My son asked me if I would play league of legends with him, so tried it for the first time. So much going on!
Firstly, how does anyone zero in on what hero they want to play, there are so many of them! I feel like it would take a year just to play enough to decide.
Secondly, the purchase UI seems to have been designed to ensure that a new player can never understand it. I’m sure like all things it becomes clear over time but jeez, did a professional team really work on that thing?
Anyway, 2 defeats from 2 games so far, I write to you from the lobby waiting for the third!
MOBA as a genre didn’t come from WC3. There were quite a lot of predecessors to DotA, both in WC3 itself and in first StarCraft, namely Aeon of Strife is believed to be the first popular MOBA custom map out there.
Blizzard didn’t decide that quirks of WC3 engine are dumb. Yes, they wanted to make a simpler MOBA, but the main reason for lack of funny stuff from WC3 is that they used Galaxy engine for the game, the same one StarCraft 2 was built upon.
And HotS feels less complex not because of Galaxy’s vs WC3’s quirks (the former has plenty, too), but because of lack of gold and shop, shared experience and an actual tutorial at the beginning of the game.