Just about every commercial MOBA shares the same victory condition of "destroy the enemy base". Is there anything that could be done to introduce some variety?

Before we begin, the word MOBA is used more inclusively by some people than others, so for clarification we need to divide the answer into two cases: lane-pushing games, and arenas.

Early in its development cycle, Sins of a Dark Age was reportedly going to merge the genres of RTS and MOBA to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

Their plan was to follow in the footsteps of Demigod, by dividing players into commanders who play a full-scale RTS, and heroes which play a MOBA under their commander's supervision and direction. Each team was to have a singular commander, who decides which troops to build, where to send them, what locations warrant the protection of towers, and which expansions to capture.

Commanders would also be able to issue instructions to

A continuation of the review of Dota Outland, exploring items, heroes, and more of its off-lane features.

Just before the Frozen Throne expansion was released in July 2003, Eul's Defence of the Ancients was easily among the most popular maps on Battle.net. But it was also a rare example of a map that didn't have tons of clones, since it was made using non-standard tools that made editing it difficult.

Then the Frozen Throne expansion was released, with a new editor that incorporated those tools. Now anyone could do what Eul had been doing, and DotA's popularity, plus excitement about the possibilities offered by the new editor, led to a sudden flood of developers pumping out their own DotA clones

The Legend of Sand is one of the most distinctive AoS concepts out there. It taps into ideas from a variety of other genres, and while the result lacks refinement, it's certainly an interesting experience. The game depicts the tale of two early settlements on an island called Sand, and how they wrestle to take control of the island by securing and exploiting its natural resources.

Within the game, each major strategic decision is clearly represented in the form of a resource, which makes the game very readable and puts a player's options right in front of them. There is also a good diversity

I recently read a book called How Life Imitates Chess by former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov.

It describes the strategic analysis and decision-making techniques he developed while competing at the highest level of chess, and shares how the same techniques are applicable to decision-making in other areas of life.

In this article, I'm going to analyse lane-pushing games using Kasparov's model. Warcraft III actually gets a mention in the book as "a distillation of the MTQ concept", so I find this a particularly exciting and appropriate exercise!

MTQ stands for Material, Time, Quality

A continuation from Part 1, exploring items, roles, and loadouts.