And the Mac hasn't been left out of the equation — some popular MOBAs run natively on the Mac. Here's a roundup of the best ones you can get right now. What's more, all of them are free to play, so it won't cost you a dime to try them out.
First, for the uninitiated, let's answer the obvious question: What, precisely, is a MOBA?
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MOBAs are real=time strategy games that involve multiple players divided into teams. Each player typically controls a single champion or hero character that leads others — computer-controlled minions — into combat. Teams square off and try to destroy or control each other's in-game structures in order to win.
MOBAs combine elements of action games and strategy games together, and have become a popular pastime for gamers looking for fun, challenging ways to team up with friends (and sometimes complete strangers) online.
Blizzard Entertainment's seminal strategy game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is often pointed to as the seed for the current MOBA craze. An active community of modders — hobbyists and programmers interested in expanding the capabilities of the game — took to Warcraft III, and one in particular, a fellow who went by the nom de mod of Eul, created Defense of the Ancients, a specialized map for the game modeled after another popular map for another Blizzard strategy game, StarCraft. Since then MOBAs have existed both as mods for other game and as entirely standalone projects. So without further ado:
League of Legends
Riot Games' League of Legends is nothing short of a phenomenon. Since it debuted in 2009 it's garnered millions of fans worldwide. For a long time Mac gamers were left out of the loop but the developer finally graced the Mac with a client in 2013. (Don't be scared off by the seemingly permanent 'beta' status of the Mac client.)
League comprised well more than 100 different champions, each with different strengths, strategies and weaknesses. Players fight each other to gain experience and to win gold, which they can use to buy items to strengthen their champions. A variety of game modes exist and Riot is constantly improving and tweaking both gameplay and the in-game characters, which leads to constant new challenges. And it's paid off: At peak times, more than 7 million players can be playing simultaneously. League is the focus of professional gaming tournaments, too.
League is free to download and play. Riot makes money from the sale of Riot Points (RP), which help players get ahead in the game.
- Free - Download now
Dota 2
I mentioned Defense of the Ancients at the outset. Dota 2 is its proper sequel, developed by Valve Corp. As a result, it's available for download from Valve's popular Steam online game matching and download service.
The classic elements of MOBA gameplay are here: Two teams of five players each, each of which occupy a base at a corner of the map. Teams are divided into The Radiant and The Dire. The Ancient is a building inside each base that must be protected or you lose the game. Players have over 100 different Heroes to choose from, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Combat provides experience, which levels the character up, enabling players to imbue their Hero with better statistics and new skills.
Dota 2 has been criticized for having a steeper learning curve that League does, and my experience has been that the Mac client doesn't run very well on systems that are on the lower side of its system requirements, but that hasn't stopped it from being very popular: Dota 2 gets close to a million players at peak times.
- Free - Download now
Heroes of Newerth
S2 Games' Heroes of Newerth squares players off into two factions: The Legion and the Hellbourne. Each team has to either destroy the World Tree or Sacrificial Shrine (depending on which faction you're fighting), or force the other team to concede defeat. There are different game modes, more than 120 heroes to master, and more.
Newerth was heavily influenced by the original Defense of the Ancients, though S2 Games developed it independently of DotA. The game remains fiercely independent. While Riot is the 800 pound gorilla and Dota 2 gets lots of attention because of Valve's involvement, S2 has done very well over the years, but its player base is much smaller. That's not a bad thing; the game continues to do well and get new players all the time.
- Free - Download now
SmashMuck Champions
A relative new entry to the MOBA market, SmashMuck Champions lets you play as absolutely weird heroes like a robot shark and a platypus unicorn. It's got a great sense of humor and some truly wacky design, and its creators cite its 'community driven development process' as a plus as well. Classic team-based play is here, though SmashMuck looks and plays a bit differently than the other MOBAs listed above, with five different game modes that include a capture the flag mode, tower defense mode, control point capture and more.
There's a more limited selection of champions to choose from, but more than 600 customizable items keep it interesting, along with daily challenge and alliance-based achievements.
- Free - Download now
Happy gaming
Hopefully these will get some of you started down the road of MOBA play. Are you already an avid MOBA fan? I'm sure I've left out a few that play well on the Mac without relying on a Windows partition. If I've left off your favorite or if you have any comments or suggestions, lay 'em on me.
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Dota Underlords may be the hot new game everyone is talking about, but Dota 2 is still one of the most played games in the world.
That’s right, in spite of being 6 years old now, the free-to-play MOBA from Valve is stronger than ever. In fact, Dota 2 is currently the second most played game in the world, with 450,000 concurrent players in one day.
The sequel to the infamous mod, Defense of the Ancients (DotA), Dota 2 pits two teams of five players against each other. Each team has to defend its own base while trying to destroy the enemies base.
You’re in control of a “hero” with unique abilities, and with more than one hundred to chose from, mastering your hero while playing as a team is a real challenge. This explains why MOBAs are so hard to master and why their community is so demanding (and borderline abusive with beginners).Bottom line: It may not be as big as League of Legends, and Heroes of the Storm is still my personal favorite, but Dota 2 is still one of the best MOBAs you can play. With a 90 Metascore and 85% Positive reviews on Steam from over a million gamers, you can’t go wrong with this one.
Dota 2 Mac requirements
Before we go any further, these are the game’s Mac system requirements:
- OS: 10.9 or newer
- Processor: Intel Dual core
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia 320M or higher, or Radeon HD 2400 or higher, or Intel HD 3000 or higher
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 15 GB available space
As you can see, this isn’t a demanding game by any means. Requiring merely an Intel HD 3000 means any modern Mac should be able to run it without breaking a sweat.
That said, for a long time gamers complained on Reddit that it was hard to get a smooth and consistent experience. We take it for a spin to see how it really runs on MacOS.
Can you run Dota 2 on Mac?
Unlike our official reviews on which we test a game on several Macs, we tested Dota 2 on the following macbine:
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016): 2.0 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, Intel Iris Graphics 540 (1.5GB)
This Mac should be a fair compromise as it remains a modest machine because of its integrated graphics but it’s still recent enough to compare with most MacBook Pros out there.
We tested the game on 1280×800 and Medium settings using the Exclusive Fullscreen option (which results in much better graphics and performance):
We ran tests using both the OpenGL and Vulkan rendering API.
Using the still standard OpenGL option, our MacBook Pro runs the game at an average 51,8 FPS (frames per second), which is more than enough for most:
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Be aware that FPS can significantly drop when several heroes get into a fight simultaneously. For that reason, it’s better to run the game using modest settings for an overall acceptable experience.
We did run the game using the Vulkan API (which you need to install before running the game) and found it to be as fast but more stable. In the words, we experience a similar 50 FPS on average performance but the drops were less pronounced.
That said, the game did crash a few times meaning Vulkan is not ready for primetime.
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Bottom line: If you own a recent Mac, you should be able to easily run Dota 2 on Medium settings. And remember, the game is free-to-play so it can’t hurt to try it for yourself!
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Dota 2 is a free-to-play game that is exclusively available on Steam.