League of Legends (2009)

I've now played 8-9 hours of PVP on top of several hours against bots, and I'm having fun, but I can't think of a less beginner-friendly game out there. It seems to take months of regular play to even unlock ranked mode, which says a lot about the developer's confidence in newcomers. The amount of time played to even unlock a variety of characters and even some abilities and perks (runes) is kind of nuts because you are inherently disadvantaged until you get them.

If you get forced into an uncomfortable role/character, or even if you are playing your comfortable role before being 100% ready, you can expect to more or less ruin your teammates' fun (and maybe invoke their rage) due to not knowing or properly executing one of the dozens of things you need to be able to do. The number of characters, abilities, runes, nonverbal communication symbols, and items to learn is wild, and that's all on top of a highly complex set of macro strategic decisions you have to make. The more matches I play and the more things I get comfortable with, the more I realize how much I don't know.

But still, it's a really fun game when it all clicks into place, with an admirable variety in its gameplay and amazing character designs. I love playing as mages and assassins, it's so much fun keeping the enemy at bay, picking away at their life before comboing them to death. I love making a nice joint team play. It can just be extremely overwhelming sometimes. I will definitely look out for less complex MOBAs in the future and continue playing this one... occasionally. Time to try Heroes of the Storm?

I've spent a few dozen hours in the last couple weeks with Riot's Teamfight Tactics (having a great time by the way), spent some time with their Legends of Runeterra and Valorant last year, and enjoyed their animated pop group K/DA quite a bit. I've also spent some time watching Dota 2 as well as playing its spinoffs, so it's a little surprising that I still hadn't tried Riot's flagship game, League of Legends, or any MOBA for that matter.

I just did a bit of co-op vs. AI gameplay as a mage and this is actually really fun. Superficially speaking, the gameplay reminds me of MMOs and other RPGs I've played, but the strategic element is incredibly deep on top of that. I doubt I will completely fall in the hole since it's so intricate, plus I'm more on the auto-chess side and there's a big new patch for TFT in a few weeks, but I had a fun time with this tonight and will definitely come back.

When Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi zombie mode got old, this game became pretty popular cafeteria discussion among the hardcore gamer kids back in early high school, though I didn't have the PC for it or much interest at the time. It's now over a decade later and it's still one of the world's biggest games, which is kind of mindblowing. Minecraft definitely has that longevity, but I wonder what out of more recent games could still be going strong a decade plus later without a sequel. Guess Fortnite is the biggest contender.

I talked with a dear friend who is also a fashion designer about the new 'All Out' outfits in League of Legends. Are you interested in fashion and can read spanish? Then you should read my article about that.

In case you haven't seen the K-pop video with the LoL characters in the new outfits, here it is.

The perception around this game is interesting and confusing to me. It doesn't seem to have a large footprint in the gaming community outside of those who play it. But it (and Dota) seems like it is one of the most significant games of the decade, and has opened up an entire genre that wasn't there before. I think about this in terms of sports, where you have distinct games like basketball, football etc, which have been around in different variations for 100+ years, and each have come to develop their own distinct accepted rules, history, culture etc. And now we're in the beginning of esports, were watching the beginning of that right now, and moba's is like one of the big, recognizable sports within that.

As a competitive game, it's nearly perfect? It has the recognizable elements that never change game to game, but there is sufficient depth to how it plays out that no two games are ever the same. There are accepted strategies but the player always brings their own skill, knowledge and experience into shaping how effective those strategies are manifested. The process of continual improvement reminds me of learning a sport too, that's where the subtle addictive drive comes in, you are playing to get better.

Got my first Pentakill today in ARAM - Nasus in full Raid Boss mode, and my teammates were kind after the quadra and waited for me to clean up. I've been playing a lot of hours so this feels especially good. Unlikely to have it happen in a Summoner's Rift game as a support main, but who knows.

The World Championships pass got me really inspired to play, probably a little too much.

I dint really know how I ended up with 7 years, around half times I logout I feel angry for spoiled game by some..

But in return the game kinda does feels very 'tight' and polished and I always been happy the way RIOT maintain the updates.. and it never changed ever since, become more frequent in fact

I always wished for new maps to play upon, they went on making different MODES with its own theme, music, backgrounds, etc. All that sort of encompasses my clearly genuine interest in LoL. I wonder what's gonna be next?