The League of Legends thread of oh my god I have no life

[Pip Boy]

Lately I've begun playing League of Legends, an online RTS that is loosely based on Defense of the Ancients. Its free to play, and they're not too bad about flaunting that "OMG PAY US AND YOU CAN HAVE THIS" kind of stuff in your face. Could be a fun thing for some of us forumites to group up and do.

A little about the game:

Your objective in League of Legends is to push toward's the enemy's base and knock out their main building, the Nexus. In between you and them are several Lanes. Minions spawn at each nexus and travel down the lanes, fighting in the middle. The players each control a hero character that they can move around the field, destroying minions to push toward the enemy's Nexus or to destroy the other minions. Positioning and strategy is very important, and overall the game favors group coordination over individual ability, making it kind of like the Left 4 Dead series.

About 50 different characters are playable, but have to be bought before they can be played. Each week, ten different champions can be played for free, but you'll lose them when the week is over unless you buy them. This gives you an opportunity to try a variety of different characters before buying any. The different champions' costs are based on how much people have used them in the past, not their power, so even the really cheap ones (Prices range from 450 to a little over 6000 units) are just as effective if used properly.

[Grimpond]

Fuck yeah LoL! I like to play as sion or Twisted Fate.

[synkr0nized]

I had tried LoL in the open beta. I know the game is free, but it never really pulled me into it. DotA didn't, either, so it wasn't a surprise. The DotA concept is fun, for sure, but it's not a thing I do regularly -- just here and there with friends.


No, my evidence for showing I have no life is that I let my friends cajole me into getting off a free private server and signing up when Cata launched. For someone who can't pick a "main", that's a poor game to have to level from scratch in. BUT I should not derail.



LoL's artwork struck me as pretty solid. The item system seemed more simplified, which I liked due to never really getting too good at knowing what basic parts became what complex items in DotA. It was my impression, though, that from the beginning there has been a lot of animosity between LoL folks and Hearts of Newearth or whatever HoN stands for due to them being rival spiritual successors to DotA. It also didn't help my impressions as a casual player that almost all of the DotA community in its various camps now are full of "pro" players who get really irritated by newbs like me who kind of are only good at lanes and creep farming and pretty bad at knowing when to chase or collapse on another lane/hero. I don't want to use the word elitist but rather that the learning curve is not just steep but has this long plateau at first that you wander around on before jumping up to where better players are.

If that's all just a reflection of my poor playing and not actually the community, fair enough.


Do they have any rumors floating around about what they plan to do to counter the Valve-supported Icefrog and DotA 2?

[Krylo]

I can't take any game seriously when its acronym is lol.

[Pip Boy]

This week I've been taking advantage of Nocturne's being free to play. He's an excellent ganker with lots of moves to help keep in melee range and stop their escape. His cleave makes him really good for killion minions too, so he can easily stay ahead in the EXP race or jungle.

[Roland]

While I have no interest in starting to play yet another MMO, I would like to thank Ser Pip Boy for reminding me that I needed to cancel my subscription to DDO since I stopped playing it.

Thanks. Now if only I could muster up the courage to call Microsoft so I could cancel my Gold Account...

[PyrosNine]

I've been playing it lately as it is both free and I'd heard great things, but I do have some problems with it: it seems to be geared for DOTA players in terms of the sheer complexities of each character and how they interact and the various strategies.

Sure, there's a tutorial and shit, but it's barebones and you can win even if you're not really giving an ass about strategy.

Essentially LOL is giving me an awful lot of toys to play with (even if alot of them cost money, there's always at least 12 freebies any given month) and telling me to just dig in and experiment, but at the same time when I do so everybody who has already dug in is calling me a noob, a feeder, a leaver, that I'd do a better job if I disconnected...

I'm playing low level games on easy, and I'm still getting people's britches in a bunch...and since it's a Coop game, it's not even a matter of getting jeered at by the ridiculously skilled 13 year old of Halo, it's getting jeered at by the squad of people who know a little more than me and are on my own g d team. Occasionally they will bark out some understandable commands, but even if victory is achieved irregardless of the quality of other players they will still talk only about how much they hate playing with noobs.

It seems already like of those competitive games where I have to read an encyclopedia on character strategies and ideology of play before I can even pick it up or face torrents of derision!

I was half tempted during the new Players vs AI they started (so people can train others and together) to tell one particularly bitchy person to shut the hell up or so help me myself I would find out where he lived and 'feed' him to death.

The game itself takes about 30 minutes each sitting to play, and once you start a game you're in it for the long hall, so you have to plan the game around events instead of the other way around, and disconnecting mid game is not looked upon favorably to say the least.

I do like that if you participate enough, you can purchase characters and skins with just IP, and usually what was once money only will later become IP buyable, so effort does directly lead to rewards and money is only if you want certain cosmetic perks now, or certain characters ahead of time.

[Grimpond]

I am, in fact, called Grimpond in this venue as well. Playing right now actually.

[Pip Boy]

My LoL name is NeuroticEuphoria. If anyone is having a problem getting into the game or getting the basics down, I would be glad to do some vs computer games with any of the forumites regardless of their skill level. The computers aren't that hard, so if you have even 2 or 3 good players on a team, the rest of them being deadweights won't set you back too far.

[01d55]

I knew this thread existed and I had to find it because I like this damn game so much I blog about the free champion rotation every goddamn week (http://01d55.tumblr.com/tagged/League_of_Legends).

I just unlocked Skarner because he's hilariously great on Dominion and the recent buffs probably made him a badass jungler. Was tempted to take Xerath instead because he is really fun.