League of Legends (previously known as League of
Legends: Clash of Fates) is a game inspired by the Defense of the Ancients map for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne[3]
developed and published by Riot
Games for Microsoft Windows.
It was first announced on October 7, 2008 and released on October 27,
2009.The game was in a closed beta from April 10, 2009 to October 22, 2009.
It then transitioned to open beta until release.
Steve
"Guinsoo" Feak, the previous designer of the popular Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
custom map, DotA
Allstars, and Steve “Pendragon” Mescon, the administrator of the
former official support base for the map (www.dota-allstars.com), were
involved with Riot Games in the development of League Of Legends.Using the original DotA created by Eul (the original Defence of The
Ancients map for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos)
as a base, Guinsoo made DotA Allstars by inserting his own mix of
content, largely expanding the number of the heroes, and adding recipes,
numerous items and various gameplay changes. Guinsoo then passed
version 6 of the map on to its current developer, Icefrog. Pendragon,
who is the Director of Community Relations for Riot Games, helped create
the previous DotA Allstars website along with its forums.
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Development
The idea of a spiritual successor to Defense of the Ancients that would
be its own stand-alone game with its own engine, rather than another Mod
of Warcraft III began to materialize at the end of 2005.
League of Legends was born "when a couple of very active DotA community
members believed that the gameplay was so much fun and so innovative
that it represented the spawning of a new genre and deserved to be its
own professional game with significantly enhanced features and
around-game services."
Riot Games was co-founded by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill.
They partnered with some of the key creative minds behind the creation
of DotA-Allstars, Steve "Guinsoo" Feak and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon.Riot Games officially opened its office in September 2006, and
currently has about 40 people working on League of Legends, "including
their robust technology platform to service and operate the game as well
as a team dedicated to community relations."
According to Marc Merrill, when creating the various champions in the
game, instead of leaving the champion creation to just a few people,
they decided to open up the champion creation process to everyone in the
company based upon a template where they could vote on which champions
made it into the game.
Speaking at GamesCom 2009, Riot Games declared that they would be
supporting the game heavily after its initial launch.Several new heroes and hero skins have been offered as a part of this
after launch.
Gameplay
General
Players are formed into 2 even teams with 1-5 champions on each team.
Each team starts at opposing sides of a map, near what is called a
"Nexus". A match is won when either the opposing team's Nexus is
destroyed or the other team surrenders. To destroy a Nexus, each team
must work through a series of towers called "Turrets". Turrets are often
placed along a path to each base referred to as a "Lane". Along the
way, each player must gain levels from killing the opposing team's
"Champions" and "Minions" (small NPCs that constantly spawn and attack
the other team) and defeating neutral monsters (some of which grant
buffs upon death). Also, champions purchase "Items" with in-match gold
to improve their champion. In League of Legends, each player starts at
level 1 at the beginning of the match and can obtain the maximum of
level 18 with their champion, leveling 4 different champion-specific
abilities.
Matchmaking
League of Legends is a session-based game. Matchmaking occurs based
on the average Elo ratings of each individual players,
with slight proprietary adjustments.
The game can be currently played in two different modes: normal and
practice.
- In a normal game, the server tries to match up players of
equal skill level. It is possible to enter an arranged team of players,
in which case the arranged team is considered to be more powerful than
the individual players; this increase to a team's rating is based on
statistical data gathered by Riot Games. Additional prioritization is
done slightly by level, significantly by the sizes of any premade
groups, and very significantly by 'newbie'.
- Practice mode allows players to create their session and set
its properties, or find an existing session to join. Bots can also be added to fill in player slots.
There is a third mode currently in the works which will match players
together in "ranked" matches. This will be active July 13th.
Fields of Justice
Maps
in League of Legends are called Fields of Justice.
There are currently two Fields of Justice that the players can choose
from:
- Summoner's Rift resembles the DotA map. It has 3 lanes and
supports 5 players per side.
- Twisted Treeline is a smaller map with only 2 lanes. It
supports 3 players per side. Because of the shorter average lifespans of
games in this map, you receive 22% reduced XP and IP when you finish
the game.
A match puts two teams with a fixed number of players against each
other. Each team has its base, which contains the re-spawn point, item
shop and nexus. The two bases are connected by lanes.
Periodically, waves of minions spawn from the nexus. Minions are
AI-controlled troops that walk down the lanes, engaging any enemies they
encounter. The lanes are lined with turrets that engage enemies within
range. Once a turret is destroyed, it cannot be rebuilt. A new element
in League of Legends is the inhibitors. Each lane has an inhibitor on
both ends. If a team destroys the enemy inhibitor, more powerful "super
minions" will spawn for that side. Unlike turrets, inhibitors respawn
after a fixed amount of time.
Besides the lanes, the maps also contain "jungle" areas. Neutral
monsters inhabit the jungle. These monsters can be killed by a champion
for bonus gold and experience. Some powerful neutral monsters grant the
killer a buff that will help them in battle. Another special terrain
feature is the brush. Brush blocks the line of sight of units,
allowing champions to hide and set up an ambush.
The goal of each team is to destroy the enemy Nexus. The first team
to achieve this is the victor. It is also possible to surrender using a
voting system.
Champions
Each player controls a single Champion. There are currently 53
different champions in the game, each with unique characteristics.
Certain champions are tagged with properties such as 'tank', 'fighter',
'mage' or 'support' to describe their play style.
At the start of each battle, every player has the ability to choose a
champion to fight for him in battle. The choice of champions is limited
by what the player has unlocked. Each week, certain champions are made
temporarily free so that players can try them out without unlocking
them.
Champions gain experience by killing enemy minions, champions or
buildings. After reaching a certain amount of experience, the champion
levels up. Each level increases the champion's stats and adds an ability
point that can be spent to improve one of the Champion's unique
abilities. The maximum level for a champion is 18.
Players can gain gold by landing the killing blow on an enemy minion
or by killing a champion. Some abilities and items also generate extra
gold. The acquired gold can be spent at the item shop for various items.
These items boost stats of the champion. Some items can be combined
into more powerful items by following predefined recipes.
Summoner spells
The Summoner can choose two summoner spells to bring with it into an
in-game session on the Fields of Justice.
These spells significantly impact gameplay, and have a high cooldown
while costing no mana.
All spells can be improved by masteries.
Before v1.0.0.63, Promote was an available summoner spell that would
upgrade a minion, it was deemed too powerful when used in unison by
multiple summoners.
Attributes
Each champion has a variable amount of attributes that describe how
it can be played.
Melee - Basic attacks can only be used in close combat
Ranged - Basic attacks can be used from a distance
Assassin - Damage-based champion that has at least one ability to
close distance between enemy targets quickly; champions with this
attribute tend to die much quicker when targeted.
Fighter - Damage-based champion that performs better in large
group fights.
Mage - Damage-based champion whose abilities are typically ranged
and greatly affected by ability power.
Support - Champion with abilities that aid in team fights and
usually aren't good in 1v1 fights.
Tank - Champion that can act as a group shield due to their
above-average health, armor, and magic resist; usually they have low
damage output.
Carry - A champion that typically starts out with below average
stats and becomes above average as a match progresses.
Disabler - A champion that can disable enemy champions with their
abilities (sometimes labeled disable instead of disabler in-game).
Farmer - A champion that can easily kill enemy minions and
neutral monsters, thus allowing them to build in-match gold faster.
Flee - A champion that possesses abilities that enable it to
escape from combat.
Haste - A champion that can temporarily speed up self, allies, or
both.
Heal - A champion that can heal either self, allies, or both.
Ninja - This champion uses energy instead of mana (energy
recharges quickly and is not effected by mana and mana regeneration stat
increases).
Nuke - A champion that can deal a significant amount of damage in
a short time.
Pet - A champion that can create a non-champion ally (sometimes
controllable).
Pusher - A champion that can quickly destroy enemy towers and
inhibitors due to their ability to summon additional units or deal
damage to an area of enemy creeps.
Recommended - A champion that Riot Games staff would recommend
for people new to League of Legends.
Silence - A champion that can silence enemy champions; champions
affected by silence cannot use abilities or summoner spells during its
duration.
Snare - A champion that can snare enemy champions; champions
affected by snares cannot move during its duration.
Slow - A champion that can slow enemy champions; champions
affected by slows move slower during its duration.
Stealth - A champion that can become invisible to enemies (other
than when near turrets, vision wards, and enemy champions with an
Oracles buff).
Stun - A champion that can stun enemy champions; champions
affected by stuns cannot move, attack, use abilities, or use summoner
spells other than Cleanse.
Teleport - A champion that can teleport to other locations or
champions; champions with abilities that are similar to the summoner
spell Flash do not have this attribute.
Tough - A champion that lives longer than usual in combat.
Persistence
and meta-Game
Summoner
A filled mastery tree.
The Summoner acts as the persistent element in the game, to be used
to track statistics and scores for each player.
Summoners gain experience points and Influence Points for each battle
they participate in. They level up by getting enough experience,
unlocking new ways to influence battles.
Masteries
Masteries are perks that affect gameplay, they are commonly referred
to in other games as "skill-trees". All of the masteries are passive
effects although some augment summoner spells, which can be activated.
They are grouped into Offensive, Defensive, and Utility categories. Each
group has 6 tiers, within a group all but the first tier are locked
when you first start, with a successive tier opening with each 4 points
spent in the same group. Lines in the mastery tree imply additional
unlocking criteria. The summoner can put one point per level (up to
level 30) into masteries. Masteries can be re-distributed at will
between battles.
Runes
Similar to masteries, runes affect gameplay in minor ways. Runes are
categorized into Marks (offensive), Seals (defensive), Glyphs (magic)
and Quintessence (all-purpose). They are also grouped into 3 tiers,
higher tiers requiring a higher Summoner level. Runes must be unlocked
in the Store and it is possible to have more than one copy of a rune.
Summoners must arrange their runes in the Runebook to benefit from them.
The Runebook has limited number of slots for each rune type. The book
has two pages, allowing two different rune builds to be saved and the
appropriate one chosen before a battle. A combining system exists for
runes: combining two equal-tier runes produces a random rune of the same
tier, while combining 5 equal-tier runes produces a higher-tier rune.
Store
The League of Legends Store allows Summoners to purchase additional
options through Riot Points (RP) and Influence Points (IP). Riot Points
must be bought using real money, while Influence Points are earned by
playing the game.
- Champions can be unlocked for either RP or IP.
- Skins are alternate looks for champions that can be unlocked
for RP only.
- Boosts to IP and XP gain over a period can be purchased for
RP only.
- Runes can be purchased for IP only so as to not "sell power".
- Bundles that unlock a large selection of champions can be
purchased for RP only.
- Riot Points can be recharged by credit card or PayPal.
Distribution
Riot Games has signed deals regarding the distribution of League of
Legends in Asia, Europe, and North America. The game is expected to be
released in the rest of the world also. The game has already released
and is distributed in Australia, USA, Canada and Europe. No public
announcements regarding other regions has yet been made.
In Asia, Tencent Inc., China's largest Internet value-added services
company, best known for its QQ
Instant Messaging client will be in charge of the distribution to
Tencent’s growing 300 million Internet user base through its leading QQ
Game portal. The deal is one of only a handful of partnerships to bring a
U.S.-developed online game directly to China.
In Europe, Riot Games has signed an international licensing
partnership with GOA, the videogames department of Orange’s Content
Division and Europe’s largest gaming portal. On October 13, 2009 GOA and
Riot announced that they would start channeling server access for
players located in Europe, to GOA's dedicated servers.
This restriction meant that players located in Europe would not be able
to play on Riot's servers in the United States. Due to negative
community feedback, the channeling decision was rescinded October 16,
2009.
In North America, Riot Games will self-publish and operate the game and
all of its customer service aspects. After some Problems with the GOA
Dedicated Server for the League of Legends platform, Riot Games
announced that they will self-publish and operate the game and all of
its customer service aspects. Also the new Server are hosted in Germany,
after some troubles with the France ISP.
On July 14, 2009, Riot Games announced that the game League of
Legends will be free with "no catch".There will be a digital copy for download, but there is also a Digital
Collector's Copy that will be available to purchase that contains
exclusive skins, $10 credit for Riot Points, and 20 champions to access
without unlocking them normally via gameplay as well as 4 "special"
runes; the Collector's Pack is currently available for $29.99.
Even though the game is free, Riot Games "plan[s] to continue to add
content (characters etc...) with a full production team at very frequent
intervals."
The game will be supported by microtransactions rather than ads or
boxed copy sales.[
On 25 February 2010 Riot Games announced that League of Legends will
be distributed in South East Asia by an unspecified publisher and
blocked SEA IP addresses pursuant to its distribution agreement.The community has raised a number of concerns about the deal and the
immediate IP block. Riot has offered preliminary answers to each, but
has yet to offer a public response to most individual situations.
Reception
The Game has won numerous awards including:
- Gamespy Gamer's Choice Award for PC Game of the Year.
- IGN Reader's Choice Award for PC Best Strategy Game and PC Best
Multiplayer Game
- PC Gamer's DotA-Style Game of the Year
- NeoGAF MMO Game of the Year
- GamersNexus RTS Game of the Year
- MMOSite Reader's Choice Best MMORTS and Best New MMO 2009
Reviews of League of Legends have primarily been positive, especially
with regards to the gameplay. Most criticism has been related to either
the relatively unproven business model, the intense competitiveness and
moderate learning curve of the game, frequent server issues, or the
amount of content available at release.
IGN awarded League of Legends 8.0 out of 10, highlighting an
enjoyable game design, inventive champion design with good customization
options and lively visuals. However, the confusing launch was
criticized: It was felt that the title was released too early, with some
features missing and others to be removed. The chargable "collectors
edition" was also questioned, as at the time of writing it had the same
set of features as the free version. Finally, the game community was
noted for its poor attitude, especially towards newcomers.
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