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?

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.

Originally posted by adam_nox

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.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

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...

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 :)

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!

Originally posted by Onigod

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

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.

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Originally posted by Zimba

Enlighten me, whats the difference between HoN, LoL and DoTa ?

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Originally posted by the Article We Are All Responding to

When the developers of League of Legends set out to create the game a few of them who had previously worked on the original DOTA decided that there were some aspects of the game that were just too foreboding to new players and in general. So they removed them. Gold loss on death, denying enemies creep experience and gold, teleportation items, buy back from death, dynamic brush, and other mechanics that were deemed “anti-fun” were replaced with less harsh ones. Furthermore the persistent summoner profile that every player gains experience for contains summoner spells and runes that can be used to directly affect in-game stats and abilities. Beyond these rather drastic changes the basic MOBA gameplay remains intact with a few less radical changes (which include a sub-boss and neutral monster buffs).

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Originally posted by HardWalker

 

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Originally posted by Zimba
Enlighten me, whats the difference between HoN, LoL and DoTa ?

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Originally posted by the Article We Are All Responding to
When the developers of League of Legends set out to create the game a few of them who had previously worked on the original DOTA decided that there were some aspects of the game that were just too foreboding to new players and in general. So they removed them. Gold loss on death, denying enemies creep experience and gold, teleportation items, buy back from death, dynamic brush, and other mechanics that were deemed “anti-fun” were replaced with less harsh ones. Furthermore the persistent summoner profile that every player gains experience for contains summoner spells and runes that can be used to directly affect in-game stats and abilities. Beyond these rather drastic changes the basic MOBA gameplay remains intact with a few less radical changes (which include a sub-boss and neutral monster buffs).

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I thought it did a pretty good job of explaining the differences.

So nothing major then ? Just some gameplay tweaks ?

Originally posted by Zimba

Originally posted by HardWalker

 

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Originally posted by Zimba
Enlighten me, whats the difference between HoN, LoL and DoTa ?

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Originally posted by the Article We Are All Responding to
When the developers of League of Legends set out to create the game a few of them who had previously worked on the original DOTA decided that there were some aspects of the game that were just too foreboding to new players and in general. So they removed them. Gold loss on death, denying enemies creep experience and gold, teleportation items, buy back from death, dynamic brush, and other mechanics that were deemed “anti-fun” were replaced with less harsh ones. Furthermore the persistent summoner profile that every player gains experience for contains summoner spells and runes that can be used to directly affect in-game stats and abilities. Beyond these rather drastic changes the basic MOBA gameplay remains intact with a few less radical changes (which include a sub-boss and neutral monster buffs).

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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. 

Originally posted by Theonenoni

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.

 

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.