Released in 2016, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) has grown to be one of the biggest MOBA games (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) on the mobile platform, it has recently completed its 5 years of journey and is celebrating its 5th anniversary. It was even picked as one of the games for the first medal event esports competition at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games which was held in the Philippines. MOONTON Games, a subsidiary of ByteDance, is the one responsible for the development and distribution of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, along with some other great mobile game releases they have.
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a mobile-optimized multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game as stated above. The two opposing teams compete to reach and destroy the enemy’s base while defending their own for possession of a path connecting the bases, the three “lanes” known as “top,” “middle,” and “bottom.” Weaker computer-controlled heroes known as “minions” spawn in team bases and travel the three lanes to the opposing team’s base, fighting opponents and turrets along the way.
MLBB 5th anniversary journey
During its release in 2016 Mobile Legends: Bang Bang had a total of only 10 usable heroes. This quickly rose up with releases after releases for the rapidly growing game. In just two years the number of playable characters, or as they call it heroes have grown sevenfold from 10 in its release to a whopping 70 in 2018. In the present, the number of heroes available to the player base has grown even more with a whopping total of 107 playable characters with two more already up in the advance server to be added in the future to live servers.
MLBB 5th anniversary Journey: History of the game
After completing its debut game, Magic Rush: Heroes, which was launched in 2015, MOONTON Games moved on to its next project, a mobile multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game ultimately titled Mobile Legends. MOONTON Games published Mobile Legends on July 14, 2016, with the subtitle “5v5 MOBA.” Elex Tech distributed the game in the United States.
In early 2020, the game was badly impacted by third-party plugins and scripts that permitted map-hacking, causing MOONTON Games to publicly announce punishments imposed through its social media platforms, revealing the account IDs of the banned players. According to an official statement, some accounts were also hacked owing to Device ID exploits, which could have been caused by third-party scripts. In response, patch 1.4.86 enabled two-factor authentication when login into a new device.
Through the years Mobile Legends: Bang Bang gained huge popularity in Southeast Asian regions especially in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, where it was even considered to be the region’s top downloaded app for iPhone users in 2017.
Knowing this, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang has been nominated three times in an awards event for video games in Indonesia called the EXGCON Indonesia Gaming Awards which was held on December 13th of the year 2019. MOONTON Games has been nominated as the ‘Most Favorite Game Developer of the Year’. While Mobile Legends won the award for being the Most Favorite Game of the Year. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Professional League (MPL) also won the award of being the Most Favorite Tournament of the Year.
Speaking of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Professional League, tournaments held for Mobile Legends have become huge esports events with so many great teams participating and many countries involving. Official Mobile Legends tournaments, such as the yearly Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Southeast Asian Competition (MSC), have been held in the Southeast Asian region, also local leagues such as the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Professional League (MPL).
The first Mobile Legends: Bang Bang World Championship, called M1, took place from November 15 to 17, 2019 at Axiata Arena in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The competition featured 16 teams from around the world competing for a prize pool of $250,000 USD. Mobile Legends was one of the first game titles to be listed as an esports medal event at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.
There are many more tournaments that are not held by Moonton. Examples are the Nationals which is an esports league held in the Philippines which includes Mobile Legends as one of its main events. Another example is in October 2019, where the Open Kitchen Kagitingan League, a Mobile Legends competition with a prize fund of P100,000 or $2500, was held.
Moonton releasing Special MLBB 5th-anniversary fanart collection – On The Journey
To make this 5th year memorable, fans will also see a limited edition fanart collection that brings together all the amazing works from the past 5 years from 87 creators around the world.
A wonderful journey with more years to come
Overall, it is very great to see that Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is still flourishing if not more ever since most of us started playing. For mobile gamers, Mobile Legends is considered one of the most notable video games, especially in the Southeast Asian region. It is interesting to see how much further would the game be developed and improved by MOONTON Games. And hopefully, see MLBB in 5 more years in the future as flourishing and as popular as it is today.
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