If you have being living under a rock for the past year or so, you would not know that the DotA concept has been taken by a  number of game companies, had the wc3 elements and restrictions removed then revamped into a whole new game.  So far the only one of these that was sold to the general public is Demigod which sadly enough was a bit of a flop in my opinion.

Do not fret, there are more on the way which look quite promising, I am (naturally) talking about League of Legends. While browsing this site in recent times you will probably have noticed the same two ads flashing at you relentlessly. On the topic of LoL, I can’t say much more than this: yes there is beta, and I am participating.

Riot staff (the makers of League of Legends, including the maker of DotA Allstars – ‘Guinsoo’) have taken a very open approach to the development of the game throwing the doors wide and asking the question: What would you like to see in this game? Thus far this has being highly successful and LoL has gained popularity (definitely helped by the witty internet meem abbreviation.)

It is no surprise, perhaps that the secret S2Games project ‘Heroes of Newerth’ was announced, not only that, but you can get a beta key if you are willing to try. This covers the 2 new games that are cited as being DotA-like (and thus largely denied a wiki page on the topic of MOBA genre) and now it is time to try and draw comparisons without breaking the NDA I signed… or ticked the box really, but it is still a legally binding document.

A quick comparison or two…

League of Legends has what appears to be a lower standard of graphics when compared to Heroes on Newerth if you compare gameplay videos, this could be a reason as simple as the belief that you don’t need epic graphics while in the beta stage or they think that the stand to have a bigger audience if low end computers can handle it, meanwhile HoN has graphics that appear to be out to make you gasp, obviously more graphics intensive it doesn’t mean much as I’m sure most people play games for fun rather than the graphics.

Another important thing to note about the graphics is the style of the art. LoL is brighter and full of flowers witch comical signposts at every turn warning you of imminent death if you go this way preferring to stay away from realism, again keeping the target audience nice and big at the same time giving a unique and fun feel to the game. HoN is far darker and seems to be aiming for realism (this is hard when you are making realistic creatures that don’t exist) but none the less they have had good results so far. Gameplay wise these games will be very similar, with only the smallest differences (but in the end, they may make or break the games as they are in direct competition with each other.)

Finally, on my long winded rant on the subject of MOBAs I will bring your attention to Bloodline Champions a game I feel the developers of both LoL and HoN should be watching carefully, it is for the most part a simple arena game but what is more important is the number of different modes you can play in. Think of a good old FPS King of the Hill match; now picture yourself climbing that hill while in control of Pudge or Master Yi. BC has a spell use system similar to that of the WC3 mod ‘Warlocks’ and consists of fast paced matches lasting less than 10 minutes in a huge variety of scenarios.

The League of Legends forums has had several topics posted in relation to different maps and scenarios and with the open to suggestion attitude of the developers it is likely to make the cut unless it is to hard to do or not as fun as they would like. Heroes of Newerth is shrouded in mystery but to all intents and purposes it is a direct DotA clone, they wont try fix what isn’t broken and want to stick to what works.

In the end my money will be going to whichever provides the best gameplay and in the ideal world isn’t pay to play (something Riot has confirmed will not be the case although expansion buying might be there) but most importantly I would like innovation. Yes, DotA is great, but nothing is perfect and everything can be improved.

In recent times everyone’s favourite Arctic Amphibian has made some very subtle changes to DotA along with some very big ones, in my eyes the most important has been the move to eradicate cloned skills, there was once 3 copies of poison dagger, now it is 3 different skills, 2 of them are similar but the other last was a complete remake.

Icefrog can see what the emerging MOBAs mean and is working hard to keep us happy (at least until LoL or HoN makes him redundant) we have seen big changes as well as a push towards ‘total balance’. On this note I move to the section of the post you are undoubtedly reading this for, the 6.61 beta leaks.

Dota 6.61 Beta 3 Map Changelogs:
=========================

* Fixed natural regeneration on rax
* Fixed Living Armor not regenerating structures properly
* Fixed incorrect sell value on some aghanim scepters
* Fixed Double Damage visual effect to properly show when the user is using low graphics mode
* Reduced Double Edge cooldown (25->12)
* Watchers now have collision. They also have 400 less vision range and give +40 more bounty.
- Various misc code fps stuff
- Undid Sil armor change
- Fixed Reverse Polarity, it properly places them infront of you now
* Fixed an error in the damage calculation method for Plasma Field
* Reduced FPS drops when using Shiva’s Guard and Plasma Field with some custom import files (PGRu-Unexpect3D)
* Improved Faceless Void’s base strength (17->23)
* Restored original cooldown improvement on Scepter for QoP
* Improved Searing Arrows damage from 10/20/30/40 to 20/30/40/50
* Increased projectile speed on Mystic Snake
* Lowered Stone Gaze cooldown (70->35)
* Sven’s Storm bolt now uses the normal unit targeting scheme. No gameplay changes, just the interface visuals.
* Fixed -ns mode
* Fixed Napalm not properly stacking and doing higher constant values [needs playtesting since it may be too useless now]
* Slightly increased Eyes in the Forest cast range (+25) to fix some order issue bugs [make sure u can't abuse it]
* Casting Nature’s Guise on an allied unit will no longer take you out if if you have it on you
* Reverse Polarity now pulls units slightly infront of you instead of all around you
* Lowered Magic Stick/Wand cooldown from 25 to 17
* Added a new icon for Slardar’s Bash (3587)

In bold are the changes I find to be rather important, First we have the buffs to Centaur Warchief, Treant Protector and Magnus, 3 tanks with AoE damage and Disables as well as a very useful buff to the best invisibility spell in the game.

Next on my agenda is the buff to searing arrows, it is official, the frog wants clinkz to backdoor, with strafe active, the damage from your arrows nullifies and then adds damage to your attacks when against tower regen.

Voids base HP is increased by over 100. this does quite a bit to largely nullify the nerf he got on his gain a while back.

The frog has answered Caspians plee to make QoP viable again, and finally, Weaver is officially useless, a buff to Radience now a nerf to the Watchers means that they don’t do as much and they die faster giving the enemy more gold. Perhaps like all frogs, our amphibious friend has a phobia of invisible spiders and ghosts.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 9:24 pm and is filed under DotA Allstars, Easter Eggs, Heroes, Items, Maps, Online Gaming, Releases. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.