Well I figured with so much time to kill today I should try Heroes of Newerth. It is another DOTA game that came out at the same time as LOL. Here are my thoughts:

HON is a big steaming pile of meh. The graphics are pretty -- possibly even nicer then LOL -- but the controls, user interface, items all seemed very poorly laid out. It took a very long time to setup a game. (I wasn't allowed to join a match-made game without paying $30). Eventually a friend who was doing the demo with me noticed that we could choose a color -- not sure why we needed to -- and that put us on a team. Once on separate teams we could start the game.

Right off we choose a champion, but unlike LOL you can choose all of them all the time. Nothing is unlocked or earned. No runes, masteries, summoner levels or abilities. To me this is a big part of the depth and gives a much better commitment to my champion. What HON does is much more confusing. Instead of reading through 10 champions I'm looking through 50+. Sure, LOL has a ton as well, but it is a nice touch to not have all of them available at once.

The gameplay was pretty confusing as well. The first thing I clicked on leveled up my attributes instead of a skill. So I start at level 1 with no abilities and no passives abilities (LOL apparently invented those as well). Newb mistake, sure, but why have this option at all before level 18? If your skills are so bad you would prefer stat bonuses, perhaps the champion should be redone! The game starts with 3000 gold, which seems like a ton and turned out really was a ton. I didn't realize that the first items you buy are very important because it will be 20 minutes before you get that much gold again.

So I start fighting and I face a guy with -- I kid you not -- a 5 seconds stun. Luckily I had a half-way-across-the-map stun to counter him and run or I would have died right then. Both spells are ridiculous -- so I run back to my tower and I don't have a B button. No portal home. It turns out this is a consumable item you can buy. One port is about 150 gold. Man I missed my blue pill home.

After a long walk home I'm back trying to buy stuff. Unfortunately the item store is super confusing. It is much better then DOTA, but it is pretty clear that this is something that League of Legends innovated on really well. It was hard to tell what was recommended, what to buy, and what combined into what. Worse it took me a very long time to figure out how to by the final top tier item at the end. I got through the components pretty quickly but the button to buy the final item was really confusing.

Conclusion: Save yourself the time and don't bother trying Heroes of Newerth. League of Legends is
better and RIOT should be congratulated on how much.

And as a special bonus, here is my PERSONAL NOTE OF FRUSTRATION to the RIOT staff: Please fix your servers! We would all prefer to play LOL, but we will eventually stop waiting and try new things. Case in point: me ;-)

P.S. Tomorrow I will be playing LOL, or trying out Dragon Age 2. Stay tuned!

P.P.S. We still love you Riot. For now <3

read the whole thing, i found this thread as i was installing hon ....i know exactly what u mean man, gj

haha MKN. If you do play post what you think here=).

it's nice to see positive post during such a time a forum rage

I looked through both the LoL forums and HoN. Players who starting playing HoN think LoL is skilless and for noobs, LoL players tend to not like HoN. Really they are just two different games with similar objectives.

This. HoN players tend to think that LoL is over simplified, even thought its really just diferent, while LoL players hate HoN because it is so much diferent. Its kinda funny to me. Even the OP only complained about how much diferent HoN was. He didn't like that the interface was diferent, he didn't like that the amount of choice is diferent (which to me was weird...if I could play LoL and make all my champions Orange, I would.), and he didn't like the different form of blue pill/teleport.

They are completely diferent games. Its like compairing CoD to Bad Company. Its completely your opinion.

ITT: People incredibly biased towards one game.

Zzzz incredibly biased opinion is incredibly biased. Let's just ignore the fact that most of your complain are "I am a newb and dont know what I am doing but its the game fault".

Took a very long time to setup a game : What? Seriously? Setting up a game doesnt take much more time then setting up a game of LoL, you just have more option which is good.

You are complaining that you have access to all the hero : Wow... just... dont...

You made the dumb mistake of clicking the IMPROVE STATS instead of lvling a skill and complain about having the option of lvling stat : Some ability are better late game then early, having the option to skip them from lvl9-12 in favor of improved stats is nice to have.

The game started with 3000 gold : You played a 1vs1. The way that HoN work is that at the beggining of the game they distribute 3000 between all the player. If you had played a real game instead of just going for a mindless 1vs1 against one of your friend you would have 600 gold.

The only 5 second stun in the game is a skillshot that work the same way as Ashe ult, expect that the range is limited and move incredibly slow. Your "half a way across the map stun" is just BS, no non-ult stun range are bigger then Master Yi alpha strike.

Not having the option to B is pretty nice when you get used to it. It reward harrassing much better then LoL when you dont have the option to just B.

The only valid point in your post is probably about the item store, it take time to get used to. especially as a LoL player since item arent as obvious as in LoL.

Conclusion : Stop being a fanboy and try to understand the game before making a judgement. Both HoN and LoL are good game and you would know if it you even tried to play HoN.

i prefer a lot of things in HoN, really I play LoL because my friends do. I hate that everyone in LoL has tp scrolls shoved up their asses and summoner spells are also annoying

I heard there was a circle jerk going on in this thread and just had to join. Who wants to stroke me off?