League of Legends
In
League of Legends, players assume the role of an unseen "summoner" that controls a "champion" with unique abilities and battle against a team of other players or computer-controlled champions. The goal is usually to destroy the opposing team's "nexus", a structure which lies at the heart of a base protected by defensive structures, although other distinct game modes exist as well. Each
League of Legends match is discrete, with all champions starting off fairly weak but increasing in strength by accumulating
items and
experience over the course of the game. The champions and setting blend a variety of elements, including
high fantasy,
steampunk, and
Lovecraftian horror.
League of Legends was generally well received upon its release in 2009, and has since grown in popularity, with an active and expansive fanbase. By July 2012,
League of Legends was the most played PC game in North America and Europe in terms of the number of hours played. As of January 2014, over 67 million people played
League of Legends per month, 27 million per day, and over
7.5 million concurrently during peak hours.
League has among the largest footprints of any game in
streaming media communities on platforms such as
YouTube and
Twitch.tv; it routinely ranks first in the most-watched hours. In September 2016 the company estimated that there are over 100 million active players each month.The game's popularity has led it to expand into merchandise, with toys, accessories, apparel, as well as
tie-ins to other media through music videos, web series, documentaries, and books.
League of Legends has an active and widespread
competitive scene. In North America and Europe, Riot Games organizes the
League Championship Series (LCS), located in
Los Angeles and
Berlin respectively, which consists of 10 professional teams in each continent. Similar regional competitions exist in China (
LPL), South Korea (
LCK), Taiwan (
LMS), Southeast Asia (
GPL), and various other regions. These regional competitions culminate with the annual
World Championship. The 2017 World Championship had 60 million unique viewers and a total prize pool of over 4 million USD. The
2018 Mid-Season Invitational had a overall peak concurrent viewership of 19.8 million, while the finals had an
average concurrent viewership of 11 million.
Games types
League of Legends includes several game types players can select.
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- The Tutorial is the first game type available to new players. The tutorial is played on the Howling Abyss and is intended to teach new players the rules and gameplay of League.
- Co-op Vs. AI is available to new players after completing or opting out of the Tutorial. It is played on Summoner's Rift, Twisted Treeline, and (formerly) the Crystal Scar, and pits teams of human players against an opposing team of computer-controlled artificial intelligence champions.
- Normal Matchmaking uses an automated match making system to pair teams of similarly-skilled players against one another.
- Ranked Matchmaking is available to players upon reaching account level 30. It uses a similar system as Normal Matchmaking; however, pre-made teams must be of comparable ELO strength, so expert players and weak players are not allowed to team together in Ranked. After playing 10 or more Ranked games, accounts are given a public "rank" that roughly correlates with their ELO ranking.
- Custom Games allow players to play any map with any combination of player or AI teammates and opponents.
League of Legends also includes three ways teams may choose what champion they will play for a given match:
- Blind Pick allows the two teams to select their champions simultaneously. The players only learn the champion selections of the opposing team when the match begins. It is available on Summoner's Rift, Twisted Treeline, and the Crystal Scar for Normal Matchmaking games and Co-op vs. AI, and for all modes in custom games.
- Draft Pick allows each team to ban five champions each (a total of ten champions banned), removing them from the match. Teams then take turns selecting their champions while being able to see the selections of the other team. It is available on Summoner's Rift for matchmaking games, and for all modes in custom games.
- Random Pick randomly assigns a champion to each player. Players accumulate re-rolls by playing multiple matches, which they can use to randomly select another champion for that match. It is available on Howling Abyss for ARAM (All Random All Mid) games, and for all modes in custom games.
Development
The original inspiration for "DotA" was a 1998 mod for
StarCraft created by community member Aeon64 called "Aeon of Strife". After the release of
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its subsequent World Editor in 2002,
DotA was created by another modder, Eul. He ported and expanded the "Aeon of Strife" mod to the new engine and named it "Defense of the Ancients". Guinsoo later made
DotA Allstars by inserting his own mix of content to "DotA", greatly expanding the number of heroes, added recipes and items, and introduced various gameplay changes. Guinsoo then passed the mod to IceFrog after accepting a job at the newly formed Riot Games.
The idea of a spiritual successor to Defense of the Ancients was that it 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 officially opened its office in September 2006, and, as of 2013, has over 1,000 people working on League of Legends. 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.
League of Legends was first announced on October 7, 2008. It was in a closed beta from April 10, 2009 to October 22, 2009. It then transitioned to open beta until release.
Release
League of Legends was released on October 27, 2009. Riot Games self-publishes and operates the game and all of its customer service aspects in North America. Riot Games has signed deals regarding the distribution of League of Legends in Asia, Europe, and North America. By July 2013, the game has been released and was distributed in Australia, the United States, Canada, Europe, Philippines, and South Korea.
The game is distributed in China by
Tencent Inc., the largest Internet value-added services company in China best known for its
QQ Instant Messaging client. The game has been distributed to Tencent's growing 300 million Internet user base through its leading QQ Game portal. The deal was one of only a handful of partnerships to bring a U.S.-developed online game directly to China.
In Europe, Riot Games initially signed an international licensing partnership with GOA, the video games 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 partnership did not last; on May 10, 2010, Riot Games announced that they would take over distribution and operation of the game in Europe. To do so, Riot Games established a European HQ in Dublin.
On July 16, 2010, Riot Games announced that
Garena would publish the game in Southeast Asia. Additionally, Southeast Asian players had the ability "transfer accounts" to import their progress stored in North American or European servers into the Southeast Asian server. The game has since been distributed by Garena in Taiwan as well.
In March 2013, Riot Games released a beta version of an
OS X client in addition to their Windows client.The Mac client was since moved out of beta and OS X / macOs players have had full access to
League.
Riot has since expanded to many countries, after the initial North America / Europe / Korea / Garena's Southeast Asia launch. In 2012, a Brazilian and Turkish server were added; in 2013, Latin American & Russian servers; and a beta of a Japanese server was launched in 2016.
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