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This is more of a self reflective article about the whole MOBA term that has spread around, and the issues that this term brings.
Firstly as a sort of a history backdrop, the term was created by one of Riots highest developers before LoL went into closed beta (either Marc Merrill or Steve snow came up with the term). Since at the time the League of Legends boards developed quite a community (for a game not even in beta phase yet) it started being adopted both inside the League of Legends community and outside LoL due to the interviews with Riots staff (where they used the MOBA term). Ever since then, the term spread basically like wildfire (also thanks to this site) where its now to the point where MOBA is generally excepted as the genre for games such as DotA/LoL/HoN (these were formally categorized as AoS games, after the Aoen Of Strife custom map in SC which was the first known game using this "genre")
So what exactly is the issue? Well the problem exactly lies is that the term, simply put, is incredibly vague and broad term that doesn't really work well in actually defining the genre. For those who don't know, MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. It should become immediately obvious that basically the majority multiplayer games fall under this category, and this is the reason why its also a highly disputed term. Games from CS to SC (these games are multiplayer, they are online, they are in an arena which in this case are the levels and maps and you obviously battle) to even online card games (yu-gi-oh anyone?) to obviously games like DotA or LoL or HoN. The only other genre that could possibly have such a vague term is RTS (real time strategy) since it can be argued that almost any genre requires strategy. However in this case, RTS is actually based off the term "strategy games" which were board games that specifically focused on strategy (and hence how the RTS term developed). This means one can say the same about MOBA (i.e. MOBA games focus on the concept of battle), however again as explained earlier, most online games focus on battle in the first place.
A lot of people at this point would say that I am exploding the problem, that even if the term is deemed as "vague" it really doesn't matter. The biggest problem doesn't really arise from the people already familiar with the games in the genre but it does present itself with issues when it comes to people attempting to understand the games in the genre. Think of it this way, we categorize different professions in science such as physics, biology,chemistry etc etc. If everyone generally went around using the term scientist to describe the various sub categories of science, people would then start assuming that a biologist is basically the same as a chemist with some slight differences (which is obviously quite incorrect).
This is in fact the issue that is now starting to arise with using the term MOBA. It wasn't so much of an issue before (since MOBA was only really used as a replacement of the term AoS, of which only clearly defined games such as DotA/LoL/HoN fell under) however we are now getting games which became categorised as MOBA but are indeed quite different. For example, now that the game BLC (Bloodline Champions) is getting attention, there have been number of cases where people are claiming that BLC is the same type of game as DotA or LoL (which is further from the truth). The most extreme example is a review of Bloodline Champions by the "Rock Paper Shotgun" game review site (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/01/19/the-thin-red-line-bloodline-champions/)
As you can see, its being implied that the game itself is similar to DotA Allstars and there are a massive number of comments on the website from DotA players commenting on the game (people assuming that its a DotA clone and commenting/criticizing the game from that perspective). I commented on the site some time ago stating that in fact the game is in fact quite different to DotA. This problem has also shown itself in other areas, for example on the Bloodline Champions boards there are people posting there expecting the game to be like DotA/LoL/HoN (since its categorized as a MOBA) and then there have been these debates trying to explain to people what the game actually IS.
This is however the ironic thing, since although Riot came up with the term MOBA, this site MOBAGamers is most likely what spread the term so massively, especially during the beta of League Of Legends. I also believe it was this site that first categorized the game BLC under MOBA (just be mentioning the game on their site). So where exactly does this leave us now? Should we come up with another name that more accurately portrays the genre, should we still use the term MOBA and if so how are we going to deal with defining games as MOBA or not MOBA, should we add some context on the term or should we just, leave it be?
It was a game made by some of the great minds behind everyone's favorite mod map, the legendary DOTA. It was touted and revered as being a free to play amazing game, albeit behind a hideous Adobe Air powered gasbag of a client. But yesterday, the hammer dropped. The shoe fell, the dream died, and the bloated disgusting entity known as League of Legends revealed its true colors. 
