I have high hopes for this because it costs money. I'd like the LoL people to stay there and not mess things up for the rest of us.

W-wha...whaatt??? What the fuck does money have to do with this? Spending money != good product (see: Starcraft 2).

I think I've probably gotten used to how much space LoL's UI gives me to see everything, but when I was watching those games all I could think about was how much unnecessary empty space there was. Maybe it was just the resolution of those screens, but it sure did seem like the whole bottom area and the top bar took up more room than necessary.

Please, I'm sure some people have spent more on LoL than any other game they've played.

I used to spend every waking moment on Starcraft. This was for 5 years.

Idk man. I like LoL and all, but I wont worship it like a god. I do respect it as a well made game though, that will continue to entertain players as long as they get off their asses and work on it. See Dominion

But also I think despite this, an upfront cost discourages people from playing even if they will end up paying for things once they get hooked.

True. I wish you could still buy HoN for 7€ while it's f2p. It's so cheap that this barrier is really low. Try it with a f2p account then like and buy it.

I actually never imagined myself saying this, having never been an MMO player, but I don't think that a subscription fee would be a terrible choice. In fact, it's probably the business model of the future.

Rationale:

- Obviously pay for power is idiotic, putting that in DotA 2 would be foolhardy at best and absolutely game-destroying at worst. Microtransactions purely for cosmetic differences in my opinion could not come close to properly sustaining a game that's competitively oriented: a lot of players like myself simply don't care about that kind of stuff.
- Taking a cut of tournament fees discourages eSports. That's the last thing Valve should want to be doing- this is an absolute no to me.
- Many DotA players come from SEA countries where it's highly unusual for a game to have an upfront cost. Some of those players would be put off in the event of DotA 2 being a $60 game- not a good start.
- New players aren't hit with a ridiculous price for wanting to give the game a try. The genre is well known for being not for everyone, and that turned a lot of people away from HoN when it was pay-to-play- those players went to LoL. With a subscription fee (plus perhaps even a first-month free trial model) they can introduce new players to the game easily and in a non-punishing fashion... at least economically.
- WoW is enormous, it's a given that this model can succeed.

tl;dr: $3 a month/$30 a year is brilliant.

That is definitly not true. HoN and LoL have a larger community, and a large fan base then DotA could have ever achieved, so in no way does it have less competition. Granted, DotA achieved a lot being but a map stolen and modified several times on WC3. Everyone has their own story though, so onward.

HoN is different then DotA, LoL is different then DotA. DotA 2 is going to be different then DotA. In the end now, they're all also different games, and each have different strategies. I definitly believe entirely that its wrong to say that DotA players are better then LoL simply because the hero rotation is a different, and HoN now as well, since it lost its ties to DotA because of all that copyright bullshit.

That is where you are wrong, the only thing that is changing from DotA: Allstars to DOTA2 is the appearances, some of the names and maybe a few of their heroes' themes (such as the pandas).

They're adding other maps, but there's no reason to change the original.