League of Legends Genre: Why It's Called a MOBA

The League of Legends genre is MOBA — multiplayer online battle arena — a label the game did more than almost anything else to popularise.

Where the format came from

League grew out of Defense of the Ancients, a fan-made custom map for Warcraft III. Riot's founders, Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill, wanted to take that map's format and build a standalone game around it rather than a mod — the result launched in October 2009.

What makes something a MOBA

• Two teams, usually five players each, on a fixed map split into lanes
• Each player controls one character with a kit that persists for that match
• Progression resets every game — levels, gold and items do not carry over
• Victory comes from destroying the enemy base, not from a score or timer

Where the term gets fuzzy

Riot itself has avoided "MOBA" in its own marketing, preferring to describe League on its own terms. That has not stopped the label sticking in press coverage, and it is still the accurate answer if asked to classify the game.

Related but different

Auto-battlers like Teamfight Tactics share a publisher but sit in a different genre — units on a board rather than one character live.