League of Legends (often abbreviated as LoL) is a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) video game developed and published by Riot Games for Microsoft Windows, inspired by the popular DotA All Stars. map for Warcraft III. It was first announced on October 7, 2008, and released on October 27, 2009. The game was in a closed beta from April 10, 2009, to October 22, 2009. It then transitioned to open beta until release.
Players are formed into 2 even teams of Champions, 3v3 or 5v5. As of 14 December
2011 there are 89 different released champions. Each team starts at opposing sides of a map in an area called the fountain, near what is called a Nexus. A match is won when either teams nexus is destroyed. To destroy a Nexus, each team must work through a series of Turrets. Turrets are often placed along a path to each base referred to as a Lane. Along the way, each player gains levels from killing the opposing team's champions and Minions (small NPCs that constantly spawn and attack the other team) and defeating neutral monsters (some of which grant buffs known as crests upon death). Completing objectives rewards players with gold which is used to purchase items. In League of Legends, each player starts at level 1 at the beginning of the match and can obtain the maximum of level 18 with their champion, leveling 4 different champion-specific abilities.
Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, the previous designer of the popular Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne custom map, DotA Allstars, and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon, the administrator of the former official support base for the map (www.dota-allstars.com), were involved with Riot Games in the development of League Of Legends. Using the original DotA created by Eul (the original Defence of The Ancients map for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos) as a base, Guinsoo made DotA Allstars by inserting his own mix of content, largely expanding the number of the heroes, and adding recipes, numerous items and various gameplay changes. Guinsoo then passed version 6 of the map on to its current developer, IceFrog.
Riot Games has signed deals regarding the distribution of League of Legends in Asia, Europe, and North America. The game is expected to be released in the rest of the world also. The game has already released and is distributed in Australia, the United States, Canada and Europe. No public announcements regarding other regions has yet been made.
In Asia, Tencent Inc., China's largest Internet value-added services company, best known for its QQ Instant Messaging client will be in charge of the distribution to Tencent's growing 300 million Internet user base through its leading QQ Game portal. The deal is one of only a handful of partnerships to bring a U.S.-developed online game directly to China.
In Europe, Riot Games has signed an international licensing partnership with GOA, the videogames 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 restriction meant that players located in Europe would not be able to play on Riot's servers in the United States. Due to negative community feedback, the channeling decision was rescinded October 16, 2009. In North America, Riot Games will self-publish and operate the game and all of its customer service aspects.
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 14, 2009, Riot Games announced that League of Legends will be free with "no catch". There will be a digital copy for download, but there is also a Digital Collector's Copy that will be available to purchase that contains exclusive skins, $10 credit for Riot Points, and 20 champions to access without unlocking them normally via gameplay as well as 4 "special" runes; the Collector's Pack is currently available for $29.99. Even though the game is free, Riot Games "plan[s] to continue to add content (characters etc...) with a full production team at very frequent intervals." Using both free-to-play and freemium models, the game is supported by microtransactions (see store) rather than ads or boxed copy sales.
On 25 February 2010 Riot Games announced that League of Legends will be distributed in Southeast Asian countries by an unspecified publisher and blocked SEA IP addresses pursuant to its distribution agreement. The community has raised a number of concerns about the deal and the immediate IP block. On July 16, 2010, Riot Games announced that Garena will publish the game in Southeast Asia. Additionally, Southeast Asian players have the ability "transfer accounts" to import their progress stored in North American or European servers, into the Southeast Asian server.
League of Legends has received generally favorable reviews, and currently holds a Metacritic score of 78 out of 100.
IGN awarded League of Legends 8.0 out of 10, highlighting an enjoyable game design, inventive champion design with good customization options and lively visuals. However, the game's confusing launch was criticized: it was felt that the title was released too early, with some features missing and others to be removed. Finally, the reviewer noted that high level players in the game have "little patience for newcomers," though the reviewer believed that matchmaking (not implemented at the time of review), would solve the problem by matching players of similar level together. GameZebo, in contrast, awarded the game 2.5 stars out of 5, criticizing the game's lack of campaign mode and single player options, and stating that "League of Legends feels like a real time strategy game with all of the strategy taken out."
The game has undergone criticism for server unreliability and unmoderated gameplay (such as player grief and harassment). However, a system to report players who misbehave in-game has been implemented, allowing a player to report others for reasons such as verbal harassment, intentional disruption of the game (e.g., 'feeding' the enemy team, making them gain kills and thus gold, by dying on purpose), staying AFK (Away From Keyboard) for extended periods of time, and leaving the game. Riot released a peer review system called the "Tribunal" in May of 2011. Riot rewards influence points to players for reviewing reports entered by other players.
As of November 2011, League of Legends had over 32 million registrations and averages more than 4 million players per day, with the number of concurrent users online at any given time peaking over 1 million, doubling its player base in 4 months.
