And the Mac hasn't been left out of the equation — some popular MOBAs run natively on the Mac. Here's a roundup of the best ones you can get right now. What's more, all of them are free to play, so it won't cost you a dime to try them out.
These mini PCs run Windows or Mac OS X, but can fit in your hand. Here are top picks for family-use, gaming, business and home theater.
Best Gaming Laptops for 2018. Our editors hand-picked these products based on our tests and reviews. If you use our links to buy, we may get a commission. I don't mind games like Uno however, love playing this on the iPhone. Other games were 'online' too, but only with leaderboards and such things. I've often seen lists about online multiplayer games for Mac, but weirdly enough, Driver: San Francisco was never listed. That’s why I’ve put together this guide to gaming on the Mac, covering everything from the best Mac hardware for gaming, to using Windows Boot Camp, to the mice and keyboards you should buy. Here are the best gaming headsets available for PCs, Xbox One and PS4, including wireless options, budget picks and 7.1 channel models. What about best wireless for someone gaming with a Mac.
First, for the uninitiated, let's answer the obvious question: What, precisely, is a MOBA?
MOBAs are real=time strategy games that involve multiple players divided into teams. Each player typically controls a single champion or hero character that leads others — computer-controlled minions — into combat. Teams square off and try to destroy or control each other's in-game structures in order to win.
MOBAs combine elements of action games and strategy games together, and have become a popular pastime for gamers looking for fun, challenging ways to team up with friends (and sometimes complete strangers) online.
Blizzard Entertainment's seminal strategy game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is often pointed to as the seed for the current MOBA craze. An active community of modders — hobbyists and programmers interested in expanding the capabilities of the game — took to Warcraft III, and one in particular, a fellow who went by the nom de mod of Eul, created Defense of the Ancients, a specialized map for the game modeled after another popular map for another Blizzard strategy game, StarCraft. Since then MOBAs have existed both as mods for other game and as entirely standalone projects. So without further ado:
League of Legends
Riot Games' League of Legends is nothing short of a phenomenon. Since it debuted in 2009 it's garnered millions of fans worldwide. For a long time Mac gamers were left out of the loop but the developer finally graced the Mac with a client in 2013. (Don't be scared off by the seemingly permanent 'beta' status of the Mac client.)
League comprised well more than 100 different champions, each with different strengths, strategies and weaknesses. Players fight each other to gain experience and to win gold, which they can use to buy items to strengthen their champions. A variety of game modes exist and Riot is constantly improving and tweaking both gameplay and the in-game characters, which leads to constant new challenges. And it's paid off: At peak times, more than 7 million players can be playing simultaneously. League is the focus of professional gaming tournaments, too.
League is free to download and play. Riot makes money from the sale of Riot Points (RP), which help players get ahead in the game.
- Free - Download now
Dota 2
I mentioned Defense of the Ancients at the outset. Dota 2 is its proper sequel, developed by Valve Corp. As a result, it's available for download from Valve's popular Steam online game matching and download service.
The classic elements of MOBA gameplay are here: Two teams of five players each, each of which occupy a base at a corner of the map. Teams are divided into The Radiant and The Dire. The Ancient is a building inside each base that must be protected or you lose the game. Players have over 100 different Heroes to choose from, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Combat provides experience, which levels the character up, enabling players to imbue their Hero with better statistics and new skills.
Dota 2 has been criticized for having a steeper learning curve that League does, and my experience has been that the Mac client doesn't run very well on systems that are on the lower side of its system requirements, but that hasn't stopped it from being very popular: Dota 2 gets close to a million players at peak times.
- Free - Download now
Heroes of Newerth
S2 Games' Heroes of Newerth squares players off into two factions: The Legion and the Hellbourne. Each team has to either destroy the World Tree or Sacrificial Shrine (depending on which faction you're fighting), or force the other team to concede defeat. There are different game modes, more than 120 heroes to master, and more.
Newerth was heavily influenced by the original Defense of the Ancients, though S2 Games developed it independently of DotA. The game remains fiercely independent. While Riot is the 800 pound gorilla and Dota 2 gets lots of attention because of Valve's involvement, S2 has done very well over the years, but its player base is much smaller. That's not a bad thing; the game continues to do well and get new players all the time.
- Free - Download now
SmashMuck Champions
A relative new entry to the MOBA market, SmashMuck Champions lets you play as absolutely weird heroes like a robot shark and a platypus unicorn. It's got a great sense of humor and some truly wacky design, and its creators cite its 'community driven development process' as a plus as well. Classic team-based play is here, though SmashMuck looks and plays a bit differently than the other MOBAs listed above, with five different game modes that include a capture the flag mode, tower defense mode, control point capture and more.
There's a more limited selection of champions to choose from, but more than 600 customizable items keep it interesting, along with daily challenge and alliance-based achievements.
- Free - Download now
Happy gaming
Hopefully these will get some of you started down the road of MOBA play. Are you already an avid MOBA fan? I'm sure I've left out a few that play well on the Mac without relying on a Windows partition. If I've left off your favorite or if you have any comments or suggestions, lay 'em on me.
AMD and Nvidia are (still) fighting it out for gaming dominance on the desktop, with new products such as the Nvidia RTX Super line and the AMD Radeon RX 5700 series, as well as in laptops. Right now, the landscape can be confusing, but generally the best gaming laptops are running Nvidia's RTX graphics, which first came to desktop PCs in late 2018, and to laptops in January 2019.
For this roundup, we've taken all the laptops with discrete graphics hardware we've tested over the past year and a half and ranked them based on 3D performance. Below are those with top performance from that group, and you can also scroll through the full list of game benchmark results here.
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If you're building a desktop gaming rig, start with our guide to desktop graphics, but if you're in the market for a gaming laptop, these are the very best ones we've tested. All of these gaming laptops, from just under $1,000 to $5,000 or more, can easily support high-end virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and many new designs fit top-tier graphics hardware into wafer-thin laptop bodies.
When reviewing a gaming laptop or desktop, we run preset performance tests using several games, including Far Cry 5, Metro: Exodus and others, along with standard benchmarks like 3DMark, which is designed to test a computer's 3D graphic rendering capabilities.
For this list, we're ranking the best gaming laptops in descending order of 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra scores, but the real-world game scores (presented as the number of frames of animation per second the laptop can render) match very closely. Note that these scores are specifically for the exact configurations of each laptop we tested, and almost all can be configured with a wide range of options.
At the very top are two high-end gaming laptops that use desktop-class processors and full-power Nvidia RTX 2080 graphics: the Alienware Area-51m and the Origin PC Eon-17X. Those are both at the top end of the price scale, but gaming laptops at more reasonable prices, including systems from Asus, Dell, Origin PC, Lenovo, HP, MSI and Razer, among others, are all represented.
New and notable for this summer update of the best gaming laptops are the latest model of the Razer Blade 15 Advanced, equipped with a stunning OLED screen that's good for creative work; HP's novel dual-screen Omen X 2S; and the budget-friendly but powerful Lenovo Legion Y545.
The exact scores and graphics hardware specs for all tested gaming laptops are located here.
Note CNET may get a share of revenue from the sale of the products featured on this page.
Sarah Tew/CNETOn top of the satisfying visual refresh rate of Alienware's highest-end laptop, the Area-51m offers an impressive 17.3-inch display, an excellent keyboard, and plenty of processing overhead from PC gaming CPUs and the latest RTX GPUs. Plus, a modular processor and GPU design lets you get inside the case and replace both the processor and graphics card for terrific gaming performance.
Sarah Tew/CNETLike the Alienware Area-51m, the Origin PC Eon-17X features the desktop-class Intel Core i9-9900K processor and the new Nvidia RTX 2080 graphics card. This combination made these our two top-performing laptops so far from all of 2018-2019.
Sarah Tew/CNETThe Acer Predator Triton 900's rotating display is a great idea that's also well executed. The keyboard incorporates mechanical switches that feel very good, and its performance is fast -- though as a laptop, the keyboard and short battery life may be a drawback for some.
Mac Gaming Mouse
Sarah Tew/CNETThe 2018 version of this laptop, with a desktop CPU and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card, was right behind the updated version. It's pricey and has a modest battery life, but it delivers top-notch performance.
Sarah Tew/CNETBest Online Games For Mac 2018
This updated Asus ROG Zephyrus combines both a slim, professional-looking design with the expanded power of Nvidia's new RTX graphics card for an excellent gaming experience, though at the cost of battery life.
Best Online Gaming For Pc
Dive into the exact scores and configurations for all the top performers in the full buyer's guide list of 30-plus gaming laptops.
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Best Gaming Mice For Mac
To find the best budget laptop, read our breakdown of the best gaming laptop under $1,000.
Originally published earlier this year. Updated to reflect new performance scores.
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