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Originally Posted by ArchmageXin
Except you forgot EQ II, which came out within weeks of WoW. And Blizzard raped it six way to sunday. I was there when both games came out, and EQ II just couldn't win. Even though both games were identical in term of game play.
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Vanilla WoW was better than EQ2 in pretty much every way aside from the graphics and sandbox elements it still had. EQ2 didn't even have a pvp server at launch. Also, many EQ1 players did not want to move to EQ2 because they didn't want to lose their investment in their EQ1 characters.
So EQ2 basically had to try to market to a new playerbase just like WoW did, except it didn't have the mass appeal of the Warcraft/Blizzard label, had way higher system requirements. WoW had a better UI, better quests (especially solo), and graphics that looked good even on low-spec machines. For a casual player who's probably never played a MMO before, WoW was the obvious choice.
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However,
1) Blizzard has a unholy brand name.
2) Unlike WoW, MOBA does not have a high time sink investment. I can log in for a 40 min game of LoL, I can log in 20 min for whatever this new game is. There would be a learning curve (of course), but after a certain stage, you can get used to the game.
Why was WOW especially successful and able to crush all other MMOs? Because think about it, if I invest 3 months in getting to level 80 and Tier 4 armor and meeting a whole bunch of friends online, I wouldn't abandon it because when I go to Guild wars of whatever, the grind/netowrking has to start again from point ZERO. WoW was effectively an captivate audience. The same cannot be said for MOBA games.
3) Map variety. This is a very dangerous ground for any MOBA. Dota, LOL, HON all use a SINGLE Map for their major league gaming. This has been going on FOREVER. The reason for this of course, is because MOBA maps are difficult to balance. But if Blizzard can make new maps and retain balance (Like SCII maps)...then it is a whole new ball game.
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Blizzard name isn't as great as it once was. SC/SCII have pretty much lost their place in competitive gaming to LoL in pretty much every market. Diablo 3 was a pretty bad blunder. I have no doubt they'll get a sizable player base, but I doubt it's going to CRUSH LoL.
Also, LoL does have a pretty unholy time commitment. It takes forever to get higher ranked, and anyone who's even a bit competitive will keep playing to hit that fabled Diamond ELO. You also have to purchase heroes, so there's a money commitment too.
A lot of more casual players will probably play both or move to HoTS though, but again, LoL is not going to suddenly lose 32 million players. DOTA2 came out, and while it gained a huge player base pretty quickly, LoL was able to grow a lot too. If anything, Blizzard is targeting players who are not currently playing any MOBA.
Finally, HoTS is still in the alpha stage. Knowing Blizzard's history, it probably won't be released for at least another year. They probably want to start the game off on a big roster so there's still a lot of dev work to be done.