League of Legends (2009)

Recently re-listened to the Arcane Medley performed at TGA 2024 so I wanted to rewatch it as well. I'm already a mild fan of Twenty One Pilots but I can't say I've even heard of D4VD or Royal & the Serpent so I'm gonna do some homework and listen through their stuff as I really liked their performance here.

Beware of Arcane S2 spoilers.

League of Legends could have been a fun game for me, but unfortunately, it is another example in which for me personally, it never came around the way I hoped.

League of Legends is a fast paced, adrenaline pumping MMO Tower Defense /Battle Arena game, in which two teams fight it out on a map, trying to destroy each other’s Nexus. You control one of the many unique champions, in which you set forth towards the other players base.

The base is defended by turrets and other structures and a hero can buy upgrades for their base when they are present in it. NPC “minions” are constantly summoned and go straight for the enemy base. Killing this monsters/minions, earns gold and XP for the champion to level up, increase their skills and buy more stuff.

The maps are square with one diagonal lane, straight towards the enemy base. However, two more lanes from the left and right side, follow the square’s lines, and also make a connected path to the base.

The action, tactics, coordination and tension is great and matches can take a few minutes with noobs like me, or more than an hour for skilled players. The graphics and sound is this game are a little basic, but for a game like this, it works and does not matter that much.

The controls, interfaces and menu’s are simple and easy to understand. Even a noob like me got the hang of it pretty fast.

When LoL first came out, it already looked interesting to me, but at the time, I did not get around to it yet. Then, some years later, I wanted to give it a try. I still did not know the mechanics or the way it must be played, so I played the tutorial and was ready for some matches.

But for me, here is where it did go wrong. I connected to a lobby, and immediately got kicked out. This process repeated itself multiple times, until I finally connected to another lobby, stayed in this time and got playing. I was still a noob at the game and in this match, I got constantly reminded of this. I did not play fast enough, got called names, got noob shamed, and overall, the experience was terrible.

The moral of this sad story is, that there is no room for plebs and noobs like me. You need to play God tier, like the professionals. Make one mistake, react too slow or make one wrong move, and you will regret it. Even though I basically “gave” a victory to the opponent, I just got criticized and demolished for playing “too bad”.

For this reason, I played for exactly ten hours, spread out over a few days, in hope that my own experience with the game could redeem itself, but alas, it was not the case unfortunately.

Such a shame, but I did like the game in general. But in this state, I am just “afraid”, to start any match, and this is not how you should play a game or spend your free time to relax on.

So, once again based on my own personal experience, I cannot recommend League of Legends, unless you have a weird kink for shaming.

Just recently went back to playing the game because of the new arena mode but even in a mode for fun people can be such assholes not that that's anything new to league.

Add this to that the fact I was trying to play with a laptop touch pad and struggling to do anything except run at opponents, though when u play tanks that's mostly what you do anway.

Riot continues to pump out catchy "Pro Gamer Highlight Reel"-sounding music with very cool animated music videos to promote League of Legends and other stuff in its universe.

The latest puts some of their most recognizable characters into a flashy boy band:

And this one animates the real-life professional players into some cool action sequences:

Always like getting this kind of stuff as they continue to stretch out the League umbrella to keep pulling in more interest. Definitely not something you get for every game out there. Now where's news on that MMO they're making...

Unfortunately. This game is good. Its the game I play the most, I have a tattoo of Viego’s sword underneath my Witcher one. And I’ve calculated the way to get every skin for the least amount of money. I’m a little addicted (sick in the head).

But putting all of that aside, this game is well made. It’s regularly updated. The game doesn’t change but they consistently add and update content. Mechanically it’s perfected to the point of a decent learning curve (aside from the initial hill) and excellent skill expression. Micro transactions are purely cosmetic (runes being an extremely minor exception). It has the greatest replayability I’ve ever encountered. The community is huge and growing. And more.

I think League is worth committing to because who doesn’t play it? When is it going away? League is eternal at this point and having the option to hop on with friends and choose any playstyle you would like out of the hundreds of options is a great pasttime.

Also the art and lore are expansive and fun to explore if you care. And cosmetics or skins are diverse and about half of the time (a lot in the grand scheme) well crafted as opposed to superficial shiny spiky silk pretty gilded junk that many other games throw together. BDO being a perfect example of the almost formulaic cosmetic design.

My counter arguments to complaints:

Addicting: Nowhere near the level or infamy of WoW or flappy bird. If you cannot keep yourself from hitting ‘Play Again’ you probably needed mental therapy before you installed in full honesty. It was this or some other vice.

Toxicity: The game is nowhere even close to the toxic levels of Rainbow Six Siege. With mainstream-ification of the game/IP through means of TFT, Arcane, and Star Guardians. The gender ratio of players is slowly balancing and -phobia and racism are declining. Ranked is still toxic because it is ranked though.

Boring: I can understand how people find the “laning phase” boring for the majority of the game leading up to teamfighting. But really the laning phase is more than just CS if played well. And ARAM and rotating game modes feature teamfighting at a much higher ratio.

After watching Arcane, I was amazed by the representation of Jinx's mental health. Specailly because in League of Legends she's nothing more than another "crazy sexy fun girl" in the same archetype as Harley Quinn.

I wrote an article about that in spanish. You can read it here.

(A couple of psychologists friends helped me with this article to make sure I didn't say anything stupid)

Legends never die! I am going to evaluate the game called League of Legends, also known as ‘LoL’. The developer of my favourite game is ‘Riot Games’. It is a company that was founded in 2006 and released the game in 2009. League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle area that is based on World of Warcraft III. The intention of the game is to destroy the base of the enemy players. Whoever reaches that goal first, wins the game. You and your teammates need to fight against another team that is also trying to win the game. In League of Legends you play a variety of different characters. There are now 141 characters in the game.

Not everyone will agree with me but if you play League your eye-hand coordination will improve, and you will think more tactically and strategically. In the game you need to fight with your team to achieve victory. You need to make plans to kill your enemies. Another positive thing about playing League is that you make friends all over the world. It is a good way to learn more English because you must communicate with your team in English.

A negative point about league is that you need to sit down behind your computer. A game can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour. If you play all day long, that is bad for your health because you don’t get any physical exercise. A second negative point is that because the game is so competitive you can become very upset with yourself or your team if things are not going your way. If your team isn’t that great or someone leaves the game, you are in a disadvantage and will most likely lose the game.

I have been playing this game for almost over five years. It is a very good game in my opinion. I made a lot of friends in the game but also ‘in real life’ because of it. For me the game has more positive aspects than negative ones. I would say that League of Legends is probably one of the best games in the world. There are just so many people playing the game. It is truly unbelievable. For example, in 2014 there were over 67 million players monthly and sometimes even 27 million daily. In 2016, they have over 100 million players signed up. That is just crazy in my opinion! Finally, I give this game a 4 out of 5-star rating.