SC2 basically told everybody that esport is a market worth designing a game for, that game and streaming created the whole esport revolution you see now. BW was the nerdy guy in the room refusing to leave, LoL didn't crash and burn to the surprise of 99% of the industry figures, CS was the game everybody used to play, but not anymore, Quake Live still had faint pulse and CoD 4 got smothered by the fact they releases a new version every year and MLGs had most games on consoles. I still think it's the most worthy esport game out right now, simply because of how fucking hard it is to play well and I think Blizzard was fine with people not grinding ladder every day, but they screwed the pooch with the arcade, which is a ghost town these days.
They have the basic framework for adding skins to units it is just completely not used. I'd say let the entire ladder be open and free. Only put the single player behind a pay wall. Add in a system very much akin to DOTA2 where you make money off basically everything else. Add a premium UI, premium load screens, premium buttons on the UI, unit models, decals, voice packs, player avatars ... basically everything is for sale. Make all the content additions such as expansions free to everyone. Blizzard is a smart company so I'm sure they've thought of all this and I'm sure converting the game it is written now over to being F2P wouldn't be a trivial task.
Many of your arguments, which are valid, revolve around the social aspect of MOBA vs RTS. Personally I hate the social aspect of MOBA. It is the part that turns me off the most. Additionally I have zero IRL friends that play competitive games. So that is out from the get go. I can understand playing with long time online friends which a MOBA/A-RTS fills that role. But I can also understand just playing a game in a bubble and possibly joining an online community. And SC2/RTS can fill that role. Many eSport people tend to have this notion there is only room for one game. Which the prosperity of DOTA and LoL even indicates there is room even for two very similar games. Probably because there is very little crossover. People have "their game" they watch and don't tend to straddle multiple titles.
A couple things in my post you did miss. First, Starcraft is a much more mechanically demanding game. That really is a truth without debate. While Moba's have no small cap on exploitable APM, there is a definitive limit where the commands would be excessive. Certainly a Pro Dota player has moments where his hand speed is 2-300 APM at the pro level. But it is not a condition that must be sustained from minute 1 until the end of game. Which in Starcraft you could easily make the case that as the game goes on the difficulty level continues to skyrocket in the context of Mechanical APM.
Personally, I stopped playing SC2 unless I have like 2 weeks of time where I can devote several hours daily to it, because otherwise I just get frustrated by my own incompetence. While I have a certain degree of ladder anxiety, it tends to go away the more I play. There's no better high than when you win a really close 1v1 match, because you know it was your skill that got you the win. It's also a great training for so many other games. I can laugh at people who tell me microing Visage familiars is hard, Enchantress is difficult and Chen is straight up unplayable.
I purposefully left it out. I don't know enough about pro level mechanical requirements in DOTA. I generally try to avoid just making stuff up so I felt unqualified to discuss it. But when it comes to SC2 APM for the most part it is robotic and internal timer based APM. It isn't quite as exhausting since you aren't really taxing your brain the entire time. Eventually it just becomes natural and engrained. Just muscle memory. In a SC2 match compared to a DOTA2 match you probably make fewer "decisions" at the highest level. Because you pretty much know what to do based upon what you have and what your opponent has and you've seen this scenario. But this repetitive high APM tense environment does lead to more forearm/wrist issues compared to an average DOTA pro. Until you get that muscle memory, though, trying to remember to keep your APM up can be very, very exhausting.
