Talk:Multiplayer online battle arena/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 16:44, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

This has been sitting for a long time. Definitely time to get it through. Comments to follow soon. Indrian (talk) 16:44, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Gameplay

• "though MOBA design DotA popularized also made its way into games that deviated from the mod's isometric view" - Maybe I am reading something wrong, but this phrase is gibberish to me. I get that its saying not all MOBAs go isometric, but I think something got lost with the "MOBA design DotA popularized also made its way into games" part of the phrase. Is it supposed to be "MOBA elements popularized by DotA"?
• "they grow in power and may strengthen one of their abilities which they typically have four of" - "Which they typically have four of" is awkward phrasing and ends with a preposition without a subject. Could be broken into two sentences to allow the separate concepts to breathe a little, or it could just be changed to "of which they typically have four."
• "they are removed from active play until a respawn timer counts down to zero, where they are then respawned in their base" - The dependent clause is modifying the respawn timer countdown, which is not a place. Should probably be "after which they are respawned in their base."
• "As a fusion of real-time strategy, role-playing, and action games, game in the genre have little traditional real-time strategy elements." - Leaving aside the typos in this sentence, I am not sure this is the best approach to starting this section. I realize there is an emphasis on traditional real-time strategy elements because the MOBA evolved from the RTS, but someone unaware of that history will look at this sentence and think "of course it lacks a lot of RTS elements, the article just told me its a fusion of different genres." Perhaps instead start the section by saying that as a fusion of these genres "it borrows several prominent elements from each genre" and go from there. I am open to suggestions on a better way to do that, but I think it needs to change from the current version.

Origins

• "The roots of the genre can be traced back decades to one of the earliest real-time strategy (RTS) titles, the 1989 Sega Mega Drive/Genesis game Herzog Zwei." - Well, if we are going back to Herzog Zwei, we can't really stop there because Herzog Zwei took all of its core mechanics from an even earlier Apple II game called Rescue Raiders which has the bases on opposite sides of the map, a flying unit controlled by the player, and the spending of money to create AI-controlled units that advance towards the opposing base. The link between Rescue Raiders and the Herzog series is explicitly made by the designer of the original Herzog in The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Volume 3 by John Szczepaniak.
• So the "Origins" section contains the single biggest problem in the entire article: none of the stuff about Aeon64 or Future Cop LAPD being inspirations for the genre actually appears to be accurate, but I am not sure how we fix this while maintaining the need for what Wikipedia deems "reliable" sources. A college instructor named David Dannelly was able to track down the actual creator of Aeon of Strife, who was a modder who went by the handle Gunner_4_ever. Gunner was not influenced by Future Cop at all and actually took his inspiration from Dynasty Warriors II. Gunner was also able to provide the oldest surviving version of the mod, 1.03, which predated every version then existing on the Internet by several months (there was nothing online predating V2). There appears to have never been a modder named Aeon64. All the files checked out, and Dannelly also did a scrape of every StarCraft map he could find on the Web and found nothing that refuted this story. There is no reason to doubt its accuracy. Full details can be found on Dannelly's blog.

Of course our problem on Wikipedia becomes is this "reliable"? Well, Dannelly published his findings on his blog, which is a self-published source and usually a no-no. Now Dannelly is also an academic, so that gives him a certain base level of deference as a situationally reliable source, but he teaches game design, so I don't think he is published anywhere in the field of video game history. This could make his blog a tough sell. Again, however, from a basic fact-checking perspective, there is no reason to doubt any of this material, so we cannot very well leave in blatantly incorrect facts like the mod being created by the phantom "Aeon64" or that it was inspired by Future Cop. I am inclined to pass the article to GA status with the Dannelly source, but if you ever want to take the article to FA, we would have to find something better to pass the source review. If you have another suggestion for how to get out of this mess, I am all ears.

Came here for the same reason, if secondary sources like polygon are all there is to support the existence of "Aeon64", would these not at least be enough retract the incorrect information? At best this is disputed by articles on other websites, but the worst part is this can actually be verified by anyone. StarEdit is freely available for download directly from Blizzard, Nicholas Taijeron AKA Gunner_4_ever's website is in the Web Archive, and the map is downloadable from there, still. Anyone can open the map file and check the properties, and briefing, to see the credit to Gunner_4_ever, and thanking the games Dynasty Warriors 2 and 3. I even still have the file on my computer because I actively played StarCraft around that time, so, it's frustrating to see information I can easily check is false mentioned in a Wikipedia article. It is verifiable information, just not in a format that Wikipedia is designed to handle.

Sportsbet article: , publication by Stefan Lopuszanski, University of Connecticut Department of Digital Media and Design: , Red Bull article (French): , GGRecon article: , Wayback Machine for download page of original creator: , StarEdit download page: MrJelle (talk) 23:47, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

• "Guinsoo left the development to his adjutant Neichus" - They may have used the title "adjutant" among themselves, but I doubt he actually served that role irl, which is defined as "a military officer who acts as an administrative assistant to a senior officer."
• "who initiated large changes to the mechanics that deepened its complexity and capacity for innovative gameplay" - Should there be some examples? I am legitimately asking as I do not know the answer myself. If any of these changes were integral to the new MOBA genre, than one or two should probably be highlighted. If not, that's fine.

Impact

• I don't think this section is quite there yet. I don't think the article really gets at the massive success of Riot and LoL in particular, just listing it among several games. Something about the breakout success of LoL and how it really launched everything that followed in terms of commercial success should probably be in here somewhere. Also maybe some more info about how the MOBA became such a prominent esports category.

That's it for now. Most of the article is in really good shape with just a rephrasings needed here and there. The origins section needs some major updating to remove some long-held inaccuracies, while the impact section is still a little undercooked. I do think this article can be brought up to snuff with a little work, however, so I will go ahead and put the nomination  On hold while these concerns are addressed. Indrian (talk) 19:16, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

EchoBlu Are you still planning to work on this? I can certainly be patient while the article is improved, but I have not heard anything since completing this review a few weeks back. If I do not hear from you soon, I will have to go ahead and fail the article. Indrian (talk) 00:29, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Indrian Hi, I can fix awkward sentences from the "Gameplay" section. However, I am not sure that I am currently capable to make deep changes to the "Origins" section. They are much deeper than they look - as they are mentioned numerous times across Wikipedia, reliably sourced. I don't say that your statements are wrong - currently, I don't have time to do another serious and deep research. I would have to make numerous deep changes in multiple "History" sections across WikiProject Video games. And when I say serious, I mean very big and serious. About the "Impact" section - it can probably use more improvements, however, I wanted to write about MOBA's general impact, instead of the impact of specific games. I am afraid that the "general encyclopedia" article will lose its focus if we write about specific games. However, we can write about the impact of League of Legends in one or two sentences, but I would need some suggestions. EchoBlu (talk) 03:20, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your candor. I think under the circumstances its best I fail the article for now. I get what you are saying about some of the work that needs to be done, but I cannot in good conscience promote while there are some serious inaccuracies present here. This is not a reflection on you in any way, for as you say, the wrong information has been out in the wild for a long time and has infiltrated numerous reliable sources. Most of the article is in pretty good shape, so I encourage you to renominate it once you have time to do another deep dive into the research. Indrian (talk) 16:12, 14 November 2020 (UTC)