Quote (Crossed @ May 5 2012 07:49pm)

After playing all 3 of these games extensively and at a semi-top competitive level here is my 2cents and general opinion:

Heroes of Newerth
Pros:
The only game that got the Spectate system right. I do not want to watch a friend or anyone for that matter with a shitty 3 minute delay hearing all reactions and everything in vent well before the event happens.
Best Art and feel to the game IMO, maybe my opinion is a bit skewed because I've played this game the longest but nevertheless.

Cons:
Shitty, Greedy, money hungry company, pretty much every new skin they make you will have to throw down real money to get and if you don't have a legacy account these are definitely out of your grasp.
Pretty hard for new players to get into, with the amount of smurfs and general douchebaggery any new player attempting to get into this game will be met with malice and a bit of a losing streak before they start to enjoy the game.

Conclusion:
A fun game and a very entertaining community, but if you are the kind of person who cares about stats or other mundane things I'd recommend you stay away from HoN, it'll just give you heartache.


League of Legends
Pros:
I like their matchmaking system the best. You need to get level 30 before you can even play ranked (which will take about 2-3 months of casual play) and even if you can play ranked you don't feel obligated to do so because you still get IP for playing regular games. This also filters out a lot of smurfs and general asshats who might otherwise fuck up your ranked games, if you're being a douchebag and get your account suspended we won't be seeing you in another ranked game for a couple of days.

Cons:
It might just be me but once you've more or less mastered all the heroes or even before this, the game gets stale fast. Every single game you can expect the same boring line-up (AD/Support Bot, Jungle, Solo Top, Mid), the meta doesn't really ever change except for some heroes becoming higher "tier" with patches and shit.
The game also feels a lot less challenging than HoN or Dota, in general all skills seem to do about 70% less damage and require about 70% less mana resulting is less skillful precision and strategy and more of you just sitting in your lane spamming skills. Also everybody has a "Get-away" ability if they so choose.

Conclusion:
Fun game for awhile and pretty noob-friendly, there's also an entirely different game mode if you like the capture-the-points sort of play style, but once you get sort of close to the top if you don't find a team and go competitive it will probably get really boring for you.


Dota 2
Now since this game is still in Beta I obviously haven't played it nearly as much as the other 2 games but I'll still give you my opinion on it
Pros:
If you've got ambitions to make it big in the MOBA gaming industry then getting good at Dota 2 is probably for you.
Valve is a good company and I feel they are striving hard to make Dota 2 a big E-Sports name.

Cons:
I don't like the art style and general feel of the game, as of now moving around in this game feels like I have a ping of 300-400 in HoN or LoL.
Also as of now this game feels like it has a much slower pace than HoN. I feel like it's a downgrade reversing some things S2 did to make HoN a better game like synergizing many heroes to make their skills work better together and general map balancing.

Conclusion:
If I was going to strive big, get on a competitive team and try to make a living playing videogames in the MOBA field this is the game I'd be playing.
But as a casual MOBA player this is not the game for me.

Quote (sMACKTRiCKz @ May 8 2012 11:31am)

Bolded parts:

Yes, it used to feel very slow and delayed. The fixed that recently, and I find the servers to actually be alot better than HoN servers (never had a "lag" server yet)

Also, thinking HoN is more balanced and synergized is just wrong. If you play more dota2 and watch more competitive streams, you will understand.

Quote (Ectasy @ May 2 2012 01:27pm)

In my opinion, no one has a right to assert an opinion on HoN vs LoL vs DotA 2 without having played both extensively. I think it's pretty fucking obvious that 99% of the people who started with LoL will stay with LoL, with the same for HoN players. The truth is, unless you're dedicated to giving the other game a shot, you're not going to spend enough time playing it to actually like it or anything.

With that said, I think that LoL is (obviously) more popular, partly due to its cartoonish appearance which appealed to a bunch of young people, and also due to the fact that it was free off the bat (attract people with no money/kids, slowly start attracting more).
Also, as a HoN player I can say that S2 is an incredibly bad company which has a public relations disaster at least once a month. Dunno about Riot, but I'm pretty sure anything is better than S2's comical attempts to handle customer relations.

Quote (sMACKTRiCKz @ May 8 2012 06:31am)

Bolded parts:

Yes, it used to feel very slow and delayed. The fixed that recently, and I find the servers to actually be alot better than HoN servers (never had a "lag" server yet)

Also, thinking HoN is more balanced and synergized is just wrong. If you play more dota2 and watch more competitive streams, you will understand.

Quote (sMACKTRiCKz @ May 2 2012 10:36pm)

HoN is becoming trash
LoL was always trash
Dota2 is good

Quote (BowlerJoe @ 17 May 2012 08:04)

Of the 10 or so people I play network 5v5 HoN 3.8 with, 10/10 agree we will be going back to LoL when we get back from deployment.

HoN snowballs even worse than LoL (didn't think it was even possible) due to gold loss on death, character balance is FUBAR in our collective opinion.

As far as what Crossed said about LoL having 70% lower mana cost and 70% less damage, I would say it's more like 70% lower cost, and 70% more damage.
HoN is so slow paced and grinding and back and forth it's unbelivable. In LoL at lvl 2 or 3 (3-4 minutes into the game) you can kill someone in two volleys. In HoN there is no point in the game where it takes less than about 5 good engagements to force someone back.

Quote (BowlerJoe @ May 17 2012 12:04pm)

Of the 10 or so people I play network 5v5 HoN 3.8 with, 10/10 agree we will be going back to LoL when we get back from deployment.

HoN snowballs even worse than LoL (didn't think it was even possible) due to gold loss on death, character balance is FUBAR in our collective opinion.

As far as what Crossed said about LoL having 70% lower mana cost and 70% less damage, I would say it's more like 70% lower cost, and 70% more damage.
HoN is so slow paced and grinding and back and forth it's unbelivable. In LoL at lvl 2 or 3 (3-4 minutes into the game) you can kill someone in two volleys. In HoN there is no point in the game where it takes less than about 5 good engagements to force someone back.

Quote (BowlerJoe @ May 17 2012 05:04am)

HoN is so slow paced and grinding and back and forth it's unbelivable. In LoL at lvl 2 or 3 (3-4 minutes into the game) you can kill someone in two volleys. In HoN there is no point in the game where it takes less than about 5 good engagements to force someone back.