A broken product
Even with community patches game is a mess. AI randomly stops playing. Game balance is non existent.
It is the only moba where… heroes can dive into nexus and be only slightly annoyed by turrets. They can easily heal themselves to full. Teleport out themselves out of a battle.
It is the only moba where… trying to damage enemy hero is meaningless. You can dps him for all eternity, you will do slightly more damage than a minion to the point it is not even worth it. Game is made solely on late game scaling where some generals simply get insane. Mostly not because of their own kit or build, but due to getting percentage bonus from minions.
It is the only moba where… early to mid game does not matter. Turrets have insane amounts of health and can be cheaply improved even more. Trying to rush opponents with offensive minions only results in feeding them. You can destroy few towers if you are lucky, out of several layers of defence. In a grand scheme of things, it is nothing as turrets do little damage and can soak up a lot of damage. Late game revolves solely by coming in massive waves of creeps and overwhelming enemies. You on the other hand spend first half of a game doing pretty much very little. Just standing and soaking and constantly recapturing flags. Anything else like ganking would see you quickly falling of xp race and becoming useless.
Pacing is not fine, it is atrocious. There is very little to do. Heroes are imbalanced between each other. Some can just kill other heroes while good portion of a roster simply doesn’t have neither dps or abilities to defend themselves. Assassins can just go past all towers and kill them. Game is a complete mess from gameplay perspective. From technical side, game can’t handle alt-tab. It always has a massive lag spike during first blood. Some heroes are locked away from a player for no explained reason. It lacks character, heroes are literally just saying 1 phrase.
Being the first did not translated into being better
Even if it was the first commercial moba, it doesn’t mean that it was good. There is a good reason why there isn’t any dedicated following for this game and why nobody remembers it. It is a primordial moba game one who builds on previous mod experience by improving it in every way. However, it does not improve it enough and the things which it added to be unique are unrefined and ultimately takes away from the experience.
Even back in 2009, I had played League of Legends which was vastly superior. It had working wave mechanics, working turret mechanics, a lot more dynamic gameplay via ganking and jungle. Heroes were a lot more responsive. Leveling was a lot more meaningful. This game tries to be a lot more strategic and focus on overall long term team strategy. However, that is not exciting. Creating strategies which would give you 1000 more gold after 10 minutes than your opponent is not an exciting gameplay. Getting 10% more turret damage is not an exciting gameplay. Game is too slow, too tedious, too unresponsive.
Conclusion
Even with community support this game is an unfinished products. Developers had screwed themselves with a poor launch, poor monetization model. They also did not had resources to provide content and longevity which realistically only online game would need in order to keep players engaged. That is more, its own mechanics do not work. It is not more fun to play, it is inferior to its competitors in most ways. Even if it was a first, it is a game which is rightfully forgotten by history as an insignificant stepping stone to modern mobas.