I only have a little bit of experience with HoN and LoL. Almost none with the original Dota, however, a friend of mine is a huge fan of the genre. Played Dota and HoN and he keeps me somewhat up to date with what's going on with at least those two games. What I hear from him, I'm not liking most of the design decisions and the reasoning behind keeping things the same as they were in the original Dota. In several cases they're inserting hurdles for the players, simply because in the original Dota there was a engine limitation that caused an inconvenience. I hear some people are in favor of this kind of stuff, in that it "requires skill." But in my opinion, it's just elitism. A bit "screw you" to new and lesser experienced players that Dota got away with only because sometimes it was unavoidable and there was practically no competition out there, at least none that did it any better. Now, things are different. There is competition, there are alternatives, and I think HoN and LoL are going to go this a lot better than Dota 2 will unless they get their heads out of their butts. Valve is a nice ace to have in the hole, but it won't save them if it's just a crappy, inaccessible game that only the hardest of the hard core Dota players will want to stick with.
Yeah, they're getting a lot of attention now, but that's to be expected. I'm waiting to see what the reactions are once the game is actually being played by a lot of people and not just a few select hard core players. I could be wrong, they might be able to survive on a name alone, they might be able to evolve into something better than I've seen and heard about so far, but I really hope if they make it it's because they've actually done things right and not just because they've got money at their backs.
I for one absolutely hate the "secret shop" and a lot of the holdovers that HoN(to a lesser extent) and LoL(to a greater) have already done away with or improved upon. You'll probably see me sticking to those two games as long as they're still around. If I"m still playing. (The communities of both tend to keep me away from them game unless I get a strong urge to play.)