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[Neonivek]

The heart of what makes a MOBA is a competitive RPG

Well no, at its heart it is lane defense... that is the only real requirement for something to be a MOBA.

Everything else is completely extraneous.

Even being an RPG, items, even skills are completely unimportant to the sub-genre and you could easily make a MOBA fighting game or a MOBA Dodgeball game. Hence why I call the sub-genre creatively bankrupt. It isn't even a highly constrained type of game, people just conform to the box.

[EnigmaticHat]

That's not true.  Are jungler characters not playing a MOBA?  And, more to the point, if you were gaining experience and gold through some other means wouldn't the core gameplay of the genre still work?  Whereas if you had a generic FPS with no stats and all you were doing was pushing lanes, that would be A a shit game and B not a MOBA as most people would define it.

[Neonivek]

That's not true.  Are jungler characters not playing a MOBA?  And, more to the point, if you were gaining experience and gold through some other means wouldn't the core gameplay of the genre still work?  Whereas if you had a generic FPS with no stats and all you were doing was pushing lanes, that would be A a shit game and B not a MOBA as most people would define it.

Jungler is a specialist character who is capable of playing outside the lanes, specific to MOBAs that have Jungles.

But Demigod, for example, is a MOBA and it featured no Jungle.

As for A and B... The quality of a game doesn't include or exclude it from MOBA and (B) these are the same people who say Zelda is an RPG because "it has a story". The secret is distilling a genre down to its very essence until only the bare essentials remain.

[Levi]

Closed Beta starts Oct 27th. 

Also there will be stress test weekends where they will let a lot of people in to play apparently.

[Shadowlord]

You can trace abilities-mapped-to-keys way back. In the DOS real time isometric RPG The Summoning, each of the magic types was mapped to a key for casting the selected spell from the school. That was from 1993 or 1994 iirc? 1992.

In Nox you had the action bar where you could map spells or abilities, iirc. That was by Westwood from around 1998 I think? 2000.

And of course in recent-ish games... In the Witcher 2, I mapped each sign to the qwerty keys, and just like in a MOBA can cast any of them with one key press.

(Of course in Duke Nukem 3D you could map multiple functions to the same key - I mapped open door, use medkit, and mighty kick to the same key, and also mapped mighty kick to the fire key so I could kick while I kicked.  )

P.S. Didn't check dates because I'm on my phone. Dates corrected!

I am looking forward to trying Overwatch, at any rate. 

[EnigmaticHat]

Closed Beta starts Oct 27th. 

Also there will be stress test weekends where they will let a lot of people in to play apparently.

Oh hey, the very last day of working at my current job.

[EnigmaticHat]

"Slime to Seep"

Well, the beta is coming out real soon.  Hope I get in... it would be really nice to finally get to play a multiplayer game from the beginning, when everyone else is bad at it too.

[i2amroy]

Well, the beta is coming out real soon.  Hope I get in... it would be really nice to finally get to play a multiplayer game from the beginning, when everyone else is bad at it too.

Wouldn't that be wonderful.

[Shadowlord]

Heh, indeed. But some people will probably already be better, just because they're better at FPSes in general.

[EnigmaticHat]

I was a monster scout in TF2 a couple years back, and I'm still on the high end of pubs.  There's no way I don't chew up as Tracer if I get into the Beta first day.  I mean Overwatch is a different game but the playstyle for those two classes seems pretty similar from what I've seen.

[Shadowlord]

Good luck then!

[WealthyRadish]

So the game's open for preorder ($60).

The price seems really steep, and knowing Blizzard I'd guess that access to the closed betawill only been given to people who prorder, so I wouldn't wait up on an invitation. I'll bet it'll also have cosmetic microtransactions (and probably won't get a discount for ~12 years). This is probably the best news Valve could've hoped for; a full priced release seems like a fairly huge barrier these days.

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, I was just checking my invite status when I noticed the preorder.  I wouldn't count on any invites either. 

Frustrating, and I dunno why they think they can make a game like this work full-price, but blizzard is known for magic.

[Bastus]

I think it will be a hit, even though it's not F2P as many people predicted/hoped (including myself).

But I have to agree to Taz here, only reason I was thinking about checking it out was because I thought it would be f2p. As a full price release however I really don't "need" it. Don't get me wrong I don't think it will be any worse than before just because it's not f2p and as soon as the price drops a bit I will be in, but knowing me I am better of staying with the f2p options I have(TF2, LoL, DOTA2).

The other think is that I really don't get that decision, are they afraid after Heroes of the Storm wasn't as big as everyone thought it would be? Or do they simply think there is no way it could generate profit the same way TF2 does? I would love to know what they were thinking.

[Shadowlord]

Good luck, Blizzard, I guess. I would have tried it if it were free. I can't see throwing $60 at a multiplayer game that I know next to nothing about and might not like.