MMOBA (Massive Multiplayer Online Battle Arena). A player vs player environment where a user controls a specific hero. Games are mostly 5v5 and each player has there own sets of skills and abilities to destroy the opposing team. Basically there are two cities that the heroes must protect and the objectives are to destroy the city as well as kill the heroes.

History
In Blizzard's Warcraft 3 it gave the users the ability to create their own custom games. People then created hero base games where users would level up, buy items, and protect a city. Once that became popular fighting artificial intelligence, people began to create Battle Arenas where players could fight players. Unfortunately for the battle arenas many of the characters were imbalanced and the games were just an all out slug fest and item massing. Soon Defense of the Ancients arrived along with several other MMOBA, birth of the new genre. DOTA became one of the most popular games in the Warcraft 3 custom game list. In fact if you go look at the game list you will see it is mostly filled with DOTA games.

Soon after the creators of DOTA were able to produce two different games using the same concept from DOTA. League of Legends ( LoL ) and Heroes of Newearth ( HoN ).

LoL vs HoN
For people just starting off in the genre LoL is definitely the choice for you. One main problem DOTA had was that people just learning the game would find themselves always losing, always causing their team to lose, and then they would be barraged with hateful comments from your teammates for being a new person (newbie). For those thick skinned and willing to learn strategies, tips, tricks, and trek through the abuse they would finally learn the game and see the merits of the game. Unfortunatly not many are able to rise to this occasion. League of Legends does a good job helping out new people learn the game. One person who is new and bad will not ruin the game as much in LoL as they would in HoN.

For Heroes of Newearth (HoN) if you are a newbie and you lose a few lives. You may have just cost the game for your team (seriously). Reason for this is when you die the other team gets stronger and a slippery slope arrives. New people will see that they can cause the entire team to lose with just a few simple mistakes (also be sure to know your team will let you know, that you are terrible, they will not hesitate to do so). But the team play in HoN is tremendously stupendous. You really have to work as a team, there is no solo person that can take out the entire team. The better team work you have, the more likely you will win.

Conclusion
League of Legends is a great game for those just starting off wanting to learn the new genre and you also will have the ability to learn the game at a much easier pace. While Heroes of Newearth will seem a lot more hardcore as the game does not take likely to people who are learning. Since the fact is one person can ruin the entire game. But the experience of a 5 man squad destroying another 5 man squad is one of the greatest feelings in the world. If you take the time to learn Heroes of Newearth you will see the addictive nature of the game.

Currently (March 2010) Heroes of Newearth is still in Beta and hopefully you can get your hands on the beta key. While League of Legends is now available for the public to try.

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