Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother with such a thing.  I know HoN is far and away the better designed game.  I know certain UI design elements of LoL would make HoN even better.  However, in the face of “you suck at LoL, so you hate it” ignorance on the forums.  I decided over the weekend—Friday night to be exact—to do the Pepsi Challenge with HoN and LoL.  I played one game of each.  In the HoN game, I played in an all PuG game and randomed my hero, as I would have in DotA.  In LoL, I played it as the LoL fans in the VTW Productions community have suggested, and played on a team of all VTW Productions members and picked my hero.  Here are the results.

Heroes of Newerth

Hero: Torturer (http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/heroview.php?hid=90)

k/d/a: 6/4/19

Time of Game: 41:40

Recap (with aid of replay):  First death occurred at 4:00 mark.  I love this about HoN.  The game is dynamic from the opening bell.  There’s no “dead zone” of 10 mins where players get to dance around each other, but are largely ineffective in creating legitimate pushing opportunities.  By the 9 minute mark, the greatest design advantage of HoN over LoL, and the biggest issue with MOBAs in general is brought to the forefront.  One player on the opposing team thought HoN was LoL, where in the first 10 minutes you can get yourself out of position as much as you like, and the only way you are at risk of getting killed is if you are outnumbered, or your lane partner sucks.  In this case, one opponent character gets out of position at 8 minutes, and we kill him.  At nine minutes, he gets out of position trying to chase, and we kill him again.  Then…rage quit!  At 10 minutes I get ganked by a relatively well set up action by 2 players.  Partially it was my own fault for not backing off more at the initial engagement. First tower kill was at 12:00.  At this point, there has been not one “team fight” (e.g. n vs. n clusterfuck in the mid that LoL fans apparently love).  I’m ganked again at 16:30 by 2 players.  This time, the unlucky timing of a creep wave, and my opponent’s bouncing stun ability, do me in.  Well played by them—1/2/2 at this point.  At 18:45 the first “team fight” sort of breaks out, but it is a skirmish really vice the all-in sort of LoL team fights.  Another team fight occurs at 28:30, and our opponents get the best of us.  I missed a stun that could have saved one of my teammates.  At 35:45, our enemies respawn and my teammates bolt.  Left alone, I die horribly.  We’re in the base at 38 mins, and the gg comes at 40 mins.  The overall experience wasn’t bad as my first game in the FTP HoN era.  The rage quitting sucks, so hopefully that gets sorted out soon.

League of Legends

Hero: Amumu (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/champions/32/amumu_the_sad_mummy)

k/d/a: 0/11/16

Time of game: 40 mins

Recap (without benefit of reply): No event in the known universe is as boring as the first 10 minutes of a LoL game.  This is now a verified fact, and no amount of fanboi/fangurl argument will reverse this truth.  The game is dominated by harassing and team fights in the mid.  Honestly, I spent most of my time dead, and any time I did get any lane momentum going at all, I was called away from it to be the sacrificial lamb to the other team in the inevitable mid team fight.  Apparently, being dead a lot is my role, which I suppose fits in with the RP of the character, a mummy.  I stun sometimes, but most of the time, I’m dead.  The last 20 mins are a giant 5 v. 5 boring clusterfuck in the mid that my team is on the losing side of. [Aside: every game of LoL I have played has devolved into this.  Every one.  All of them, except that bit about the losing side. 6 times I’ve been on the winning side.]  Finally they kill all of us; we surrender, and I want my 40 minutes back.  The only thing that made this game remotely bearable was the fact that I was on vent with friends.  This game sucks, and I could make some conjectures about why people like it so much (they sucked at DotA and LoL is free); however, the usual suspects will only come back with “you suck at LoL, which is why you don’t like it”.  On the contrary, I don’t like LoL because of its glaring design flaws: lack of choice in character selection (not just heroes that are available, but characters having roles is limiting.  Items ought to make the character a tank or DPS.), the “team focused” aspects that devolve into gaudy spell effect displays, and an opening 10 minutes that always makes me wish I could skip to fun part.

So that’s that.  I gave League of Legends every advantage: played with friends, picked my hero and used VoiP to communicate.  HoN is still far and away, night and day, factors of 10 ahead of LoL in every aspect of design sans the shop UI.  Hell, HoN now includes guides for characters with item builds and leveling orders, which you can toggle to have the game auto-level for you.  Pepsi challenge is complete; direct your sniveling to that wall over there.