Hello, community.
I have been an avid League of Legends player for almost 7 years, starting back in 2010 when it first was released.
After one year of break, I actually came back for a few months, after some friends asked me to join them for a casual match, to reach the gold division in current season. Realizing I didn't have anyway to proceed in climbing the league, Iluckily stopped.
Now, I could actually write a book about how anti-skill, unpractical and unhealthy that game is for soloq (cause I have no problems in admitting that playing premade 5v5 with friends who actually want to cooperate in order to win and rank up properly might even be enjoyable) players, but it's not the reason I am here for.
I find the playerbase of a MMO/MOBA game being a very fundamental trait.
If you are to play competitive and invest time and effort into a game, you wanna make sure that the player pool is wide and fits your expectations.
The major factor that drags people all over the world to mostly play a game such as League of Legends is due to the largest community and the media around it.
In April 4th, 2016, an user nicknamed 'BigAlChubbs' opened this thread in the official forums:
Consistently though, the percentages of total game time were roughly (December 2015 quoted here):
League of Legends - 22.92% PC Time
DOTA 2 - 5.09% PC Time
HOTS - 1.16% PC Time
If I look at Steam, the range for last month of Dota 2 players was average of 684,154 to 1,291,328 peak concurrent.
If you use these ratios for League and HOTS, it suggests that, on average, there are 3.1M League players on concurrently at any time, 684K for Dota 2, and 156K for HOTS.
It also suggests the peak for League is 5.8M concurrent, 1.3M for DOTA 2 and 294K for HOTS.
To summarize, for how many are on at the same time:
League - Avg 3.8m, Peak 5.8M
DOTA 2 (Known stats, unquestionable) - Avg 684K, Peak 1.291M
HOTS - Avg 156K, Peak 294K
However, we know Riot says they have peak concurrent users of 7.5M. So if I redraw this a little, knowing raptr is based on playtime and not users, the new suggested ratios are:
League - Avg 3.8M, Raptr Peak 5.8M, Riot Peak 7.5M
Net range: 3.8M-7.5M
DOTA 2 - Avg 684KM, Raptr Peak 1.291M, Riot Peak 1.67M
Net range: 684K-1.67M
HOTS - Avg 156K, Raptr Peak 294K, Riot Peak 380K
Net range: 156K-380K
Those numbers have been gathered in 2015, but I am pretty sure that throughout the years the player population ratio between these three top MOBAs haven't changed that much.
It is true, though, that Heroes of The Storm 2.0 still hadn't been released and it might have brought a considerable increase in the player pool.
I personally find Heroes of The Storm to be such a way more flexible and funny game than League of Legends.
I still didn't hit level 5 with 15 champions (which I find it a very smart and fair way to filter players into accessing ranked matches, honestly) so I can't speak for the competitive side of it, but the gameplay is fresher, more dynamic and always inside the action.
Blizzard doesn't want to disclose numbers and I am not sure I can quite understand that but I'll have to respect it for sure.
I wanted to know what you think about this whole thing.
Is the game still alive and worth to play among all the other MOBAs?