League of Legends Preview

by matt

League of Legends is a free to play online multiplayer game being developed by Riot Games and I think a little history lesson is in order here. A long time ago when the world was a better place Warcraft 3 was released and it was good. A lot of mods were made for Warcraft 3 but one stood out like no other and that mod was defence of the ancients (DOTA for short). DOTA became hugely popular and League of Legends at its base level is DOTA remade. Your goal is to destroy the enemy team’s fortress by picking a hero, fighting monsters on the map, collecting experience and gold, buying new items and killing other players. Hopefully you will become strong enough to bring down the other teams fortress. Unfortunately at this time the NDA says I can’t post pictures or video but as soon they let me I will.

League of Legends has a few of the people that originally worked on dota and you can really see it. The map is a straight copy of the map in dota and that’s fine because it’s a great map. This a good example of how riot games developed League of Legends, they haven’t changed the core game play at all but they have added things on the side that make a much better product and of course this isn’t a mod so they don’t have to work within another game. Dota had a very VERY hardcore following and I think a lot if not all of those players will love the additions that have been implemented. For example they added a teleport back to base spell that everyone gets GENIUS! Where Riot Games have really made this their own is actually outside the game itself. You have a summoner account that exists no matter what hero you are playing. Your summoner account levels up as you play more games and has a talent tree and a book of runes. The talents you pick are the same for all your heroes and you can respec any time you’re out of a game. The book consists of 3 pages that can be customized with the runes that have bonus stats on them. The rune system is still being worked on so ill leave it for now and when they let me post video i will go into more depth. You also have levels and the more you level up the more talent points you have to spend and the more rune slots you have in your book.

The only problem I have with League of Legends at this point is the learning curve, it’s really rough! There are already a lot of people from dota who are very good and the levelling system just makes it harder to compete. People being too good is a hard thing to fix so I can only hope some sort of match making system is put into place when it goes live. I would love everyone to try this game but I’m afraid most people will just get beat repeatedly and give up. So far I really like League of Legends, a few more bug fixes and balance tweaks and it will be near perfect. Check it out when it launches on October 6th.