That's really interesting to me. MOBAs are notoriously new player hostile, just with the sheer amount of knowledge the game demands, and the fact that a team really does rely on its members which is too much pressure for a new player (which can translate into verbal abuse from your team depending on the game's culture).

So what's the MOBA that got you interested even though you're not familiar with the genre?

thats surprising, its such a ubiquitous word in multiplayer games. i think i first heard it used back in the early 2000s in wc3 or wow.

It's such a common term around mobas that I doubt you haven't heard it before. Considering the popularity of the genre it's statistically unlikely that it hasn't come up.

The term predates moba, it's early RTS, early MMO stuff, around late '90s, early 2000s.