOBA title is that it will lend from all the various Blizzard IP to create its heroes where characters from Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft all come together in one title. The game is marketed as a "Hero Brawler", steering clear of the LoL MOBA and Dota2 "action real-time strategy" titles. No word on an official release date for the game already promises multiple game modes, in-depth character customisation and dynamic battleground maps that offer up in game sub-objectives, looking to take the best of all the previous MOBAs that have come before it with the full backing of Blizzard.

Finally, and almost standing alone from the other MOBA/MOBA-esq titles we’ve mentioned is the third person war of the gods from Hi-Rez Studios; SMITE. Smite undoubtedly offers much of what those that came before it have already, but at least it doesn’t pretend to be something completely unique and fully accepts that it is a MOBA plain and simple. Multiple game modes, over 50 gods to play as, unique features and most importantly the only MOBA to currently play in third person mode (traditionally every MOBA uses the isometric top-down viewpoint). Released in March 2014 the game has had favourable reviews due to its simplistic yet fun gameplay the third person viewpoint completely changes strategy and tactics and feels like a completely different type of game.

The MOBA genre really does seem to be entering a new era, those games coming out faced with the real facts that League of Legends truly dominates the market and so prospective up and comers must decide whether they wish to try and redefine the genre and find their own niche or ride LoLs coattails and mimic it (similar to how many MMORPGs tried to follow the World of Warcraft formula after its undeniable success). With the rise of eSports and the ever growing popularity of official tournaments MOBA games developers can’t help but see dollar signs in their eyes in this ever-growing market’s and with LoL in its sixth year it’s possible that many players are waiting for something new that other MOBAs just haven’t yet been able to provide.

We kindly invite you to also have a look at our newly introduced MatchUp feature we recently started with Dota 2 vs League of Legends.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2014 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.