Multiplayer online battle arena - Wikipedia
Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), also known as action real-time strategy (ARTS), is a genre of strategy video games that originated as a subgenre of real-time strategy, in which a player controls a single character in one of two teams. The objective is to destroy the opposing team's main structure with the assistance of periodically spawned computer-controlled units that march forward along set paths. Player characters typically have various abilities and advantages that improve over the course of a game and that contribute to a team's overall strategy. MOBA games are a fusion of action games, role-playing games and real-time strategy games, in which players usually do not construct either buildings or units.
The genre largely began with Aeon of Strife (AoS), a custom map for StarCraft[1][2] where four players each controlling a single powerful unit and aided by weak computer-controlled units were put against a stronger computer.[3] Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a map based on Aeon of Strife for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne, was one of the first major titles of its genre and the first MOBA for which sponsored tournaments have been held.[3] It was followed by the two spiritual successors League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth, and eventually a sequel, Dota 2, as well as numerous other games in the genre.