MOBA

The Intro

MOBA is an acronym for “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena”, this is a genre of action adventure games. As the name suggest, more than one player play this game online, and they ought to compete with each other by using their computer or gaming device.

Origin

In 1998, United States based gaming company “Blizzard Entertainment” developed a custom mapmaker tool 'StarEdit' for the game “Star Craft”, which was a “RTS” ('Real Time Strategy') game. This tool was used by different gaming fans or modders to create different maps, a fan by the name of 'Aeon64' created a completely different custom map for the game, this map was known as “Aeon of Strife” (AOS), this was the first known MOBA game.

Popularity

Aeon of Strife created 4 players to compete against stronger computer unit, it was so different that gamers started describing it a new genre of game, and it gets a name of “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena”. After entry of AOS, RTS games keep inspiring new MOBA genre. However, with development of new games which were coming with multiple inspirations, this strategy becomes a complete genre in itself.

Development

Most popular games of this genre were “Defense of the Ancients” (2003), “League of Legends” (2009), Realm of the Titans (2010), these were custom map inspired by another popular RTS Game “Warcraft III” (2002). MOBA remained into the gaming world as a subgenre of “RTS” until other genre of games started inspiring it. In 2014, Hi-Rez Studios Published “Smite” which was developed by Titan Forge Games, Smite was a different game in which players controlled the character of God or Goddess, this game become so popular that this is still available to play.

Struggle for establishment

Although, MOBA games were popular genre and most of the publishers were giving free trial in all games to let players decide if they make it successful, however, not every game was worth to remain on gaming world.

Some games were shutdown due to legal reasons, for example Uber Entertainment's popular game “Super Monday Night Combat” (2012) was shutdown in 2018, because it was unable to compel with the European Union's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Some games were shutdown which were unsuccessful in Beta testing, for example “Infinite Crisis” (2015), which was developed by Turbine and published by Warner Brothers, it was released in 26th March 2015, but was shutdown in 14 August 2015 (less than 5 months).

Comeback

Some MOBA games, which were shutdown for some reasons are in attempt to come back on some possibilities, the best example for this is “Dawngate” (2014), which was developed by Waystone Games and published by Electronic Arts. Due to unpopularity, Dawngate was shutdown in 90 days after it's beta release, however, it gained attention of fans due to trademark. Some fans are in talk with Electronic Arts to gain the rights of the name “Dawngate”, and launch it again with a remake.

Well Done

There are still some games which become popular and are still played, such as Stunlock Studios' “Battlerite” (2017), Carbon Games' “AirMech” (2018), NetEase's mobile game “Marvel Super War” (2019) etc.

The Strategy

The gaming strategy of MOBA genre is to create two teams of warriors in a digital battle arena. In both teams, each warrior or character have an own battle quality, which is comparable to other characters in strength and weakness, but each of them have different capabilities to attack and defend, this makes every character unique in itself. The common playing rule of MOBA is to select a unique character and defeate the opponent in whatever condition is designed by the game.