Multi-player Online Battle Arena. MOBA?
I've been missing the competitive experience of playing games against other people. All the more so since Im not allowed to play basketball (I guess that is a non-eSport) until December.
In the past I've spent countless hours playing FPS games like Counterstrike and Day of Defeat but Im not not into the modern crop of FPS games. And I never really tried the RTS genre despite my love of Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 2.
I never played Starcraft but I did enjoy Starcraft 2. However I wasnt won over by the multiplayer experience and didnt finish my 50 "practice" games. It was fun but not cooperative enough or compelling enough to continue.
Recently Valve has announced that they are getting into the eSports arena with DOTA2 and a new version of Counterstrike. DOTA2 is not released yet but they just had a contest with a $1M grand prize and have generated a lot of buzz which has me curious.
Unfortunately the MOBA world is a bit confusing with a ton of games that are so similar its hard to tell them apart and a reputation for brutal competition (and a lack of manners). Is this something I can enjoy casually?
As I understand it, first there was Warcraft 3. (Played it; didnt' love it.) Then there was a W3 mod called Defense of the Ancients. DOTA was a cult hit for years and spawned the MOBA genre. Years later we have Demigod, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, and two new games Rise of Immortals and DOTA2 (from Valve).
Im in the Rise of Immortals beta so I fired that up last night and... promptly lost match after match until my PC crashed. Think I will give it another try after I read the rules :) and then check out the other games.
