What is a MOBA?

Smite, League of Legends, Dota 2, Honor of Kings, and Pokémon Unite. Each of these games are all what we call a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), and we will investigate what defines this popular subgenre.

The defining aspects of a MOBA game start with two teams of five that fight on a predetermined map. The players will all start by choosing a unique character with upgradable special abilities and a role. Pre-game strategy is a very important part of this game as well, as choosing the wrong characters can lose the game before it even begins.

The teams then begin to try to beat the enemy team by gaining resources to become stronger, eliminating the opposing team, controlling the map, destroying enemy structures, and completing other objectives.

The parent genre of these MOBAs, Real Time Strategy (RTS), was the start of this now-booming style of gameplay. The very beginning of MOBAs is traced back to two games,

The first game was Future Cop: LAPD’s game mode Precinct Assault where the destroying the nexus, or main, base was the defining feature. The second is the 1989 game Herzog Zwei because of its lane-pushing and RTS elements.

These games, however, are not what truly started the movement towards MOBAs. That honor belongs to arguably one of the greatest RTS games in history, Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft. It is a popular opinion that the custom map Aeon of Strife in 1998 was the true start of interest in MOBA style games as many of the features, including controlling a single hero unit, became the basis of the new subgenre up to today.

This hype created a vacuum that sucked up modders to create new and improved maps and gameplay mechanics for games like StarCraft and then Warcraft III, which had a new and improved world editor tool. This eventually culminated in famous modders such as Steve Feak, also known as “Guinsoo”, and IceFrog, to create the now-popular games League of Legends and Dota 2.

Teams are usually made up of five roles, Tank, Bruiser, Carry, ADC (Attack Damage Carry), and Support. There is a simple summary for all five below:

• Tanks are high HP (Health Points) and defence melee fighters that are usually found in the top lane, duo lane, and in the jungle with a focus on survivability.
• Bruisers are medium to high HP often with life steal and high damage. They are usually found in the top lane of jungle
• Carries are scaling characters that are often weak early game but become very powerful later on. They are often found in the mid or top lane.
• ADCs are ranged characters that focus on damage and mobility to stay alive. These stay in the duo lane with their support or tank.
• Supports are healers and buffers that rely on their abilities to support the team with crowd control or other support abilities. They are found in the duo lane with an ADC.

Now on to the important part, how do you play a MOBA? The first thing you must know is that there are multiple phases to each game.

Early Game Laning Phase- Usually you will first be sent to a lane according to your role, or the role of your character. You will then grind resources by defeating what players call creeps, or units that either run down either lane and are on a team, or neutral creeps that are inside the jungle.

Mid-game Team Fighting- This section of the game is centered around fighting in groups to take out the enemies and push towers to try to get closer to the main objective.

Late-game Team Fighting- If you make it to the late game with extra-long respawn timers, then now is the time when taking out any enemy on the other team can win you the game. Typically, during this phase everyone on both teams is equal in levels and money so your lead depends how good your team composition is compared to theirs.

MOBAs are some of the most popular and watched video games in the world, and in some countries like South Korea, MOBAs seen just under the Olympic Games in popularity, even excusing popular Esports player Faker from military service for his performance in the Asian Games. For example, compared to the 2019 Super Bowl with 100.7 million views overall, the League of Legends World Championships had over 100 million viewers as well.

It is also worth noting that Dota 2 had an impressive peak concurrent viewer count on Twitch of almost two million people worldwide in 2021. Also, the 2021 Dota 2 International prize pool had a whopping forty-million-dollar prize pool, achieving the largest cash prize in Esports history.