League of Legends is a game based of the Warcraft III map “Defence of The Ancients,” or “DOTA.” The point of the game is to kill the enemy’s “Nexus,” while protecting your own from the enemy team. You control one champion that you pick in the beginning out of the available champions. Each champion has their own skills, roles, and special abilities. You can also build your character for a specific role depending on what skills you level up and what items you buy. Players are formed into 2 even teams with 1-5 human players on each team. Every minute or so, a wave of “creeps” spawn from both sides. When you or your allies kill them, your champion gets EXP and/or gold. You also get a large amount of exp/gold from killing enemy champions, who have to wait for 30-45seconds before respawning at their base.
Each player starts at level 1, and levels up until the end of the game, and is reset for each game. At each level you can upgrade a skill by one point, as well as receive mana and health upgrades. With the gold you earn, you can go to your base and buy better items or potions. There are suggested items so buying items is not hard for beginners, but has many options for experienced players.. There are 3 “lanes” that all lead towards the Nexus, and on the way will be the creeps that spawn, and towers. The towers have lots of health and deal a lot of damage, especially to champions. But towers prioritize creeps over champions unless you attack an enemy champion next to the enemy’s tower. With this in mind, a lot of the game’s strategy revolves around attacking and defending towers the proper way.
After the game ends, your “Summoner” will gain EXP and in-game money that can be used to buy runes and champions. There are also free champions which rotate every week for continual variety. Runes help boost your champion in every fight, but the bonuses are slight and doesn’t create a large gap between low and high level players. As your summoner levels up, you also get mastery points which you can put into one of three tech trees; you can reset your mastery points so you can experiment with what you put them into. They will either give slight upgrades to your champion, or give slight upgrades to certain spells. The spells are chosen when you chose your champion and are universal, any champion can use any spell. The spells can have a big influence on how you play the game because they are very useful but have long cool-down times. Some examples of spells are teleporting and healing. The higher level your summoner is, the more spells you have to choose from.
The bought currency in League of Legends, Riot Points, gives the ability to buy heroes faster, buy skins, and buy booster packs which increase your EXP/IP per game for your Summoner. Buying it does not really give an upper hand to the other players. Although, it is extremely painstaking to buy every single champion or hero with your normal Influence Points, or IP. It can go as low as 450 IP, but can go as high as the 6000′s. Buying skins doesn’t do anything, it just changes your texture or avatar in-game. Booster packs only affects your outside summoner, but doesn’t affect anything in-game. Overall Riot Points don’t give much of an upper hand.
League of Legends is a top-notch free game to play. Even playing it countless times I was never bored mainly because of all the unique heroes. Its steep learning curve may turn away new players. Team communication is key to winning. League of Legends has limited amount of bugs and it is an excellent game that keeps you coming back. -Shotzzzz August 14, 2010