League of Legends, Ryze the Rogue-Mage squares off with Kassadin
Copyright Riot Games

Well it's finally here – League of Legends, the brainchild of the creators of the insanely popular Warcraft 3 map “DOTA Allstars”. Does it live up to the hype?

First of all, lets start with the pricing. League of Legends features a free-to-play model featured in many popular MMORPG's such as Dungeon Fighter Online or Atlantica Online – you can play to unlock content over time, or just straight up shell out some coin to get the features faster. You can also use the paid service to unlock special character skins which will make you the envy of the other players in the game – a visual bonus, but no real in game power. Since the base game is free, it's earning a gold star here.

Then we come to the “pre-game” interface, PVP.net – Honestly, this system could have been designed a whole lot better and probably wasn't ready for release. It's clunky, looks bad, and is plagued with crashing and bugs, including not being able to see your friends on the instant-messenger style popup panel. The matchmaking system, while definitely not 100 percent accurate at landing you in an even match, does flow smoothly and can get you in a game with your so called peers in a minute or less, without the frustration of having to balance teams by yourself.

The cell-shaded graphics have been panned by the gaming community since the first screenshots were released and this is an area where it comes down to personal preference. They take some getting used to, but in the end they actually aren't that bad. They're not for everyone but in complete fairness, give them a chance – they may grow on you after a few games.

The characters – Riot scores massive points in this department. The creative minds behind these guys have come up with some original and epic personalities. From the fireball-flinging, demon-bear doll wielding Annie to the orange-eating cannonball blasting Gangplank, the heroes have a host of unique abilities that are a true joy to use. There's werewolves, barbarian kings, psychotic jesters, and a freaking pint-sized “Yordle” with a blowgun and mushroom traps. The entire fantasy spectrum is represented and redefined with the cast of characters and Riot deserves ten thumbs up for their efforts here.

Hero abilities in LoL take a much bigger role than they have in previous MOBA games such as DOTA – and it's a pleasant experience. You'll be using your skills much more actively during the course of a game rather than saving them for use when it's “time to strike”. The addition of a stat called “ability power” also allows caster-style heroes to be useful in the late game, while in most games of the genre casters die off with fixed values for their skills.

Items, items items – the gear that makes the game. The items are well thought out and interesting, with many of them featuring a team oriented slant, promoting players to stick with their allies to provide them with various auras and buffs. There's a lot of choices, and it's all organized by item type to help you find exactly what you're looking for. Completely new and don't know what's going on? The “recommended” item tab will take care of you until you're skilled enough to make your own decisions. There are no items with active abilities, which is a rather questionable choice, but since LoL seems to focus more on character abilities it is not a glaring issue.

Your average game takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, and plays a lot like DOTA with plenty of additions and twists to the inspirational work. LoL's gameplay is highly customizable with summoner spells, runes, and WoW-talent tree styled choices. One does wonder, however, that if LoL is meant to be competitive what sort of advantage a level 30 player with a fully optimized rune book would have over someone without any, but since runes are currently not enabled in it's hard to say.

Overall this is a great addition to the ranks of an emerging genre, and has some great potential. With the store still not in the game it's anyone's guess how things will be once it releases, but this one is going to come down to Riot's dedication to the game and where they want to take it. It was probably launched too early, with many features not working, buggy, or not even around yet but with a F2P title you can get away with that. To a point.

With LoL being F2P, there's every reason to give it a shot and see if you like it, it's a winning mix that will appeal to a wide variety of gaming backgrounds and playstyles.  Want to play? Head right on over to the official website.

League of Legends - Fast paced MOBA/DOTA action with RPG elements!
Copyright Riot Games

The DOTA-inspired League of Legends hits both shelves and the digital world today, available for free-to-play access over at the website. Players can download and begin playing and working up their characters immediately!

For the duration of the launch rollout, all of the characters in League of Legends will be able to be played – after the party ends, players will have to fork over their influence points (earned by playing games) or cash to unlock bonuses in the store, which include champions, special skins, and runes to augment their characters. So if you're looking to try out some champions to see which ones you like the most, or just get a head start on earning some experience points and influence, now is a great time to jump into the fray!

League of Legends features “Multi-player Online Battle Arena” style gameplay with elements of MMORPG's, such as permanent character development, talent trees, augmenting abilities with runes, and unlocking additional content. As with many games of the genre, players pick a hero and assault the enemy base while protecting their – all while leveling up, purchasing items, gaining skills, and battling the opposing forces.

The paid version retailing at 29.99 comes with a collection of pre-unlocked characters, some runes, and special skins, and is a great way to get a head start on the game and will allow you to save some of your hard earned IP for other things.

Since it's free, there's really no reason not to give it a try – see you in Summoner's Rift!

With the recent anouncement that LoL is F2P fans have been waiting with baited breath for the next big announcement and it has arrived, Cho'Gath and Amumu are here! Let's get right into it with Amumu.

Amumu - The Sad Mummy

Amumu has arrived and fanboys and beta testers alike are rejoicing, or are they? Since the release of the first trailer Amumu has been probably the single most anticipated champion in League of Legends. Has Riot lived up to the hopes of League of Legends hopefuls or is Amumu a flop? Let's look into it and you can decide for yourself. 

Bandage Toss - Amumu throws a sticky piece of his mummy wrappings at a target, should he strike true the target is stunned and takes damage as Amumu pulls himself in to his victim. His first skill is a sure fanboy pleaser, the pudge mechanic has arrived, in September we find out if it holds up.
Despair - Amumu drains all of his surrounding enemies of a percentage of their health. As it reads it would be a percentage of current HP and not base HP, but either way it is more effective against tanks than any other type of Champion as they will have more HP.
Tantrum - Amumu's ability to absorb physical damage is increased and after a certain amount has been absorbed he can release it and damage the enemies around him.
Curse of the Sad Mummy - Amumu traps all enemies around him in his bandages effectively rendering them immobile and unable to attack. For the duration they take damage per second.
Cursed Touch - Amumu inflicts his enemies with a curse that lowers their resistance to incoming magical damage. 

As he currently reads, Amumu may be the most synergistic team play champion in the game. He renders his enemies vulnerable to incoming magical damage simply by being in his presence, can immobilize a full team of champions, is able to deal a percentage of health based AoE damage to them while they are immobilized, can tank all of the damage that they deal after they come out of it and then he can render another single enemy immoblie again. If you were able to read that run-on then you know that the time it took you to do it was far shorter than the time it takes Amumu to down a team of five and win a game almost single-handedly. Now keep in mind that this is based solely on the way Amumu reads, whether it is feasible in practice remains to be seen. The question posed is why would anyone ever pick another tanking champion when this one not only directly counters other tanks but may also render an entire team nigh useless? Until September no one will know whether or not he works as he reads and is as effective as he sounds. Regardless, he will be a fan pleaser and he looks awesome!

PLUSHY PLEASE!

Cho'Gath - The Black Terror

Cho'Gath was a champion that surprised many beta testers upon it's release. Only the most astute followers were aware of it's impending arrival, so was the secrecy hiding a gem, or a rock? 

Rupture - Cho'Gath stirs the ground beneath it's opponents causing earthen spikes to hurl it's enemies in the air dealing damage and slowing them for a short time.
Feral Scream - Cho'Gath unleashes a howl that terrifies it's enemies silencing them and stirs their flesh causing damage.
Vorpal Spikes - The beast's attacks are infused with spikes that shoot out upon each hit dealing damage to targets behind the primary.
Feast - Cho'Gath devours a weak enemy unit whole, increasing his own HP and the effectiveness of all Feast's after this one. Feast stacks up to six times and is reset to zero when Cho'Gath dies.
Carnivore - With each killing blow inflicted by Cho'Gath his HP is recovered slightly.

The trend of increased synergy is continues with Cho'Gath. It reads that Cho'Gath stacks up pretty good with Amumu int he AoE disable department with a stun ability that slows afterwords and an AoE damage/silence ability. Where he seems to have an advantage is single target damage. With an ultimate like feast some questions are going to be asked. Is the damage increase additive or multiplicitive? Does it matter what you devour? What is the cooldown and how easy is Cho'Gath to kill? Again, it remains to be seen, but on paper Cho'Gath loosk great, both skill-wise and visually.

Action figure would be more appropriate for this one

That concludes this champion reveal, stay tuned for more as Riot feeds our greedy mouths.

Thanks for reading.

 Dan: How many maps will there be on release, and will there be different objective modes or just "destroy the base" as in DOTA?Riot Games: We are currently working on a number of maps and will have multiple available at launch. Each of our maps will also have a particular game objective tied to it and thus will play very differently from other maps. One thing to note is that we view launch as the start of the game – not the end. Thus, we will constantly be adding additional content, from new Champions to maps, game modes and community features.

Dan: What plans are there for league and tournament play, will it be community based (TDA, etc) or Riot supported/created?

Riot Games: We have awesome plans for both League and Tournament play and really look forward to providing more detail about this. We fundamentally believe in empowering the end user with tools to be able to host their own competitive events and have some ambitious plans in place here. We also believe in creating a very strong and central community however and thus will be hosting Riot supported events as well.

Dan: Will Pudge be back?

Riot Games: Guinsoo is an amazingly creative designer who created most of the memorable Heroes in Dota – such as Pudge. However, we believe that it is far more interesting for users to experience totally unique characters that are highly differentiated from what exists in DOTA because we want League of Legends to really stand on its own. We value innovation and creativity and have been really pushing the envelope here – with totally new Champions and the amazingly new and unique Summoner System – as well as a number of other features.

That being said, it is *possible* that some old favorites will make an appearance – but if we were to do that, it would be the exception for us, not the rule.

Dan: How much impact on the game are summoner abilities designed to have?

Riot Games: Summoner abilities are designed to have a meaningful impact on the game without throwing out the balance. It is primarily intended for users to have additional depth and customization options – especially since every veteran player will be on an even playing field from a power perspective. We believe that the Summoner system adds a ton of stickiness to a game that is already extremely replayable.

Dan: Are there plans for a micro-transaction system to allow for new content such as new heroes or maps?

Riot Games: As we recently announced, League of Legends will be available for FREE. Additional content in the game can be earned just by playing it – so any purchase would be relegated to customization options or convenience. We don’t believe it would make sense to sell maps, since we wouldn’t want to fragment the community – but it’s possible that we may introduce some single player campaigns to develop the story that may cost money – in a similar vein to downloadable content for many other games like Half Life 2.

Dan: Is denying going to be in the game?

Riot Games: Denying will not be in League of Legends. We believe that denying promotes defensive, passive play, whereas we want to promote aggressive, dynamic early game. The early game of League of Legends is thus far more active and engaging than the early game of DOTA. Skirmishing with other Champions in your lane is far more interesting due to our ability design, systems design and nuanced changes such as minion health.

We have a significant number of ultra-competitive DOTA players in the beta and no one misses it. It’s a feature that sounds important – because you can’t imagine DOTA without it – but as soon as you play League of Legends, you realize that it was essentially a sub-optimal legacy mechanic from WC3.

Dan: How will the issues of disconnections and leavers be dealt with?

Riot Games: Users who disconnect from League of Legends games can reconnect to their game – so if your internet goes crazy for a moment or if your game crashes, fear not! Reconnect at will.

Leavers are dealt with through a number of systems that we collectively refer to as “Leaverbuster”. Due to the Summoner System, players have one unique identity in the game tied to their account. Thus, reputation matters. We track the number of games you have left and since there is a reconnect feature – so you really know when someone is a leaver. Furthermore, our Influence Point reward system and Summoner XP system does not reward leavers – further discouraging players from leaving games. Not to mention our anti-AFK features and the fact that games of League of Legends are faster paced and less prone to one-sided slaughters due to matchmaking – we believe we are addressing the leaver problem from a number of extremely effective angles.

Dan: Will the game keep track of Kill:Death ratios, assists, etc and if so, will there be some method of preventing "score padding"?

Riot Games: Yes, we track lots of stats – pretty much everything you can imagine. We won’t necessarily make all of it available in the player profile, but we may expose some really interesting data to community sites that are interested.

We’re experimenting with some diminishing returns systems to help prevent “score padding” – and our Influence Point reward system provides incentives for lots of in-game behavior aside from just getting the most kills, such as getting the most assists.

Dan: What do you see as the future of DOTA with the release of LoL?

Riot Games: DOTA has millions of active users around the world and will continue to do so after League of Legends is released. We believe that we will be expanding the genre that DOTA pioneered and helping to bring the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA genre – as we call it) to many new players who haven’t yet experienced how awesome this style of gameplay is. We do believe that many active DOTA players will love League of Legends – our beta testers already do – but many players who play CS Source still love old school CS still too.