The Full Form of MOBA is‍ Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) is a rapidly emerging sub-genre of the Real-Time Strategy genre and e-sport that may well be on its way to a full blown genre of its own. The concept started in the Blizzard Mod community in the mid 2000’s and has since proliferated out into standalone AAA releases. As of this writing the business model, nature of the sub-genre and even its’ very name are all in a state of flux.

As of early 2012, The emerging genre has yet to have attained a universally accepted name although many acronyms have been proposed. MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) seems to be emerging as the leading candidate as of this writing. The MOBA moniker was proposed by Riot Games who developed League of Legends.

Other names include:

• AOSs (Aeon of Strife)- Aeon of Strife was the original Starcraft:Brood War map from where the genre arose
• DotA (Defense of the Ancients) – The other leading contender to MOBA, DotA takes its name from the Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos mod that propelled the genre to popularity. The DotA alias also shows up in different variations such as “DotA clone”, “DotA-like”, “DotA-esque”, “DotA-style” etc.
• ARTS (Action Real Time Strategy) – proposed by Valve who launched Dota 2
• HAG (Hero Action Game) – one of the the less popular options at the moment.
• LoMa (Lords Management) – coined by Idle Thumbs and used by its community.
• Team Brawler – Used by Blizzard to describe Heroes of the Storm.

There is considerable debate among fandom as to which name suits the genre the best.

A further complicating factor is that Valve has filed a trademark on the term “DOTA” (all in capital letters) in August 2010. This likely severely limits the chances of other developers ever embracing the “DotA” nickname for the sub-genre in their marketing despite the term’s popularity among players. Immediately thereafter Pendragon (Steve Mescon), founder of DotA Allstars the official community site of the DotA and an employee of Riot Games, filed a trademark dispute against Valve.

Another dispute was filed by Blizzard against Valve on November 26th 2011 over the trademarking of the term “DOTA” asserting that since “DotA” was created as a mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos it falls under the purview of the game’s End User License Agreement (which states that all content created with Warcraft III’s editor tools belong to Blizzard).

In early May 2012 Blizzard’s dispute was settled, with Valve retaining the commercial rights to the name DOTA and Blizzard users being allowed to use the name for non-commercial uses only. This outcome makes the adoption of the MOBA acronym more likely for the sub-genre.