Dota2 is also the by far currently most played game on Steam, being 4 to 5 times more popular than any other. See the link below for some statistics.
"As of October 2012, Riot Games claims League of Legends has over 32 million registrations and averages 12 million players worldwide per day;[5] global concurrent users online regularly peak at over 5 million players, as of March 2013.[6] In July 2012 Xfire released a report stating that League of Legends was the most played PC game in North America and Europe, with 1.3 billion hours logged by players in those regions between July 2011 and June 2012.[48]"
Source for LoL numbers: http://www.riotgames.com/articles/20130312/700/league-legend...
League of Legends on the other hand add a bit of depth to the genre by giving customisation options to champions outside of the main game (runes, masteries, summoner spell). The learning curve should be smoother, as people need to reach level 30 on their "summoner" (account) before they can enter ranked games. They also need to "buy" at least 16 champions on order to participate in ranked games. This will force the player to learn a bit of the game before entering the competitive scene.
Currently League of Legends is definitely the most competitive MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game around and Riot invests heavily in keeping it that way.
IMO, that's really what makes DOTA/clones uninteresting to me - an interesting and strategic action game saddled with a non-relevant RTS interface.
It's a RTSS Real Time Strategy Shooter sort of thing. It's an FPS game that is sort of like a strategy. Not really any of those, but sort of close.
I personally prefer Dota 2 but it's largely subjective.
The biggest difference is probably in business models. While both games use micro-transactions Dota 2 only sells cosmetic items, League of Legends requires you to buy (either via $ or points earned in game) access to champions/heroes.
runes also let you massage a champion a teeeeny bit towards your preferred style of play for a character (defensive or offensive).
untrue. you can get full rune page quite fast (~ month). and once it's done, there's no disadvantage anymore. if you play smartly from very beginning, you can get that done around lvl 30, right when you are allowed to start playing game competitively.
also - champion choice is not that important. especially in low level. and it's better to learn few champions thoroughly than "gotta catch em all" and being good at none.
When you start playing LOL you have to choose from, I think 6 different champions? Which is pretty limited but let you master those 6 before changing them the next week to 6 new champions. I learned the game without problems this way.
DOTA2 let you play with all the champions directly, oh boy was I lost and still am 200hours of games later. I only play "random" so I can learn every hero but I still haven't played 25% of them I would guess.
Also I know many friends who bought champions on LoL, I think it's a very good source of income.
* Much higher level of polish in terms of graphics, animations, voice acting, music, sound effects, ambiance. It has the Valve touch.
* More varied hero play styles, lane formations, and overall build and game strategies.
* Items are much more varied and there are many more items that have abilities.
* Higher skill cap.
It's easier to master mechanically, but I feel it is all around a much better made game. For one, it actually runs smoothly. This could just be my PC, but super lowest settings and custom config on DotA2 still runs sluggishly, while LoL is very responsive and satisfying to play.
Gameplay-wise, DotA is very cutthroat in that a single hero can go rambo and 1v5 the other team if he gets out of control, while LoL generally allows you to come back if you play smartly with your team. The item shop in DotA is terribly confusing, but I suppose you'll learn it if you play long enough.
The only negative things I can say about LoL is: the leveling system and runes/masteries, while helping new players ramp up to competitive level, seem to take a long time to fill out to get on par with a "normal" player. DotA 2 allows you to jump in straight away on the same level of play and with all heroes available. You have to unlock champions in LoL (it takes a while if you take the free route as most do).
TL;DR - LoL is a polished, simplified, beautiful take on the MOBA genre that DotA popularized. Hardcore DotA fans will call it easy/noob-friendly/etc, but in reality it's just different and in my (biased) opinion, better.
Also, 'buying' champions to play with did not sit well with me at all.
Edit: Also, yes, LoL was made to run with much lower-spec PC's than DOTA2. That being said, DOTA2 has much higher levels of polish when it comes to characters, voicing and environment.
The same thing happens in Dota, too (especially if you play smart). The game has very good comeback mechanics. If you're losing you'll be fighting closer to your base (so it takes less time to buy stuff and to go back and heal), you'll probably be around your towers (so you'll have additional firepower), you'll also have better vision and a position on higher ground (same as in real war - higher ground = better position to fight), you'll probably be underleveled and respawn faster if you die, so you can come back into the fights faster, if you kill the higher leveled enemy you get a LOT of gold and experience, etc.
1v5ing in Dota only happens in very low level games where most people don't know the game and their characters. Sadly, many players don't know it and think it's Quake or something :)
Well it only happens if there's too much of a skill gap between the 1 and the 5. The same exact thing would happen between an experienced Quake 3 player vs 5 noobies.
It's quite fun running around with fully stacked: mob boots, infini, lich bane, mejai, occult, rabadon Shaco
and finishing game with score something like 25/2/whatever
Dota 2 is really hard to get around for beginners as compared LoL. But once you are use to it, believe me it is much much better.
As the case of Rambo, it is really a team effort to make one carry hero be given farm and experience, that's the motive of the carry class here for late game.
I single well fought team clash can easily turn the table around. I have won many games playing smart with other team being overpowering. So there is a chance most the time to comeback. Valve has cleverly created suggested items for each phase of the game very well for an easier shopping experience.
I think valve has done a really good job in bringing Dota 2 with perfected balancing.
That all said I think the individual opinion is mostly affected by the game he has played more and start to love the characters and feel of the game.
Another main difference is that League of Legends has scaling magic damage. Because of this, spells are significantly weaker in the early game (due to the fact that you can get items to boost their power as the game progresses). There are no +magic damage items in DotA, so spells are significantly more powerful early game but become less effective compared to auto attack damage as the game progresses.
>Good examples would be denying friendly creeps / towers, lack of stuns and CC, and the inability to dive towers early in the game.
this applies to denying creeps/towers only. there are lot of stuns, snares, slow in LoL. also - tower diving early in the game is a common thing.
Are Dota pro players also LoL pro players? No.
The biggest different between Dota 2 and LoL is pricing model.
Dota 2 is free. Really free. You have access to 100+ heroes from your first game and there isn't a single thing you can buy that has an effect on winning or losing a match. It's all skins, alternate announcers, and other stuff just for fun.
LoL is free... to play. There are a set of heroes that are free at any given time which is constantly rotating. You have to pay to unlock heroes permanently or can unlock them very slowly over time. You will never unlock everyone without paying money. There are additional other systems you have to level up, or can pay to level more quickly, that provide small bonuses to character attributes in game.
This effects more than the price.
For example in Dota 2 one of my favorite modes is "Reverse Draft" where each team picks the OTHER team's heroes. So you try and give your opponent the worst team you can think of. Something like this is impossible in LoL because every person only has access to a small set of heroes.
Runes on the other hand, do allow for slight advantages during a game. They're also free (as in, you can't even buy them with real money), but once you've gathered an amount of in game currency (Influence Points), you have to choose between using those IP to buy runes or champions. So while everything that's able to give you an advantage in the game is free, those investing real money will have a wider range of champions and/or runes sooner.
After all, we talk about a game where you have over 100 champions with completely different skill sets, over 100 in-game items to buy, all creating a huge array of possible plays and counterplays... That at the same time requires split-second reflexes, maintaining map awareness and, the hardest part, good teamwork.
Actually my main problem with LoL is that you have to spend money to access champions. In DotA I'm used to having access to a huge complement of heroes, and a common strategy is choosing heroes specifically because they are powerful against the enemy team (counter-picking). In LoL it's a lot harder since you only have like 20 (or fewer?) heroes available.
Paying for champions is paying for additional content -- content that's free in DotA 2.
No you don't because of Influence points. Playing games acquires you IP which you can use to buy champions. All champions can be bought with IP
[1]: http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=...
Furthermore, even though they've just announced that they've come out of Beta, almost none of the new players have been invited in yet as they're inviting people via waves.
Once all new players actually get in, and Dota 2 opens up in other countries such as China and Korea, these figures will skyrocket by several magnitudes - probably well overtaking World of Warcraft in number of players.