Okay, so this has been a really burning and most debated topic among the online gaming community. Half of the people believe that DOTA 2 is better than League of Legends and the other half believe the contradiction. Since I am also a gamer, and I play both DOTA 2 and League of Legends, I’m going to give you an insight in my psychology.

DOTA 2 is the third online game I ever played in my lifetime. The first was Counter-Strike(all 1.6, Source and Global Offensive included). Then I moved on to play Clash of Clans by the influence of some of my classmates. Then I came to acknowledge DOTA 2 just about 4 years ago. I had seen people playing DOTA(I didn’t know it was DOTA 2) before I started playing it myself, and I always thought that it was a really boring game because I wasn’t familiar with any sort of MOBA. I always used to think why these people are wasting their time and money to play a boring game like DOTA in internet cafes. And 4 years ago, I heard many of my close buddies saying “DOTA is an awesome game, you need to at least try it”. Since my buddies asked me humbly to try it, I wanted to give it a shot.

When I first downloaded the game and started playing it, I found the strategies really fascinating, you know, how a so-called HERO can be built with different ITEMS. I had never played an online game which had so many variables and was so unpredictable. I started to take the game seriously and was getting good at the game and another of my friend said, “You play DOTA? Then why don’t you try out League of Legends too? It’s a MOBA just like DOTA and I like playing LoL more than DOTA”. That statement, from a fellow gamer, made me think – if I find DOTA so fascinating, another game with the same mentality, strategies and patterns couldn’t be boring. I wanted to explore all sorts of online games since I was just exposed to this genre seriously.

That’s the story of how I started playing both of these competitive games, just because I wanted to know the real kick and meaning of gaming. I had already started taking the gaming career seriously when I played Counter-Strike and now I had found out about two more gems that could help me become a professional gamer. On this date, 20th April 2018(UTC + 5:45), I continue playing both DOTA 2 and LoL. I find it most fascinating that the players of respective games bully the players of their counterparts.

You know, being someone who plays both the game, I hate this kind of behavior. You do watch MCU movies even though you are a hardcore DC Comics fan, don’t you? So why can’t we just accept that both the games can be good in their own way?

Now for the comparison between DOTA 2 and League of Legends, these are all for me, and I will try to convince what’s the difference between these two games. Firstly, DOTA 2 has a pretty much black and dark theme, just like DC movies, while LoL has pretty much lighter theme, just like MCU movies. Everyone loves the game they played first and don’t want other competitions to their game genre. They all want the game they play to have more players than any other games. To me, I don’t have time to think about that since both games hold their own importance. I normally play DOTA 2 only when I have a bad internet connection since bot match in DOTA 2 doesn’t need an internet connection, but I play LoL more when I have a good internet connection. I don’t even have the need to play DOTA 2 online since I already play LoL.

Everyone has their own choice and for me, I am totally biased towards LoL. I only play DOTA 2 online when I have a bunch of friends with me who also play DOTA 2. Other than that, I don’t like playing DOTA 2 alone. LoL suits me more since it has many components that DOTA 2 doesn’t even have. The character we control is called HERO in DOTA 2 and CHAMPION in LoL. Since DOTA 2 is really really slow on releasing new heroes, I think the game is quite the same in most of the patches. What are the latest three hero releases in DOTA 2 and when were those released? It was on 2016/08/23 with Underlord, 2016/12/12 with Monkey King and 2017/10/31 with Dark Willow & Pangolier . And what about LoL? It was on 2017/08/23 with Ornn, 2017/11/22 with Zoe and 2018/03/07. You see the trend in which they release their new hero/champion. You get to play new contents in LoL more frequently than DOTA 2. That’s the reason I’m biased in favor of LoL. Except that, DOTA has its perks like Voice Communication in DOTA is really good and we can talk even with our teammates, while in League, Voice was just released over a month ago and you can only Voice Communicate with party members. The pings in LoL is way better than in DOTA. LoL has an emote system that you need to buy. And taunt is free in LoL, unlike DOTA where you need to buy taunt. You cannot dance in DOTA. You cannot make a hero’s joke unless you kill the opponent hero in DOTA. But another shortcoming of LoL is that you need to buy the champions. You can buy champions by paying real money, but you also have a blue essence system which gives you in-game currency, when you level up, without expending real money.

All and all, I think both the games are good in their own way. Also, there is a Loot System in LoL, which gives you various skins or items(in DOTA words) for free. It is quite hard to obtain if you are a beginner, but if you are quite decent in the game, it’s not that hard. This topic will always be interesting to discuss over a cup of tea, but you don’t need to be on each other’s throats when you are discussing this topic. And to me, LoL will always be the first choice over DOTA 2.

Note: This is a guest article by Aman Joshi.