I was looking for the DOTA page on the gb wiki couldn't find it and instead found this 

Multi Online Battle Arena page
 
when and where did this term come from? I have never heard it before (obviously) despite playing Warcraft III Dota for about 4-5 years. Seems like  a goofy name.  Wikipedia seems to suggest Riot games came up with term when they launched League of Legends but that doesn't mean we should just call it whatever they say we should call it. Blizzard and Valve certainly don't seem to be embracing the term. And I haven't seen it associated with Heroes of Newerth. And for the record Wikipedia doesn't either. That to me at least suggests that term is not popularly embraced (at least yet). So why should GB call it something different than perhaps most of its' players do?
 
I can guess why Riot game would prefer the term MObA, cause I'm sure Valve or Blizzard (probably valve) has trademarked the term DOTA (and thus Riot can't use the term w/o copyright infringement issues and also probably wouldn't anyway as they wouldn't want to give free advertising to their competitors anyway). But I'm not really sure why that matters in the long run, i.e. do many game retail packages proclaim what genre it is on the box that you are holding?  Or in their tv or magazine ad spots?
 
Do Mario games call themselves platformers, or James Bond games proclaim that they are first persons hooters? I've never noticed any ads for them to that effect.
 
What's the harm in calling this first wave DOTA clone games, DOTA games or DOTAlike games (ala roguelike) ? What am I missing here?
 
I think most gamers are more likely to know what "DOTAlike" means than MOBA.
 
I realize games usually  have acronym template names for  genres (SHMUPS, FPS, RTS, MMORPG, JPRG, etc all come to mind) but I dunno MOBA seems kinda silly to me. I think the birth of a new genre deserves better, Just my 2  cents