Haitao and Misaya re-ignite the LOL vs. Dota war in China

It’s a battle that has been raging almost as long as the games have existed: League of Legends vs. Dota. But the heat turned up a few notches this week in China when two famous eSports personalities kicked off a war of words on a popular Chinese microblogging platform.

It started when Dota caster Haitao retweeted a post from the makers of Meng San Guo (a domestically-produced MOBA game) complaining about League of Legends. Commenting on the post, Haitao wrote:

Haha, one that’s “created by the original team that made Dota”, one that’s just Dota with a Three Kingdoms reskin, one that doesn’t admit it’s a copy, one that doesn’t admit it’s a knockoff. It’s really like ‘the chicken fighting the dish’ [i.e. something inferior fighting something superior], there’s totally no limit [to how low they will go].

And although Haitao’s comment, which implies that Dota is superior to all of the other games in the genre, was on a post from the Meng San Guo creators, former Chinese LOL pro Misaya saw it, and responded to Haitao directly with a post of his own:

Is the constant sarcasm really interesting or meaningful? Also, using the term ‘like the chicken fighting the dish’ makes me a bit disappointed in an old esports veteran like you.

Later, Misaya followed up with a second post on the topic:

There are really a lot of haters, and I invite you to leave comments attacking me. But whatever you think of me, at least as an LOL player I never thought there was any reason to mock Dota, and I myself am very happy playing LOL […] Also, for my friends in the industry I should add that I wasn’t paid anything for the last post.

Other eSports personalities like SKY and King have already weighed in urging calm and discouraging a fight, but of course many Chinese fans are off and running with the debate. One article about the exchange, for example, has already attracted nearly 1,500 comments, in which fans are debating everything from which game is better to whether Tencent (the Chinese publisher of League of Legends) is to blame for the extremely negative atmosphere that surrounds both games in China.

And, of course, there are plenty of toxic “Your game sucks!” “No, your game sucks!” exchanges in the comments as well.

The battle between Dota and LOL in China’s eSports scene is pretty hostile even at the best of times; articles about one game are often inundated with comments about how it sucks and people should play the other. This latest outburst from an old Dota figure who should really know better, will only make things worse.

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