Almost everyone who has played games online has encountered the word "noob". And while it has lost a part of it's original meaning, it is still used to point out unskillful players (well, when someone thinks the other is unskillful). There are a lot more other words that are used with it and such behavior has been a part of gaming since the 90's. But there is something to be said about MOBA style games and the people who play it. There is an opinion that people who play such games are a part of community which can be one of the worst in video games. It is a valid one, with some proof to back it up. I must say that I only have played League of Legends, but I know that in other, similar games people tend to behave the same way.

Popularity leads to assholness

Battle arena games are very popular right now, but why? Well, first of, games like LOL are free to play and free beats playing for something which grants a bigger amount of users who are willing to try it out. Then they find an interesting mix of RPG elements and team mechanics that can be found in games like Team Fortress 2. And the 5v5 matches have a nice length to them which is typically 30-40 minutes. It's longer then a regular FPS deathmatch., but not long enough to get boring and uninteresting.

These games also lend themselves quite nicely to tournament play because of their team-gameplay nature. That helps them to be constantly covered by the gaming press and be talked about. And that is probably the biggest factor of their popularity, this sports game appeal, like soccer or hockey. It is fun to kill a random dude in Call of Duty, but there is something else in coming victorious after a big team-battle and pushing their lane a little bit further. But this sports like nature of the genre is also one of the biggest problems of it.

I love your mother

Since this is a team game and everyone picks a character a the star of the match, players have a role. The problem is, that everyone wants to be the David Beckham of their match. Everyone want to be the guy, who powns noob with their might and skill, leading their team to victory. And there are classes that can do that. And there are others classes that can't do that, but they are still needed. Every second game I play, someone asks in the team chat window "tank?" as a request for a tank. I try to be the tank if I can, but if I already locked in my pick, there is little I can do. A support type character is even a bigger rarity. Once I ended up in a team, where everyone was a ranged type character. How we won that, I still don't know, but a good team composition can be a big factor.

But a bigger problem comes from peoples attitudes and behavior as everyone has a opinion. And they have a right to have one, but they tend to forget, that other people also have such a right. A user may spam: "ban trynda! ban trynda! ban trynda!" and if you did not ban Tryndamere, then you will find out some interesting things about yourself. This may happen if your pick is wrong, or if you died one to many times, or if you took the blue buff, or if you killed an enemy that the other player wanted to kill, or...well you get the point. And you will learn a complete different set of things about yourself if you argue back (which is pointless). This can go to extremes, where players leave their lanes, stop playing for couple of minutes or leave the game outright if someone did something they did not like. And behavior like this doesn't fix the problem they had, but makes everything worse, because a 4v5 game is practically a lost one.

In my opinion, most of these cases can be avoided if people just relax and remember that they are playing games. They are just games. Sure, a big rank score is awesome, but it has no value outside the game. You might think that this is obvious, but there are times I have to remind other players that. The funny thing is that I once played with someone who said to me: "This isn't just a game. This is a ranked game" And I don't think he missed my point. It can be odd that something that was designed for fun can be so frustrating to some people. I am not saying that all these people complain without reason, they just take to close to heart. (to be fair, there are cases where the reason is either completely stupid or missing altogether).

/surrender

I like playing League of Legend a lot and cannot wait for the DOTA 2 beta to start, but dealing with random jerks most of the time can take away from enjoying the game. I know Heroes of Newerth has voice chat that can solve some of these problems, but I wonder does it in reality. I know that because of this, some people play by themselves as little as possible which is a shame. I know that most people that play these games are not like that, but one asshole is enough to spoil the game. Sometimes, there are two.