I had first heard of League of Legends from my husband a couple of weeks ago. He had heard it from one of our mutual friends that we play Dungeons and Dragons with. The word that got me hooked on trying it was the word FREE.
This game is free to play.
So there was no harm in trying it out. For your entertainment, I thought I'd write about my thoughts on it. (Along with posting pretty pictures)
For those who don't know (because I didn't and looked it up) League of Legends is developed by Riot Games. League of Legends (LoL) was heavily influenced by Defense of the Ancients (DoTA) and many of the current players who play LoL came from DoTA. (Or from Heroes of Newerth, a game that also was influenced by DoTA)
Me, being the n00b I am, had never heard of these games and kind of shrugged my shoulders and said "How hard could it be?". I mean, I had played DemiGod and I figured it would be similar to this. Apparently these two games are completely different as voiced by many a forum poster on the LoL boards. But hear me out, the objective behind the games are the same:
Kill their dudes and bring down their nexus.
Ok, so I downloaded the game and installed it without a problem. I made my account, named my summoner, and got involved in figuring out League of Legends n00b-style.
First off, as any n00b would do, I linked the exe file to my steam account so my friends could see me nerd it up in this new amazing FREE game I got. I had many of them asking me about it just because every time I opened it, they'd get the notification I was playing it. This caused a few to download it and try it out. But that story is for later. Let me continue on with MY experience.
I opened the game and this screen pops up:
It shows the server status and the news and all the little community bits that Riot wants you to know. When you click Play, the login page pops up asking you to log in with the username and password you decided on during account creation.
Once you've done that, the games main page will show up.
There are a few options on this page alone. In the upper left corner, you see "Play" and "Store". Play is pretty obvious... you click it to begin the option of playing the game with other people. The store is where you can buy random in-game things like heroes, runes, and character skins that will change the appearance of your hero. To buy these, you have to pay in the form of Riot Points (which costs real money) or Influence Points (which you earn by playing games). In the upper right corner of the game screen, you can see how many riot points and influence points you have. The Riot points are shown as something that looks like a fist. The Influence points are shown as crossed swords.
Next to that is the option (below your name. I blacked mine out) is to view your summoner profile.
So from here you can see all the information you'd like about your playing history, runes, champions, mastery trees, and spells you know.
Ok! Lets play!
When you click play, another screen pops up.
There are several options: play a practice game, a normal game, a ranked game, and a tutorial. The tutorial is the game you play when you first log in to League of Legends. It tells you all the basics you need to know. (You pew pew at the other guy and try to destroy their stuff)
When you start the game, you have the option of browsing through your champs. It is possible to own all (currently) 42 champs. Each champ has their own strengths and weaknesses and each one contributes in a certain way to the team. You choose your rune page, extra spells, and masteries that you can use with your champion at the start of the game.
Playing normal games puts you in a queue to play with other people. The matchmaking in the game decides who should be put with whom to make a fair match between two teams. It is said the ELO is what decides this and is apparently a very complicated way of ranking people. You do not get to know your ELO unless you email the company directly but I think it is just another way for people to measure their epeens. I'm guessing this will definitely be used to figure out the ranked games, which are not possible to do yet.
So the idea behind the game is defend your "base" from annihilation while pushing your way onto the enemy's base so you can take down their nexus. Instead of explaining it fully, you can watch.
I would post pretty pictures of ingame plays but I think seeing it is better, so check out the following in game footage.
Here are some more youtube videos that will show you how the gameplay is:
My first game was a lot of fun considering it was in a practice game. I learned about in game item selection and different strategies I could try in a normal game. The REAL learning takes place out in the normal games. It can be hard for me since a lot of people have experience playing these kinds of games and I just don't, but I am excited to learn and just have fun with it all.
My thoughts
This game is a lot of fun to play, especially with friends. The graphics are nice, the range of champs to pick from is nice, and the satisfaction of winning a hard fought battle is definitely something that I can become addicted to. The Matchmaking is a little odd since it can pair up really unevenly matched teams, but I heard they are fixing it. The community is still, for the most part, pretty respectful but there is a fair share of people who take the game way too seriously and act like jerks, but you'll get that with any online experience.
As a free game, you definitely cannot go wrong. If you want to support the developer and their hard work, you can buy this game in stores and with the package you get: 20 champions, 1 champion skin, and $10 worth of riot points. Not a bad deal, especially if you get it for cheap like I and my friends did. GameStop has this game on sale for $19.99 but you can definitely buy the pack in Riot's online store in case the stores around you don't have it and you really want it.
