Hang around in any sizable MOBA (that’s “multiplayer online battle arena”) community these days, and prepare to witness a lot of angst over what Dota 2 — Valve Software’s standalone successor to the wildly popular Defense of the Ancients freeware mod for Warcraft III — could mean for this growing real-time strategy subgenre. Over the past two years, Riot Games has handily carved its own little MOBA empire with the uber-successful League of Legends (which currently stands at 11.5 million active players), and smaller fish like S2 Games and Petroglyph Games have captured audiences with Heroes of Newerth and Rise of Immortals, respectively. But the still-in-beta Dota 2 stands as the ultimate wildcard… and I think I’ve got a good guess on what’s going to happen when those floodgates finally open.
In short: a lot less than you might think.
