Heroes of Newerth:
(That's an older youtube vid I found. I'm not allowed to publish new material from the beta.)
A beta-leak video review of HoN (German). Shows you much of the lobby interface and other features.
League of Legends:
An official trailer for LoL.
A video review of LoL (english). Not sure if leaked or sanctioned.
DotA (Defense of the Ancients)
Some DotA video. I honestly couldn't find ANY good gameplay video for Dota. Most vids are simply my-dick-is-BIG demonstrations accompanied by some shitty trash metal soundtrack or something bombastic (like, US-marine corp recruitment orchestrals or Carmina Burana). Sorry. If you can recommend a good DotA video I'll put it up.
Demigod:
Demigod showcase video featuring Lord Erebus.
Demigod showcase video featuring Queen of Thorns. Probably not office safe.
For those that don't know what HoN or LoL are: Both are DotA clones. If you don't know what DotA is then google it.
First HoN impressions:
Bottom line: Graphically it's definetly a step down when compared to Demigod. But noticably better than DotA. It's really really running smooooooothly. If you consider the small DG roster Demigod's biggest drawback, then HoN might seem attractive. The complexity and detail of each hero is lower than that of any one Demigod. It's also extremely beginner unfriendly. And even though Demigod didn't have any kind of tutorial either, you grasp the gist of DG way faster than that of HoN. HoN is clearly aimed at DotA players. It looks so similar to DotA that fanboys might as well stay there.
It's still in beta so many things will change. The strongest point of HoN is it's large hero rooster. Apart from that I don't think the Demigod has much to fear.
But since it's an early test phase, I'll certainly give it another try. I can endure the "F*CKING _NOOB" for a time, hehehehe.
The buildings and catapults can't be hit by spells because that's how DotA worked--because that's how WC3 rolled. It doesn't have to make sense as much as be totally similar to DotA.
Trying to sneak into the enemy base and blow up a couple buildings, a.k.a., Backdooring, is highly frowned upon by the DotA community. Thus, buildings are invincible until you have (in dota) killed the towers in front of them or (in HoN, as I understand it) killed all towers and troops in front of them. The reason for this largely dealt with characters who could move quickly and invisibly or teleport (weaver+pitlord could easily knock out your Throne in a long, drawn out game with all the towers stripped out) lurking until the enemy side pushed, and then rushing their Throne and breaking it a.s.a.p.
As for the camera... Demigod has spoiled me. I feel trapped every time I LAN DotA with my brother. Which, thanks to the wonderful community so many people have described, is all the time I spend on the game. Will not be checking out HoN.
Agreed, Tactical Zoom isn't just a special effect or a dot point on the back of the box for me any more, it's a requirement of RTS games in general. The narrow viewing area that Dune 2 and all RTS games since then have used is no longer acceptable.
Ah, that's why. It really is a consequence of simply copying DotA without any real change. Or rather: Demigod really IS a different game and not simply a DotA clone - just like GPG always had to say in their interviews.
yah, the camera is so awesome. And rationalizing the deficits of having to play in close-up zoom is simply backward.
I am seeing alot of people who think some things are strange just because demigod does it differently. Flag capping is very important in demigod, and as such i feel a pretty big part of the strategy revolves around the capruting of flags. Where as in HoN i bet you just beat eachother up and hit a tower once in a while. League of legends does much the same (to no suprise)
But they are different games. Sure, the tactical zoom has spoiled us.. But not being able to hit towers with spells could simply be a thing of ballance. Since there are no flags, and creeps never really get a issue, if you could drop the towers in 3 seconds with your skills, the games wouldnt last much longer then 5 minutes. Is it fun? who knows.. Its still a beta, things may change (i mean, thats the reason to beta stuff). Personally i think i might enjoy all the games of this genre, as im not the kind of guy who likes one, and to do that hates all other games of its kind
They could also just have rebalanced the towers. I am no DOTA fan (anymore), but by no means do I criticize it just to flame, but this is just poor game making (in HoN I mean). Why copy DOTA all the way? They could have atleast redone the flaws of DOTA so that they are improved. I don't think not being able to use spells on a tower is a good thing.
As if a demigod or hero would think: "Hmm that tower is owning my ass, I must defeat it. I know! I'll just pummel it with my stick for 5 minutes!" Wouldn't it be much more logical for a hero or demigod to give the tower all its wrath of power and mana? I do not blame WC3 for this, that game was made for RTS not for a mod like DOTA, but HoN should have done it better.
Also, playing non-zoomable RTS's now makes me feel claustrophobic.
Well, if they didn't just straight up copy DotA, how would the DotA veterans insult everyone else for not having been playing the game for 5 years already?
I kind of wonder if the devs actually want the godawful community there, or if they're just stuck with it and don't know how to fix it.
Once again, I don't wanna sound like I'm flaming, but I think they just want to cash in, and let the community bitch at eachother. If they would have any passion for their own game they would've atleast changed a couple of things.
Lolz. Apparently you don't know anything about Stardock...
I played Heroes of Newerth,and League of Legends,but still Demigod is my favorite,HoN has a great connectivity,thats all i like about it,and LoL is better then HoN but not so fun like Demigod...if Demigod would have been free game,it was nr. 1 game with great community and 10.000 users at least online...
To be fair, the HoN guys try to seperate the veteran and noob community by certain matchmaking restrictions (has something to do with successful players not being able to join games containing noobs or so).
By the way, how is LoL compared to HoN or DotA?
Graphics seem worse than HoN. Does this game improve in any way on the DotA gameplay?
the NDA says we cant give feedback, although we can tell you we are in the beta.
Ok. Would make sense if LoL does some things differently. HoN would be caught with it's knickers down.
Yep, you're right. Missread the Superman/Batman thing and felt the other was implyed, but it wasn't. My bad
This is why skimming is bad kids
Good to know. Are we allowed to at least say "I am/am not enjoying it?".
hehe, better err on the side of caution.
S2 said it's ok to talk about HoN so they must feel confident by now.
Wouldn't be nice to let word out that LoL is worse than HoN before they have time to react to internal criticism.
Except that it's GPG who actually creates new content for Demigod, not Stardock. There's some people (myself included) wondering what GPG is actually doing given the absolute silence from them since the networking stuff was fixed.
You bothered to look at the dev diaries?
Since the network stuff was fixed, we got patch 1.0 hot fix, 1.1, 1.1 hotfix, and now 1.1 hot fix 2 is coming next week and 1.2 is coming in August. Then we will get 2 new demigods in august/early september.
StarDock is improving impulse friends in August, too.
Also, 1.2 will allow StarDock and modders to add content.
Then 1.3 is due later in the year which will add clan wars.
Seems to me things are looking much better.
Note: HoN testers can discuss HoN, but they cannot release media (videos/images/etc) from the game.
LoL vs Newerth vs Demigod:
One thing that I find important to note: HoN and LoL utilize server based connections and so the latency is only on your end... This is important for competitive gaming IMO. Both games have pretty good matchmaking, but I did like LoL's system a lot more.
TLDR: I'll play Demigod a bit, but I think LoL might be a better choice when I'm in a competitive mood. Demigod has greater gameplay, but it lacks in matchmaking and Demigod also suffers from latency issues due to the peer-to-peer system. Demigod would be simply amazing if it had a server based connection system and better matchmaking.
any beta-keys for LoL available?
I got some HoN beta invites that I won't force upon my friends.
if anyone still has some HoN keys kicking around that they could hook me up with I would love you long time.
still got two invites left.
just pm me your email.
Spent all my invites. See you guys at HoN .... maybe.
I'm kinda starting to lose interest.
I have one invite. PM me if you want it.
One invite left for whoever interested. PM me. I will play demigod again once EVERYTHING runs smoothly and more demigods added.
Played HoN a lot this weekend - quite a change to have such a smooth gamplay experience after all the Demigod frustrations. And to think it's only in a beta.
I did also check Savage 2 - another game by S2, makers of HoN. Must tell you those devs sure have some skill. While the art in Demigod is a notch higher, both Savage 2 and HoN are much better overall experience. The multiplayer features are so much richer, you can't even begin to compare.
Found some video reviews on youtube.
A video review of HoN (German).
A video review of LoL.
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