LoL game!

I’ve been playing a strategy game called “League of Legends”. It’s fair to call it a strategy game, though it has a lot of RPG (role playing game) elements. They have gone great lengths to make the game fun and addicting… which it is.

League of Legends or LoL came from a unique map from Warcraft III. In Warcraft the map was named DOTA, or Defense of the Ancients. It grew in popularity and many people joined Warcraft III or W3 just to play DOTA. This is typical of any popular mod for a game out there. A popular mod gets a lot of attention and when it becomes a popular mainstay? The people or developers of the mod are bought up and it usually gets put into a standalone game. Prime examples are Team Fortress for Quake 1, Counter Strike for Half-Life, ”The Kill Patch” for Quake, Desert Combat for Battlefield 1942. All of those developers for those mods were bought and put into a real company to develop a real game! Which by my count has all been very successful.  A good way to get into the gaming industry.

In LoL, each person has a character they choose, which has to be unique for your team. Matches are between 10 people, 5 on each side. The map (which the game only has 2) has 3 lanes to reach the other persons base. They are protected by powerful defensive towers. There are also minions that spawn in 30 second intervals. These minions act as the way to get experience, gold and a way to push into the enemy base.  This is where the strategy comes in to play.

Each character has a role as well as strengths and weaknesses. They are categorized by almost standardized gaming terms. The tank plays a role to protect the team and push the lines. The tank is supposed to be the toughest person in the team and the hardest to kill. The assassin is supposed to be a stealthy killer playing guerrilla tactics. The caster is someone who has a lot of damage potential in killing power, but weak in terms of defense, easily killed if caught off guard. Then there is a support, which typically isn’t very effective by you but makes the team drastically more effective. I prefer to play a tank role as well as support. I pick unusual characters that are not popular so I usually get the person I want.

Playing as a cooperative team can be difficult, but the only real effective way to win. If minions are left by themselves, they will go back and forth on a line and grow stronger in numbers the longer they are left unchecked by a player. This can cause your team to lose a tower if you leave them alone. When you take out all three towers in a lane there is a special building called an inhibitor that causes the other side’s minions to become more powerful. If you lose yours, that lanes enemies grow very powerful. Left alone they can quickly devastate your base and win. However, minions are not the most dangerous part of the game, it’s the other players.

Players at the start are not very powerful, they cannot compare to the power of a turret at all. Later in the game the player can become more powerful and easily take down wave after wave of minions with ease, including towers. Very late game, towers almost can be ignored by some players.

Each match has an average time of about 45 minutes. They can go much longer or shorter. Playing with people you know make it that much more fun.

Now here’s the strange point, or selling point. The addicting part of the game is not the play-style, but outside the game. Each match you gain experience for your account and in game currency to spend. These are very addicting points to any game. With points you can purchase characters, skins which change the appearance of your character or in game stat increases called runes. You do not have to spend any money to play or earn a character, but their skins and things you can only buy with real money. It’s not a lot but they can nickel and dime someone and that’s how they get their profits! What’s really bad is that I like how their system is. People who would normally never spend money for a game actually fork over cash to something that never helps them! I don’t know anyone who is against their way of making money! It works and they seem to do very well.

The game has a hard learning curve but it is easy to get into. The play is simple. The commands or in game mechanics are easy. There is a lot of depth to how things go together or how the skills interact with each other. Enough to anyone who loves math to spend a few weeks on the combat formulas.

The graphics are not impressive and can run on older hardware. However, it’s enough to emerge you into a fun experience for anyone willing to spend the time. I highly recommend trying it out, unless you don’t want to lose a lot of time. It is addicting.

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