League of Legends has entered its ninth season and is still as popular as ever. With the season officially underway, everyone is looking to climb the ladder and advance their rank. While everyone wants to carry every game, it can be hard to follow the meta and know which champions are going to offer you the best chance to dominate. While every champion can be played to perfection, there are definitely some top tier picks that will give you an e
DOTA2 was among the first big MOBA games out there, and sort of paved the way for titles like League of Legends . What makes it even more special is that Valve took the original DOTA , a mod of Starcraft , and made it into a clas
Those who think esports occupy a small, forgettable faction of the entertainment industry are unequivocally and undeniably wrong. Esports may seem small due to a lack of mainstream coverage, but the budding industry is a global phenomenon with a fanbase in the hundreds of millions. Still, esports continues to be difficult to wa
Imagine an esports equivalent of ESPN. ESPN works because coverage of most traditional sports is basically the same. You point a camera at the field and watch what happens while two “experts” talk about what’s going on. Esports won’t and can’t work like this. Every game is drastically different from the next, with its own graphics, mechanics, and strategies to be emplo
That might’ve been where it ended but for another custom map in yet another Blizzard real-time strategy game called Defense of the Ancients . The general idea for Defense of the Ancients (which was soon shorted to just DOTA ) was basically the same as Aeon of Strife , only DOTA utilized Warcraft III ‘s new hero units to full effect. The map also added purchasing items, expanded hero skills, and various neutral encampments that could be killed in order to gain an economic advantage over the opposite side at the risk of being caught between a belligerent mercenary camp and an ambushing en
All this seems to indicate that the sun is setting on the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. The latest genre to sweep the gaming world is the battle royale, which rose to prominence in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite . Other games are adding battle royale modes to their multiplayer options, while games like Apex Legends add battle-arena-like special abilities to the battle royale form
Most game modes could canonically be explained away through various means. Modes such as Ultra Rapid Fire need the simple explanation of saying that the mages who manage the league would simply scale champion abilities to allow them to use multiple abilities in rapid succession. But what of othe
Although battle royale games have taken the world by storm the last few years, MOBAs are still holding their own on the market. League of Legends and DOTA2 continue to be among the most popular and classic MOBA titles available, with Heroes of the Storm as a solid third conten
Which is kinda what happened to MOBAs. A few years ago, it seemed like Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas were taking over the world, with a new moba items guide being announced almost every month. Now, most of those games have failed and only a few MOBAs live on to fulfill that ni
League might require a bit of grinding to unlock all the possible Champions and Runes needed, which can be frustrating. However, the good thing about the hero rotation which forces players to pick from a certain pool of heroes in the beginning is that you won’t be overwhelmed right off the
As mentioned several times in this list, the original purpose of the league was to settle disputes between city-states. This role is reinforced by the abundance of military personnel available to select as champions in the game. Characters such as Swain, ruler of the major nation of Noxus, hold lofty titles in the region they repres
You can easily make the argument that video games are a saturated market; anyone who wants to buy a game can easily do so through any number digital distribution platforms for either home console, PC, or mobile device. This doesn’t stop games from being sold, but it does make it a little harder for new games to get noticed. After all, there’s a whole wide world of huge games out there, so why would any gamer bother with something
Today, few companies are looking to create a new MOBA. Dota2 ‘s player count has been on a slow, steady decline while League of Legends’ has mostly plateaued. Riot Games still reports LoL ’s player count as an ever-growing number , one can only assume that’s due to greater international penetration as well as longtime players creating secondary or “smurf” accou
Rocket League is teaming up with Stranger Things for Halloween this year for the Haunted Hallows event, which offers an Upside Down version of the Farmstead map for players to use. There’s even a great big Mind Flayer looming over the field, to give players a little extra spook. And the Halloween in-game currency, Candy Corn, can be used to acquire a bunch of new themed it