As you are well aware, the commercial achievements of DOTA successors like League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth has made MOBA games quite popular on the gaming market. All of them follow a free-to-play model and have very similar game play (how could they not if they are DOTA clones?).  But what makes one MOBA game different from another and what makes one stand out?

Rise of Immortals is a game created by Petroglyph games. It was released on the 30th September 2011 via Steam.  After picking your Immortal, the first difference you will encounter as you enter the game is that you’ll be placed in a social hub. In this hub you can chat with other players, use emotes (or other RP action), go to a market in order to obtain runes, form a party with your friends and, of course, enter battle.

You can fight on 4 different map types, from which you can choose from 2 PvP maps and 2 PvE ones.  In PvP there is a classic 5v5 map and also a new 2v2 map. Personally I think it is a great addition because when there are not people online, I can still play with my friend without fear of being matched with retards.

The PvE modes seem to be quite interesting. The first one is 1v1 playing on single lane with one tower protecting the enemy base. I would recommend it for anyone who would like to test an Immortal that they are not familiar with or if you want to try out a new build. The second map offers a 3v3 experience playing versus bots with a lot of creeps and bosses on the map. Also after you defeat your opponents, destroy their base and you think it’s over… Think again as a giant dragon spawns and it heads directly to burn your base into the ashes. Fear not as you can destroy crystal prisons that are on the map, which will summon allies to grant you a little help with the nasty dragon.  You can also release them beforehand to help you with tanking turrets or whatever you need them to do. It seems to be simple but it leaves place for a lot of tactical decisions and I’ve never seen something like this in any other MOBA game.

The Visuals

The graphic of RoI are alright but then I’ve never seen MOBA games with shiny looks and games from the genre look more or less the same. Although, the music playing in the background is something I like. The controls are tight and I have no issues with them whatsoever. On top of that you can rebind any key you want. Also the ability to use regular cast, smart cast, and self cast is everything you could expect from any MOBA control options.

New in the Genre

The social hub and multiple map choices are not everything new in RoI. The levelling system is different as well. You do not level you account or summoner in this game, instead you gain new levels for the Immortal you are currently playing. The more you progress, the more special talents you can unlock, which are designed specifically for your champion. Also you might unlock a fifth ability to further enhance your gameplay.

Free-to-play model

Rise of Immortals is a free to play and free to download game. For playing the game you earn in game currency which you can spend on unlocking new Immortals and artefacts (sort of like runes in League of Legends). Obviously you can buy it for real life money as well. Skins for each champion and many different boosts, for example a +experience gain, can be obtained for real currency.

Summary

Overall I had fun playing this game; it brings a few new ideas to the genre like 3v3 PvE mode and the social hub with a MMO touch to it. The people I encountered were mostly kind with decent manners, nothing like the 12 years old flooding HoN or LoL servers. The community is small so far, which has both advantages and disadvantages, but the game is extremely young so let’s give it some time to fully develop. Will it grow to the sizes of LoL or HoN or will it stay in the shadows? Time will tell.

You can download this game via Steam account or on www.riseofimmortals.com

To see how the game looks you can watch this video I recently made about the game:

Introduction

Anybody who has taken an interest in e-Sports over the last year may have known that it has grown rapidly. In this blog I’ll look to see what we, as a community, can do to help it grow bigger, better and faster in 2012.

Let’s just take a quick look at some of the statistics of arguably the biggest e-Sport event in 2011

As you can see MLG not only trumped some of America’s largest TV Networks, but it grew by 225% in one year. You’d struggle very hard to find another sport that has ever had a year this good.

20,000 people turned up to watch games at MLG Anaheim. Thats almost as large as some of the top league football stadiums in the UK.

e-Sports is definitely growing huge. Let’s see what we can do to make it bigger.

To start things off, I’ll take a look at what the fans can do to grow the scene. I’ll add more parts to this blog, including what the gamers can do for the fans and what we can do collectively to grow e-sports in to a world-wide recognized trend.

Nevertheless, on with the chat.

Communicate.

Almost all gamers now have a way of communication with their fans. Whether it is stream chat, in game chat, an email you can contact them on or forums on a website. Everybody wants to hear support and feedback on how they are doing. Companies now spend more and more sponsoring e-Sports. Make it your duty to give feedback.

If you enjoyed a stream, tell the streamer what you enjoyed. If you didn’t enjoy it, let them know in a constructive manner how they could improve it. The chat section is read by almost all streamers and they will want to do anything they can to give their stream a better viewing pleasure.

It doesn’t just stop at stream comments. I’m sure most people here have a facebook or twitter account. If you enjoyed the stream, share it with your friends. At first I was a little skeptical about sharing gaming links with my friends. I just posted it to a small group of close friends at first and then slowly start posting it to more and more friends. I can safely say I’ve introduced around 50 people to the wonders of twitch.tv and own3d just by adding links to the streams I watch on facebook. Those 50 people may otherwise have never contributed to this scene.

Show your family what it is you spend your time doing. Did you find something cool on youtube? Send it to friends. Get more people involved. This one of the easiest ways to get more and more people hooked on the e-Sports scene and in turn, grow the games bigger.

Consuming. Don’t just buy a new Razer mouse, or win some neat gaming gear from a competition on facebook, talk about it. Let your friends know, let the businesses know. Did anybody tell ASUS that you thought it was awesome that they just sponsored an 8 man tournament for Starcraft and that you’d love to see more of it? Go and tell them. Did anybody think to email the guys who run Dreamhack and let them know that Dreamhack Winter was amazing?

Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson – Pro Starcraft 2 gamer, and team captain of Evil Geniuses describes this topic best.

“When Redbull sponsors Bomber and then gets 30k emails from avid SC2/Bomber fans about how excited they are that Redbull is getting involved do you think they go “ah gee thanks” or do they go “Woah, we’ve never had that before.. what if we sponsor another player? Team? House? League…” This is ACTUALLY how it works. If they KNOW their investment is being received by aware and consuming people they will invest more and more. If Bomber gets sponsored and we all go “yay” and nobody moves much beyond that we increase the chances of an event like that meaning not much. Could Redbull invest anyways? Sure, but why leave that to chance? Why not up our chances of getting a huge company involved?“

Talk about it guys. Let the masses know.

Just a view of the audience at Dreamhack Winter 2011

Support your favourite players.

Again I understand not everybody has the money to subscribe or donate to gamers and fund them directly. But have you ever thought to email that guy that gives advice on his streams? Did anybody think to tell Anotherx, Fabio and Glypticx you thought it was awesome that they won the European Invitational? The more attention the gamers get the better they feel and perform. The game needs the players for it to be successful.

I personally can’t vouch for much here, not being a pro-gamer and all. But when somebody comments on my work and tells me what a great job I’ve done, or gives me some helping words after a bad time, it inspires me to do even better next time.

This is perhaps a topic I’d have to go in to more detail on in the future. But make it your business to let the players know how awesome you think they are.

What can you do for WoW specifically?

Whatever it is you want to do. You’ve got to be the change you want to see.
I personally want to see WoW as an e-Sport again, so I do everything in my power to inform as many people to try out PvP.

I’ve taken time out of my day to organize tournaments on different servers, I’ve added my own prize-pool to every tournament, but people have been kind enough to donate too. Some have been successful, some haven’t, but keep trying. If Blizzard see an epic server-wide tournament thread on the forums and 500 people tune in and watch it not much is going to happen. If these tournaments start cropping up on every server Blizzard will start to notice. If this is what the players want, they’ll start to cater to it. Think of it like this – If everybody stopped buying Diet Coke and just bought regular Coke, what would Coca Cola invest their resources in?

Talk to Blizzard. Let them know how you feel. If you felt that the change to Deep/Ring was good, go and tell them. If Blizzard get 50,000 tickets saying that people are happy that the deep/ring combo was balanced out, they’ll take more notice of the PvP guy in the future.

Can you influence other people to take a small part of their time to try out what it is you stand for? If you can, there is a chance those people might just influence more people too.

Maybe you are the only person in your raiding guild that takes part in arena. Make it your business to introduce your raiding team to arena. Get them all hooked on arena for a while. Have you told them that you watch Hydra’s stream till 4am because it’s a right laugh? Maybe they’ll tune in and end up getting interested in PvP too.

Be creative with this. Perhaps you could have in-guild competitions running? The lowest rated individual has to buy flasks for the guild that week?

Why do this?

The biggest reason to do this is because you want to. Make it your business to want to make this scene bigger and better. Anybody who follows the GSL knows that Tastosis make it their business to tell everybody to get Starcraft trending on social networking sites. They don’t do this because they are paid to. They do this because of their love of e-Sports.

How awesome would it be if more and more people could make a living from gaming?

The scene isn’t going to grow much without help from the fans. Companies can pump millions in to tournaments and teams every year, but if they don’t see the return they aren’t going to do it for much longer. It’s up to you guys to help grow this.

Instead of 20,000 people at MLG Anaheim this year, can we get 40,000? Let’s aim to double Hydra’s regular viewers on his stream. Let’s aim to send an email out weekly to a business letting them know you think it’s awesome that they are supporting your community. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could give more people the chance to earn their living from gaming?

The more we talk about it and share it, the more it grows.

If you guys liked this blog, why not tweet it, re-write it in your own language, read it out on youtube. The message gets out because we spread it. 2011 was a good year for e-Sports, let’s make 2012 even better.

I’d like to add that my inspiration from this blog comes entirely from one man, if he can influence me, I’m sure he can influence a few others. If you get a spare moment please go and read it here

Conclusion: A little bit about myself

So a few people might know me, I’ve been lurking around the site for a while now. I’m pretty sure I’ve read every blog since the new website came out. I try my best to leave a comment or tell the blogger how I felt about it. If you guys liked my blog, let me know, if there’s something that was awful and didn’t like at all, please let me know. I’ll do my best to cater it to your needs.

I’ve been what I’d called a “gamer” for 8 years now. I’ve spent upwards of 5 hours a day playing games for fun for the past 6 years. I’m not what I’d call a successful gamer, or even talented, but I’ve got an interested in the scene. From the first tournament I ever watched (Guild Wars World Championship) I fell in love with the idea of making money from gaming. For me, it’s out of reach, but I’m pretty sure for others it’s well within your grasp. I feel for me, it’s important to give back from where I take. I take a lot of pleasure in watching streams and playing games in general, so I feel I’d be doing injustice if I didn’t give back to the scene.

I currently can be found lurking on Stormscale-EU Horde under the alias – Hêrøclass

If there’s anything else you’d like to know, feel free to message me in game.

Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you.

You stay classy, Hydramist.

Download the MP3

When the Vengeance mechanic was initially announced there was a slew of worry in the WoW community about the mechanic been overpowered in PvP. Blizzard were quick to chime in and declare the ”mechanic is only there to help with raid gear scaling, not to give tanks a fun toy for PvP”. They even flat out stated that “If Vengeance ever gets to be a problem in PvP; we’ll just remove it, plain and simple”.

Up until now vengeance was somewhat balanced on the basis it didn’t stack up awfully fast and had a short duration. Unfortunately, the changes to the mechanic in 4.3 have made tank specs capable of some absurd burst.

The main and most common culprits of this burst damage are Blood DKs. There’s a myriad of examples on a number of forums, but just from personal experience I’ve been crit for 50k followed by 23k in the space of two GCDs by a Blood DK. This was with around 3800 resilience. However, don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just DKs. A protection warrior hit me for (with devatates and white hits inbetween) a a 8k Concussive Blow (stuns for 5 seconds), 38k Shield Slam, a 20k Shockwave (2 second DR stun) and finished it off with a 17k Shield Slam. This particular example was in a random BG and there was only a Warlock nuking him at the time.

In fact, for the purposes of this post a friend and I conducted a little experiment. He let me log on his DK while he popped on his Rogue (around 3800 resilience) on another account. We stacked Vengeance and then I preceded to Death Strike him four times (Empowered Rune Weapon). The result was the loss of around 96% of his health pool. Now, of course, we ignored Shiv here and got lucky with four crits. However, coupled with the lack of an enrage dispeller or any form of CC on the dispeller, this is OP by far. The amusing thing here is my rogue friend was pumping damage into me. He wasn’t simply trying to build Vengeance; he was trying to kill me and failing to do so. Yet, with one or two Death Strikes I could devastate his health pool.

To be fair, once dispelled, Vengeance didn’t become active again for another 15-20 seconds. However, burst damage on this scale should not be allowed from a Shadow Dancing Rogue or stars aligned Mind Blast crit from a Shadow Priest, never mind tank specs. Indeed, the burst damage of Retribution Paladins with cooldowns is pushing it, but this tank damage is just absurd.

Oh and by the way the DK we used to test this had a Vicious Weapon, mostly vicious gear and a few Ruthless pieces. He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, well geared.

The most amusing suggestion to counter this has been to not attack the tank in the first place. Of course, this isn’t practical whatsoever especially in rated BGs. Indeed, you need to kill flag carriers. In arena, their high level of survivability coupled with this damage is unacceptable. In fact, even as the last person standing in 3v3 arena, they’d still pose a threat. They can survive a decent amount of time. Actually, one Strangulate or Concussive Blow on a healer and a tank could still turn round and smash anyone to bits. This isn’t to say this is or will be common, but the possibility of it happening is certainly there.

If tanks are to have any viability it should be as annoying nuisance that takes a while to die, providing they have resilience of course. They should lose to any DPS or healer in a 1v1 situation. They should not, under any circumstances, have the capability to kill anything. Those rats you see running around cities should pose a challenge to a heroic geared tank.

As Blizzard stated themselves about tanks in Wrath PvP:

We’re hoping that Rated BGs give Prot specs a useful role similar to tanking in defending towers, carrying flags, etc. A tank in an Arena needs to have a lot of control and damage just like everyone else to be competitive, which coupled with their inherent survivability and resistance to being controlled got us into trouble.

Hopefully they’ll be quick to fix this. They’ve certainly nerfed much lesser damage than this before today for PvP reasons.

To summarise: It is inexcusable for specs with such high levels of survivability to output these ridiculous amounts of damage.

If any of you have any stories or even screenshots of been hit for ridiculous amounts by tank specs, please do share.

Episode 1 will be posted on Sunday or Monday for you to listen to or download!

We’d like to thank Pookz and Daanzka for both finding time to talk about the subjects raised on the show!