Epic Games just announced their new MOBA named Paragon at PlayStation Experience. My initial reaction was one of total disinterest and judging by the audience's reaction, they weren't excited either. That got me wondering. Why does a new MOBA sound so boring? Surely there are worse ideas, but I'm having a hard time coming up with one. Is it fair to judge a game on one pre-rendered trailer and a carefully edited script spoken on stage? Probably not, but I'm going to do it anyway.

The obvious problem is over saturation. MOBAs are hot, the same way that MMOs were hot back when World of Warcraft was the thing that everyone chased after. Despite that, there are only a handful MOBAs feasting at the big boy's table and dozens others scrabbling at their feet for any crumbs that might shake loose. People are sick of hearing about MOBAs, it doesn't get them excited or grab their interest the way it used to. If you want to find a seat at the table, you need to differentiate yourself. You have to blow our socks off, so to speak. Paragon will look incredible, it might even be the best looking MOBA out there when it releases considering what the Unreal Engine is capable of. But that isn't enough to get people's attention anymore.

At the keynote they emphasized getting right down into the action, which to me sounds like Paragon will be played from the First or Third-Person perspective. Certainly not a new idea, but maybe they can do something interesting with it considering their history of making fun shooters in that perspective.

We've been seeing other games take inspiration from MOBAs without just straight up making another one and I think that's awesome. Games like Overwatch have very obvious ties to the the MOBA genre that make for fun, new experiences. I was lucky enough to get into the Overwatch stress test weekend and the multiple characters and the way their abilities interact adds a ton of depth and variety to a game that would otherwise be a generic FPS.

I do believe there's room for new MOBAs. There has to be if the genre is to survive on its own. MOBAs are damn good fun. I've played a few hundred hours spread across multiple games and they give you an experience you can't get anywhere else. I hope they continue to grow and evolve and not stagnate like we've seen with some other genres. In 10, 15, or 20 years people will probably still be playing DOTA 2, the same way they still play Counter-Strike 1.6. That's not a bad thing, but if you want people to be interested in new MOBAs, then you have to convince us that there is something actually new to see. The Paragon announcement failed to do that.

Anyways, thanks for reading if you got this far. I haven't written a blog about games, or anything really, in years and for some reason this whole thing got me interested enough to write one. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Edit:

There's some more information to be found in the Epic Games Launcher. Add this to the growing list of games that have card collection tacked onto them. Also, you do play from a third-person perspective as they hinted at.

I've got to say I didn't expect uploading stuff to any website would be much fun at all but I've gone upload crazy here on Giant Bomb. I'm really having a lot of fun contributing to the site and seeing my name under a couple Top Editors lists is a bonus. Of course my score is no where near what some other people have. Maybe I'm just not crazy enough. Regardless, I feel like Giant Bomb is going to be HUGE and I'm glad I can contribute to the building of it. Anyway, back to uploading.

Welcome to my profile, I'm not sure how much ill be posting on this blog but I just felt like something should be here. So far I'm loving Giant Bomb and I can't wait to see it develop over time. I'll post more here later...maybe.