Could MOBA Games Give Starcraft 2 a Run?

On August 10 2011 03:33 JiYan wrote:
its also been discussed before that the dreamhack success was highly inflated due to LoL incorporating the stream into the game itself so that if anyone would log into the game - they would essentially be counted as a viewer. this combined with the fact that there are too many competitors probably hurts its chances of making it as big as sc2. HoN is now f2p and theres dota 2 coming out, i just dont see there being enough stability in their 'scene' to really get a consistent thing like starcraft has had.

On August 10 2011 03:37 PlosionCornu wrote:
Apples and oranges. Totally different games, totally different skill set required.

Besides, Dota has a super high entry requirement, despite of what people may think.

Knowing each and every hero and relative abilities is no casual task, therefore is much less of a spectator Esport.

On August 10 2011 03:43 howerpower wrote:
It's not a competition, Starcraft isn't going anywhere. I think Dota 2 will be more popular, Valve is showing much more love to the community in terms of shoutcasting and replay features.

On August 10 2011 03:33 JiYan wrote:
its also been discussed before that the dreamhack success was highly inflated due to LoL incorporating the stream into the game itself so that if anyone would log into the game - they would essentially be counted as a viewer.

On August 10 2011 03:39 Odyssey wrote:
With LOL having 10 games a second start and a much much larger amount of players then SC2 it is safe to say yes it will and already is. The thing is LOL is a joke still on a competitive level balance wise compared to SC2. Although they have taken big strides to fix it. I think LOL popularity may have already surpassed SC2 but not in the competitive scene.

That being said I think SC2 will and should stay top dog in competitive gaming. LOL sells power IMO with their micro transaction system and even with them trying to keep new balanced champions coming out it seems almost impossible to keep the balance. Although some argue the general unbalance makes it balanced.

The more good games in tourneys though the merrier IMO. I see no reason SC2 and LOL can't coexist and both be successful.

Also I agree that LOL HON DOTA all are much worse spectator games then SC2 just because you have no idea what is happening and who all the Champions are and what they do. SC2 is easy and fun to watch.

On August 10 2011 03:43 howerpower wrote:
It's not a competition, Starcraft isn't going anywhere.

On August 10 2011 03:33 JiYan wrote:
its also been discussed before that the dreamhack success was highly inflated due to LoL incorporating the stream into the game itself so that if anyone would log into the game - they would essentially be counted as a viewer. this combined with the fact that there are too many competitors probably hurts its chances of making it as big as sc2. HoN is now f2p and theres dota 2 coming out, i just dont see there being enough stability in their 'scene' to really get a consistent thing like starcraft has had.

On August 10 2011 03:34 Joseph123 wrote:
the thing in dota is that you reach your maximum skill level and you can't improve anymore cause of the nature of the game.. only thing you do is watch replays and think of strategies
while in sc2 you need to constantly play or you get worse
so for sc2 pro player to play dota = waste of talent
but this has a good side you can be competitive at dota by just playing tournaments if you have the required skill and the time wasted is minimal
both games are fun and totally different

On August 10 2011 03:37 redFF wrote:
it's like saying "Can Halo kill starcraft 2?" Different Genres, pointless thread.

On August 10 2011 03:33 JiYan wrote:
its also been discussed before that the dreamhack success was highly inflated due to LoL incorporating the stream into the game itself so that if anyone would log into the game - they would essentially be counted as a viewer. .

On August 10 2011 04:48 Gaga wrote:
i am playing DotA since at least 5 years ..... but wtf does the term MOBA stand for ?

On August 10 2011 04:20 Intricate1 wrote:
With the Insane popularity, Why not?

Whats good for MOBA is good for SC2 IMO.

ESports Fighting!

On August 10 2011 04:24 mr_tolkien wrote:

The pb is that MOBA's are fusions between Halo and SC2 :p It's a bastard genre of game.

On August 10 2011 04:52 [Agony]x90 wrote:


Multiplayer Online Based Arena. Back when i used to play DotA,i would tell the people that it was an AoS, or Aeon of Strife, which was just a precedent for the game type. Now they finally came up with a proper name for it.

On August 10 2011 04:53 PlosionCornu wrote:


It cannot grow outside its borders, its playing fanbase.

People who don't play the game (regularly or at all) will not understand what's going on.

That does not happen with sc2.

On August 10 2011 04:55 Roffles wrote:

If I didn't play SC2, I'd just see blobs of shit fighting other blobs of shit. It's what I'd see in LoL and DotA as well.

On August 10 2011 04:55 Roffles wrote:

If I didn't play SC2, I'd just see blobs of shit fighting other blobs of shit. It's what I'd see in LoL and DotA as well.

On August 10 2011 04:55 Roffles wrote:

If I didn't play SC2, I'd just see blobs of shit fighting other blobs of shit. It's what I'd see in LoL and DotA as well.

On August 10 2011 04:56 Gaga wrote:


But there are so much more spells, heroes and items in MOBA that its increasingly hard ... In Sc2 you won't need too much knowledge to understand whats going on.

On August 10 2011 03:33 JiYan wrote:
its also been discussed before that the dreamhack success was highly inflated due to LoL incorporating the stream into the game itself so that if anyone would log into the game - they would essentially be counted as a viewer. this combined with the fact that there are too many competitors probably hurts its chances of making it as big as sc2. HoN is now f2p and theres dota 2 coming out, i just dont see there being enough stability in their 'scene' to really get a consistent thing like starcraft has had.

On August 10 2011 04:53 PlosionCornu wrote:


It cannot grow outside its borders, its playing fanbase.

People who don't play the game (regularly or at all) will not understand what's going on.

That does not happen with sc2.

On August 10 2011 05:19 Lokian wrote:
its a casual past time

On August 10 2011 05:17 tyr wrote:
"MOBA" games are already bigger than starcraft 2.
Just check the Chinese community.

On August 10 2011 05:21 Trumpstyle wrote:
My prediction is that LoL will become pretty big e-sport, Dota 2 and HoN not so much.

HoN seems to be dying but might grow now when its going f2p.

Dota 2 has 3 problems at the moment to succeed:

1. It's most likely not going to be f2p which means casual players might not buy this game instead stick with LoL or HoN.
2.From my understanding Dota 2 has inferior gameplay as it caters more to hardcore players and not to casual players.
3. So far there has been no trailers, gameplay or commercials for dota 2, Valve really need to try hype this game up and not waste there money with a big tournament.

On August 10 2011 05:19 Lokian wrote:
if you're talking about dota, that game as been out far longer than sc2. its a casual past time

On August 10 2011 05:23 LlOoKkIi wrote:
I think that there is a chance that games like league of legends could surpass SC2. As i play both I found that LoL had a much easier learning curve and it was easier to fully understand the whole game. This combined with the fact that it is free, I think means that it is more accessible and more people will try it and maybe there are people out there that don't know they would be interested in E sports but would be tempted by Lol being free.

On August 10 2011 05:19 ForeverSleep wrote:
How many tournaments does LoL even have (no bashing here, i am just asking)? I hear about Dota tournaments. I hear about HoN tournaments. So far, I have not seem many LoL tournaments, except one because for some reason the developer decided to include the stream in the game (or something like that?) and the LR thread for a sc2 tournament airing at the same time had gone in total berserk . How many LoL teams are there in the first place?

On August 10 2011 05:10 [Agony]x90 wrote:


I disagree a lot with this statement. Show me anything in this world and I will not understand it until I do one of two things - try it or watch someone else perform it correctly. Until that occurs, the object, concept, game, etc. will mean nothing to me. I know this because I started watching fighting games recently. I've played them in my day, but never really seriously or with a lot of attention. Once MvC3, MK9 and SSF4 came out, I understood the basic concept, but not the mechanics or what the players were doing. As I watched more, I saw patterns and emphasis on certain actions. Eventually, I started picking out what was considered "good" and what was considered "bad". And this was not only for the basics of the game. I began learning which characters were good, which combos were good, what was hard to pull off and what was impressive. For example, when i first saw Dark Phoenix in MvC3, i was like, wow she's strong, moreso than she should be. I didn't understand why she was strong either. She activated it (didn't know how this happened either) and then particles started flying every where. Soon enough, everyone's dead on the other team. Eventually, I learned that it only activates with lvl 5 super when she dies, that the particles are multiple ranged attacks that are homing and that she has a super that can give her HP back. At this point, i started seeing why everyone hated her and why she would pop up so often. Soon I understood the the stigma around her. It is small things like this that slowly pulled me into the MvC3 culture that I could not understand before.

Another example. People have argued that SC:BW was so good because anyone could understand it. They would use the Korean girls as an example, using the sexist concept that "oh if a girl can understand it just watching it, then it must be a universal language". This isn't the case at all. My friends at school and even friends of mine that play games themselves could watch a game and not know whats going on. They see the screen and the armies fighting, but to them, they can't discern anything. This isn't because they're idiots, it's because they're ignorant (not in a bad way). If they took the time to watch as few as 5 games of professional StarCraft, and I mean actually WATCH the game, they would quickly be able to discern what is going on.

There is no reason why this is not the same case with LoL. Since games last about 35 - 40 minutes, any person who is watching will easily begin to see patterns involving the 10 characters on the field. After a while, they'll begin to see the effects each do and learn what is going on. By the end of the 40 minutes, they can almost expect what to see from each of the ten. This means that every game a person watches in a game, he or she can easily learn what is going on within the bounds of the game, so long as they are willing to pay attention and learn.

Then again, there are those who have no interest in paying attention and learning when playing games. These are casual gamers who will very likely suck at the games they play. However, this is another matter :-p.

On August 10 2011 05:25 ReturnStroke wrote:
At this point, no game will pass SC2 in competitiveness. It won't have the same skillcap, and it won't have near the competitive atmosphere. That being said, it wouldn't surprise me if it passed it in popularity. People don't like hard games anymore.

They ESPECIALLY don't like competitive games that destroy you for being a lower skilled player. Thus, people will drift into technically competitive games (as in one player technically is there to beat someone else.) If your bad, SC2 will punish you for it. People don't like this. They go play COD or, in this case, LoL, DoTA, etc. I don't doubt LoL and HoN and others are competitive, but nothing compared to what it takes to be great at SC. People still play WoW "competitively" too, and that will also remain more popular as a game.

On August 10 2011 05:25 ReturnStroke wrote:
At this point, no game will pass SC2 in competitiveness. It won't have the same skillcap, and it won't have near the competitive atmosphere. That being said, it wouldn't surprise me if it passed it in popularity. People don't like hard games anymore.

They ESPECIALLY don't like competitive games that destroy you for being a lower skilled player. Thus, people will drift into technically competitive games (as in one player technically is there to beat someone else.) If your bad, SC2 will punish you for it. People don't like this. They go play COD or, in this case, LoL, DoTA, etc. I don't doubt LoL and HoN and others are competitive, but nothing compared to what it takes to be great at SC. People still play WoW "competitively" too, and that will also remain more popular as a game.

On August 10 2011 05:31 PlosionCornu wrote:


I just invalidate your entire wot with these words : the majority of the people in the world don't have time/ don't want to commit so much time in learning something if it gets in the way of something that's supposed to generate fun/pass time.

The majority of humans are casuals.

The majority of people are not you.

I mean, I'm appalled by the fact that there's even the need to explain that moba games are horrible as far as viewer enjoynment goes. There's millions of abilities, heroes items. Besides, there's too much stuff going on at the same time. It's literarly impossible to follow effectively.

Want a more practical explanation? Well here it comes.

There's people who are still confused by the alternate appearance of the collector's edition Thor, and think that's a completely different unit, or that the opponent is hacking or something. Same can be said for the alternate dark templar skin.

LoL has thousands of alternate skins....with the same isometric camera. Go ahead and pretend that the average casual can understand that a monkey is still the same hero even if its ON FIRE.

Esports games are supposed to be extremely simple at first, and then pick up complexity as playtime goes by ( I don't mean early/mid/endgame, just from noob to grandmaster). They are supposed to have some common element that even the most casual viewer can relate to.

This does not apply with mobas. Again, thousands of heroes/abilities/items etc. Too many variables.

A game that's HARD to understand at first glance just does not make any sense in a Esport environment. Get over it.

On August 10 2011 05:37 fadestep wrote:


You must be blinded by a crazy amount of fanboyism to think that Starcraft 2 is any easier to digest than LoL/HoN.

This type of thread always makes me laugh. Starcraft 2 fanboys/purists (very rarely the people who are actually good at Starcraft 2) simultaneously go with two approaches to bashing MOBAs:

1. MOBAs are really easy and aren't as competitive as SC2.
2. MOBAs are too hard to understand and everybody can't get into them like SC2.

Woops. Those points actually don't line up as being a very logical argument about anything.

I like how you think your such a fucking expert that you tell him to "Get over it" at the end like you just came down with God's hammer of logic itself and smashed him in the forehead with it. You didn't. Get over it.

On August 10 2011 05:33 fadestep wrote:


This kind of post is bullshit.

Somebody with zero experience competitively in either Starcraft 2 or LoL/HoN making blanket statements about the skill required to play either game competitively.

It is fine to love Starcraft 2 guys, but you don't need to shit on other games and act like Starcraft is some god given game which only the most badass of motherfuckers can play.

Starcraft and LoL/HoN require completely different skillsets and at most you can subjectively value one of those skillsets as being more meaningful/difficult than the other. But it is perposterous to say that LoL/HoN can never pass SC2 in competitiveness because they are easy games that don't take what it takes to be great at SC.

On August 10 2011 05:35 Jacuzzi wrote:
I'm pretty sure LoL's been in the lead from the start...

On August 10 2011 05:39 Lokian wrote:
The irony is that LoL appeals more to casual gamers than SC2.

I have yet to play a single game of SC2 but watched it since beta.

LoL, however, I played for months but have yet to watch a single game with commentators.

This is just me, but I want to say there's a line somewhere.

On August 10 2011 05:21 Trumpstyle wrote:
My prediction is that LoL will become pretty big e-sport, Dota 2 and HoN not so much.

HoN seems to be dying but might grow now when its going f2p.

Dota 2 has 3 problems at the moment to succeed:

1. It's most likely not going to be f2p which means casual players might not buy this game instead stick with LoL or HoN.
2.From my understanding Dota 2 has inferior gameplay as it caters more to hardcore players and not to casual players.
3. So far there has been no trailers, gameplay or commercials for dota 2, Valve really need to try hype this game up and not waste there money with a big tournament.

On August 10 2011 05:45 fadestep wrote:


This is actually really interesting to me.

I have to think that like somebody mentioned earlier in the thread, the competitive scene of Starcraft 2 has a lot more personalities and great commentators/figureheads at the moment. This probably makes it more attractive for people like you, who even though they play LoL don't want to watch pro LoL because that community doesn't have as developed of a competitive scene with people they recognize and associate with.

But I think we can see the potential for the growth of MOBA esports by thinking about this:

It is very easy to cultivate and develop a competitive community and popular personalities when you have a game that is growing its playerbase. And the one thing that cannot be disputed about MOBAs is that the playerbase is growing, FAST.

On the other hand, there is a potential danger for SC2 in the sense that people really establish divides between pro gamers, casual players, and even viewers who don't play. Although the top tier scene is already established, the area for growth of the scene might actually be a lot more limited in SC2. Add to that the fact that there are simply less people playing SC2, and you can definitely see ways in which MOBA games could overtake the esports scene in certain ways.

On August 10 2011 05:41 PlosionCornu wrote:

It's not an opinion, it's plain fact.

Mobas have MORE( A TERRIBLE LOT MORE) variables than sc2, or even wc3 for the matter.
And let's not talk about bw.

It's cold math man.

A game with too many variables is very hard to get at first glance. Take for example wow arena. It's literarly IMPOSSIBLE to understand what's going on if you don't pvp. I cannot discern the play by play even if I've played for 4 or so years.

On August 10 2011 05:31 PlosionCornu wrote:


I just invalidate your entire wot with these words : the majority of the people in the world don't have time/ don't want to commit so much time in learning something if it gets in the way of something that's supposed to generate fun/pass time.

The majority of humans are casuals.

The majority of people are not you.

I mean, I'm appalled by the fact that there's even the need to explain that moba games are horrible as far as viewer enjoynment goes. There's millions of abilities, heroes items. Besides, there's too much stuff going on at the same time. It's literarly impossible to follow effectively.

Want a more practical explanation? Well here it comes.

There's people who are still confused by the alternate appearance of the collector's edition Thor, and think that's a completely different unit, or that the opponent is hacking or something. Same can be said for the alternate dark templar skin.

LoL has thousands of alternate skins....with the same isometric camera. Go ahead and pretend that the average casual can understand that a monkey is still the same hero even if its ON FIRE.

Esports games are supposed to be extremely simple at first, and then pick up complexity as playtime goes by ( I don't mean early/mid/endgame, just from noob to grandmaster). They are supposed to have some common element that even the most casual viewer can relate to, even with limited experience (or lack of thereof)

This does not apply with mobas. Again, thousands of heroes/abilities/items etc. Too many variables.

A game that's HARD to understand at first glance just does not make any sense in a Esport environment. Get over it.

Or rather, it has a limited growth potential. And what I mean by this is that only people who "actively" play the game can enjoy tournaments.

It's like saying that just football players can enjoy football matches. It's just senseless.

On August 10 2011 05:42 vrok wrote:

Don't shit on other games guys! Assassin's Creed can be competitive and require tons of skill too! It's just a different kind of skill!

On August 10 2011 05:56 Lokian wrote:
going back to the question...

MOBA games have a large player base = Very competiive

SC2 smaller player base = bigger e-sports

When saying 'competitive gaming' I take that as competitions/tournaments, e-sports.

So no, moba games won't lead e-sports. But yeah, it will have a lot of competitiveness in it because of a lot of players.

It is not leading competitive gaming so far because sc2 has more big name tournaments and sponsers. right?

On August 10 2011 05:50 fadestep wrote:


What is cold math? MOBAs have more variables than SC2? That's baloney. Having a skillbar and an item shop doesn't mean the game has more variables.

I'm actually completely convinced that SC2 has more variables than MOBAs, but I'm not going to try and argue it with you. Why? Because its pretty subjective and there is 0 "cold math man" you can use to prove it.

Also, what would that even have to with the OP? MOBAs can't be as big esports as SC2 because casual viewers can't tune in to MOBAs? Besides the fact that neither game is super appealing for casual fans to tune into, this problem is pretty easily solved by MOBAs by the simple fact that a metric shit ton of people play them, so they have a huge base to draw viewers from anyways. Did you see the Dreamhack numbers? Did you see that while BLIZZARD was pulling 60k viewers for their EU battle.net invitational, HotShotGG was pulling 15k for random ladder games of LoL?

I'm not saying that makes them better, I'm saying if you are trying to argue viewers in any way, you are picking the wrong fight. LoL pulls way more viewers than Starcraft 2.

On August 10 2011 03:33 Cosmos wrote:
Would be nice to see a Dota ON starcraft 2 (like blizzard promised) so the fans of MOBA games could come on sc2

On August 10 2011 06:07 chenchen wrote:
Starcraft 2 isn't exactly the leader in competitive gaming, you know.

It's esports scene is no where near as developed as that of BW (or possibly even Dota in China), and its playerbase is actually quite small.

On August 10 2011 06:13 GrapeD wrote:
I don't think so because moba games not a lot is happening most of the time. For the first 10 minutes its pretty much people creeping and thats not very exciting to watch. The only real thing to get really excited about are team fights and those are not many each game.

On August 10 2011 06:20 zz_ wrote:
A run for what? I'm unsure as to what you mean.

If you mean "will MOBA games every become as popular as SC2" then the answer is that they're already far more popular than SC2, and have been since WC3 became the biggest game in China. DotA alone had, at least about a year ago, more active players than WoW. Count in the active accounts in LoL and HoN and yeah, SC2 doesn't even come close.

If you mean "will MOBA games become as huge of a hit in the western world as SC2 has become, with an equal amount of tournaments, community support etc", then the answer is no, probably not. LoL has shown that there is a market for these types of games, but I don't see it (or rather, DotA2) ever becoming as prominent as SC2.

DotA will always be my favorite online game, but I have no illusions of it becoming as huge in the west as SC2. It would be awesome if it did, but highly unlikely.

Related: Can't wait for gamescom :DD

On August 10 2011 03:34 Joseph123 wrote:
the thing in dota is that you reach your maximum skill level and you can't improve anymore cause of the nature of the game.. only thing you do is watch replays and think of strategies
while in sc2 you need to constantly play or you get worse
so for sc2 pro player to play dota = waste of talent
but this has a good side you can be competitive at dota by just playing tournaments if you have the required skill and the time wasted is minimal
both games are fun and totally different

On August 10 2011 05:24 Lokian wrote:



What the logic

On August 10 2011 05:34 Eppa! wrote:

Since when is teamwork not seen as "skill" any more? If you are afraid to get punished SC2 is for you, If you lose in SC2 you can say whatever and start a new game. If you feed in a MOBA you will get harassed. You will get destroyed by slightly better players in MOBAs. You see top MMR players wreak high level players.

DotA is a hardcore game, larger learning curve, team oriented with a bunch of very very tight timings.

On August 10 2011 06:16 Lokian wrote:


care to explain what you're talking about?

by the way....


Blizzard dota will surpass sc2. lol

On August 10 2011 06:29 chenchen wrote:


Ok, I'll explain what I'm talking about.

In Korea,In Korea,In Korea,In Korea,In Korea, BW teams are sponsored by the likes of multinational corporations and telecommunications companies that service the entire country. Top players have salaries (not including prizes) reaching 200 to 300k a year. BW is broadcast across the nation during prime time and has two dedicated channels, OGN and MBC. The live finals of large events draw tens of thousands of viewers, far higher than any SC2 event (MLG included other games, GSL has never drawn over 10,000). Professional BW players film advertisements aired nationally for their sponsors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0OY6Ow65LQ

As for playerbase . . only a paltry 400k people have played SC2 games in the past 7 days. Millions, if not tens of millions of people play Dota regularly. Not to mention, a Chinese Dota team was recently purchased for over 6 million USD, just to give a taste of how big the Dota esports scene is in China. Even Brain and Fish server, dedicated servers for BW in Korea, have about 30k+ concurrent users each in peak hours. The number of LoL players also reach the seven figures.

On August 10 2011 06:37 Baituri wrote:
Could Baseball give Football a run?

2 different thinks. They will coexist next to each other.

On August 10 2011 06:37 Kangdemon wrote:
You guys do know sc2 is still fairly new right? You cant talk about sc2's player base right now until everyone from BW move over. There are still A LOT of americans that are in bw, and it is still bigger then sc2 in korea, so just wait for a year or two then we'll see which game has the bigger playerbase.

On August 10 2011 06:31 qqw wrote:
The main argument I'm seeing here is:

"You have to play it (DotA/LoL/HoN) to watch it"

I agree. You have to be able to play the game yourself to understand what the point of the game is. However if someone who'd never played an rts in their life had to play see SC2 being played they wouldn't know what was going on.

On August 10 2011 06:41 scintilliaSD wrote:

League of Legends is a couple of months older than SC2, and the legacy that LoL and other MoBA clones has been built off of is way younger than SC:BW.

On August 10 2011 06:44 Novalisk wrote:


Yes, but how long will it take someone to learn basic RTS concepts and tens of units+spells, as opposed to hundreds of champions+items+powers.

On August 10 2011 06:44 Kangdemon wrote:


I'm sure MOBA as genre has more players then sc1 and sc2, but I mean the playerbase of sc2 as a whole should not be talked about right now until we can get a more accurate reading, which is whenever bw players come along.

On August 10 2011 06:44 Novalisk wrote:


Yes, but how long will it take someone to learn basic RTS concepts and tens of units+spells, as opposed to hundreds of champions+items+powers.

On August 10 2011 07:08 Highways wrote:
Potentially, because casual noob games will always be more popular.

On August 10 2011 06:32 figq wrote:
When MOBA could deliver stuff like these, maybe then we could talk:
+ Show Spoiler [OSL History 1999-2010] ++ Show Spoiler [Klazart excerpt] ++ Show Spoiler [Korean commentary] ++ Show Spoiler [120000 live viewers] +

On August 10 2011 05:33 fadestep wrote:


This kind of post is bullshit.

Somebody with zero experience competitively in either Starcraft 2 or LoL/HoN making blanket statements about the skill required to play either game competitively.

It is fine to love Starcraft 2 guys, but you don't need to shit on other games and act like Starcraft is some god given game which only the most badass of motherfuckers can play.

Starcraft and LoL/HoN require completely different skillsets and at most you can subjectively value one of those skillsets as being more meaningful/difficult than the other. But it is perposterous to say that LoL/HoN can never pass SC2 in competitiveness because they are easy games that don't take what it takes to be great at SC.

On August 10 2011 07:56 Serpico wrote:
I really hope not, would rather have COD be the face of esports.

On August 10 2011 07:58 Divergence wrote:


Wow, watch what you say there?

You want the face of eSports to be some 16 year old kid sitting on Xbox Live drinking mountain dew calling everyone a f*ggot while he boasts about getting "360 no scopes"?

On August 10 2011 07:58 Serpico wrote:

Might as well if we have dota clones being heralded.

On August 10 2011 08:04 Senx wrote:
SC2 is an esport title from the ground up, Dota 2 will probably be too, but MOBAS will never be as widely accepted in the western world as SC2 simply because you need to be an active player and play hundreds of games to even understand wtf you're looking at in terms of the thousand abilities, SC2 is alot more straight forward in that regard.

On August 10 2011 08:08 Slithice wrote:


While the learning curve is more steep for MOBAS, the skill cap in SC2 is way higher than HoN/DotA.

Then again HoN is a team game and require different skills.

On August 10 2011 06:39 Backpack wrote:


Agreed. All in the name of ESPORTS.

On August 10 2011 08:28 RodYan wrote:
I have a totally ungroundedhate for DOTA and its clones

DOTA is for people who can't macro, micro, and multi-task properly. Also, from my experience, their community is complete garbage.

Comparing DOTA to Starcraft2 is like comparing kickball to baseball. Baseball is the sport the pros play, but kickball is more popular on the playground.

On August 10 2011 08:32 Slithice wrote:



Angrytestie said that he prefers HoN over sc2, is that because he cant macro/micro/multi-talk properly? I doubt it.

On August 10 2011 08:36 RodYan wrote:

Probably. I've never heard of him. Exactly what SC2 tournaments has he posted results in?

On August 10 2011 07:35 zz_ wrote:


How's that relevant when the thread is MOBA vs SC2.

Also I don't even understand what you're trying to show with the first, second and third video. Emotional hype videos and commentators getting excited? Hell every game with a relatively large fanbase has that...

On August 10 2011 08:32 Slithice wrote:



Angrytestie said that he prefers HoN over sc2, is that because he cant macro/micro/multi-talk properly? I doubt it.

On August 10 2011 08:36 RodYan wrote:

Probably. I've never heard of him. Exactly what SC2 tournaments has he posted results in?

On August 10 2011 08:36 RodYan wrote:

Probably. I've never heard of him. Exactly what SC2 tournaments has he posted results in?

On August 10 2011 06:32 figq wrote:
When MOBA could deliver stuff like these, maybe then we could talk:
+ Show Spoiler [OSL History 1999-2010] ++ Show Spoiler [Klazart excerpt] ++ Show Spoiler [Korean commentary] ++ Show Spoiler [120000 live viewers] +

On August 10 2011 08:50 57 Corvette wrote:
Casually, yes.
Competitively, no.

It is much harder to balance 80+ champions than it is to balance 3 races.

On August 10 2011 08:55 Steveling wrote:


it is much harder to balance 43+ units than it is to balance 2 sides.

On August 10 2011 08:42 ReturnStroke wrote:


Umm, Testie is a crazy good RTS player, if you had followed SC:BW you'd have heard of him, he's sick. He took games off of the likes of Bisu. (watch those games btw)

On August 10 2011 10:51 Divergence wrote:
To those who play DotA/HoN/LoL:

I have a quick question just about the community for those games. It seems with StarCraft the community is unquestionably big. The amount of quality community content out there seemingly dwarfs any other game I have ever played. All the pros in SC are constantly talked about (almost too much), there are so many community personalities and there are several weekly (even daily) shows about starcraft, and people are always streaming.

How does the community of these MOBA games compare to StarCraft? I think to judge the "size" of a community you have to account for more than just the amount of players. StarCraft may be small (in terms of players) in comparison but the "community content to players ratio" seems enormous. Do any of these games have a comparable amount of community content?

Also, what about the tournaments? How does the tournament scene in these games compares to SC2?

On August 10 2011 07:54 figq wrote:
The thread is about the leader of esports.
I haven't seen MOBA create such a scene, show me please, something worthy.
edit: and lasting.

On August 10 2011 11:12 Steveling wrote:


There are more trolls, db's, wannabees in the dota communities than actually intelligent and helpful people.

The players are not much better either. Most bm like mofos, while having enormous egos.
On both cases there are bright exeptions ofc.

In total the Dota community is one of the worst I've encountered, like, in any game ever.(I know the reasons why dota attracts such an audience but I shall not go into this)

The tournaments are there and some of them are going on for quite a few years. The prizes are too small though. I'd say a good 80% of pro players don't have salaries and in general the whole structure seems very unorganized and amatuerish.

Let me finish by saying that most of these problems stem from the fact that dota is just a custom map with no real support behind it. So I expect many of these things to eclipse gradually with the coming of Dota2.