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For most of you reading this article, you are probably at least somewhat knowledgeable about League
of Legends: after all, it boasts a record of over 67 million players per
month. However, what some of
you may not know is that League
of Legends had a predecessor – a
Warcraft III mod called Defense of
the Ancients, which has been available since as early as 2003. And the
creation of the “MOBA” (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre
is largely attributed to it, its creator
has since been employed by Valve
(creator of Half-Life, Portal, etc.) to
make a new Dota 2. They are games
where you control a single character
ALEX’S OPINION
LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
League of Legends is better than
Dota, nuff said. However, in the
name of good journalism, I will use
hard evidence to make this fact undeniable and irrefutable.
Firstly, League of Legends evolved
from Dota, and thus it is more advanced in both community and
mechanics. One of the first things
evident to anyone that plays both
is the fact that League of Legends
is faster paced. It relies on a faster
reaction time and skill level. The
games move at different tempos, and
League of Legends is better because
it progresses at a tempo that doesn’t
put people to sleep. It relies more
heavily on snappy decision making
than long-term strategy, of course
this isn’t necessarily a factor which
makes it superior, however it does
make the game more interesting.
Secondly, League of Legends is quite
simply more popular. Dota is the
hipster cousin that got left behind
when the rest of the family moved
to California. This fact is quite evident from the fact that the Season 2
16
(champion and hero for LoL and Dota,
respectively) in a team of five to defeat
the enemy’s team of five, gaining money
through killing each other with the ultimate goal of entering the enemy’s base
and defeating a core structure. There are
also many other “MOBA” video games
such as Heroes of Newerth, but for this
article we’ll only be focusing on LoL and
Dota 2.
You might be wondering why the acronym “MOBA” up there is in quotation
marks. Well, that’s because it’s sometimes disagreed upon. Many Dota players don’t think it is an appropriate term
for such games – there are many other
games that could be “Online” and “Multiplayer” while featuring players “Battling” in an “Arena,” such as our regular
Prize Pool for the League of Legends
Championship totalled an amount
of 5,000,000 USD, an unprecedented prize in the history of e-sports.
Another form of solid proof is the
fact that public choice awards for
Game of the Year have been won by
League of Legends year after year.
Every game asks for their players’
support, but only League has the
sufficient size to clinch the victory.
League of Legends is a free-to-play
game supported by micro-transactions. Nonetheless it must now earn
billions in comparison to its humble beginnings in 2009, taking into
consideration the 32 million players
registered worldwide, which proves
an almost efffortlessly maintained
growth rate in popularity. DOTA on
the other hand is inadequate in comparison, reaching peaks of 600,000
concurrent players per day. League
of Legends on the other hand has
expanded into eight regions and has
an average of 12 millions players
worldwide per day.
Thirdly, some would argue that Dota
requires more skill, because of the
deeper Meta regarding items and
skill usage. Especially when it comes
to conserving resources in skirmishes. However, this viewpoint is
First Person Shooters such as Call of
Duty. But LoL was the game which
spread its fame into the world moreso than ever before – surely Riot had
the right to name their game’s genre?
Then again, this is the least of the
rifts between the LoL and Dota
community. A quick Google search
will yield you with copious evidence
of the antipathy the players hold for
each other. Perhaps it’s because they
heard the other has weird mechanics, or perhaps it’s because they tried
the other and got repulsed by the
toxic community (even though their
own is just as bad); but the differences between the games, and more importantly, the matter of which one is
better, is a debate that still shakes the
gaming forums to this day.
almost ridiculous when you consider how League of Legends employs
a system that requires the utmost
strategy when planning runes, masteries and summoner spells. If anything, League of Legends requires
more skills as a more fast paced and
dynamic game.
Finally, League of Legends is the better game because it develops. League
of Legends has