OH NO NYUU D: SCREENSHOTS NOOOOOO
(everyone else should also take more screenshots, I looove having something to look back on and really regret only having about 4 of them from my first... year or so playing. It's like baby photos or something!!)
I've never played LoL, but I definitely wouldn't call DotA and WoW similar when it comes to the actual gameplay. WoW is very much about character progression, pimping your little hero and levelling him up; there's no such thing in DotA because every game begins from scratch. WoW combat (PvP) and DotA are also very different, in virtually every way: WoW has ten different classes (then there's talent specializations, granted), each of which has dozens of spells and skills in its arsenal; DotA has almost a hundred different heroes, each of which has exactly four skills. And ya di da di da. They're just... really different.
It is based on DotA rather than WoW, but WoW is, to an extent, based on DotA (basically what Nyuu said, in fact we've talked about it before!). Or well, similar to, and made in direct chronological order by the same company (well, not the DotA map, but you know what I mean).
"Pimping" your character and levelling them up IS a key factor in League of Legends -- it's just on a smaller scale. I wouldn't say there was no such thing. You gain levels faster by playing better, or in different circumstances, and the items you buy (as well as the talent-esque things and "runes" you can equip before the match starts... and extra spells) have a huge effect on your champion's end build. The difference in this case is that everyone starts from a fairly even playing field, in WoW you can be thrown into a BG easily with people who are fresh at 85, or people with the best gear available in the game. (Or, while levelling, someone who is level 10 and someone who is level 19)
About classes vs. champions -- classes in WoW are larger/more complicated things, sure. But I think that gives you less variation in general (10 classes with a lot of spells verses 100 champions with just a few spells). Though, uh, regardless of that, as many spells as my class had a lot of them are similar to each other, and more are... barely ever used (or never in PvP). In fact the game was kinda... simplified, so to speak, going into Cataclysm (at least the talents, I understand there were many new spell things), having more and more and more spells that do the same thing is kind of unnecessary.
For example (feel free to protest if this isn't true) when Frost Mage gameplay was explained to me in Wrath, PvP wise, it was to "Activate all cooldowns and spam frostbolt". They also have a few escape tools (frost nova + blink, invisibility). The mage class has(had) many more spells and utilities at its disposal but in a small-PvP environment (duels) this could be simplified into a LoL champion with little of its complexity lost.
Let's say you had a champion with a slowing frostbolt thing, perhaps with a passive ability that slows attacking champions when they hit this champion (there are items that do that, however). They could have a CD that increases their damage while cloning them visually and summoning a little... watery elemental thing... and doubles on their attacks... the summoner spell "Flash" (basically the same as blink), maybe another damage spell that is like a frost nova clone... uh, and I guess invisibility for the fourth spell, though there are items/summoner spells that would be similar escape tools... well I dunno, but the point is that you could get pretty close! (Don't frost mages have an AoE stun now?)
If I were to simplify my own class, probably a better idea, uh... let's say I was a Discipline Priest and had PW:Shield, a healing spell/heal-over-time, a damage-over-time and uh... all champions will have an auto-attack so I dunno about more damage spells... maybe a buff for my teammates or myself that is like Pain Suppression/Power Infusion... I mean, there's not much reason to include the gigantic number of heals (they were mostly disregarded in PvP anyway) and well, that's basically all I'd use in the arena
anyway... except psychic scream, I love psychic scream. (:
POINT IS When you get down to it, WoW is less complicated than it seems, making it more complicated actually just causes a bunch of problems and balance issues a lot of the time... and trading a little bit of complexity makes it a lot more possible to switch your champions around (rather than picking one as a "main champion" type thing) which is a LOT harder to do in WoW (expensive/different gear for a respec and like, a month or two of your time to level and gear a new character. Or three months if you have a life. !). Also new classes are really rare and muuuuch harder to make (especially with "fresh" spells! I mean it must be hard to come up with a lot of unique ones, for new classes, and a lot of them are specific counters for specific classes... sometimes... I just remembered spellsteal OK?), if the champions are less work they pop up quite often and uh, keep you on your toes, so to speak. Having things easier to balance frees up the time of the developers! So more content! yaaaay (well, theoretically).
Uhm. Anyway, they're a bit different, but for good reason (on both sides, WoW classes BETTER be more complex if you have to spend so much more time on an individual character) but it is basically the same genre, and sometimes the LoL combat shines where WoW is aiming to but lacking! Eg. placement in combat, something that (coming into Cataclysm) was something that they were trying to emphasise more in WoW, League of Legends has this down-pat and placement is a huge factor! It adds a lot to the game, in WoW you occasionally had to go from point A to point B, but usually it was a measure of how close the enemy is to you/where your allies are, at its best.
Er, there's more to say on this subject but it's a bit hard to explain... so I'll leave it there for now... yeah.
Well, WoW is a MMORPG. League of Legends is not. At least from what I have seen.
Yeah, I realise that having a single hero progressing through the game world with quests and all that is a very appealing idea to some people -- I'm just speaking of the similarities in PvP gameplay (if you had only 3v3 and 5v5 arena in WoW and nothing else?).
