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I used to be one of those stuck up starcraft players, who thought league of legends was a stupid game. It is difficult for a person who was once young and naive to admit when they are wrong, but this is true. I didn't know anything about it. The only game I had played similar to LoL was the dota clone in starcraft 2 customs. When my friend finally harassed me enough to give it a try, I went in with low expectations.
Now, it's two days later, and I have probably logged in something like 12 hours and somewhere between twenty and thirty games. Not only do I like league of legends, I am currently nothing short of addicted to it. When I am away from the game, I am thinking about it. When I drive home, I am anxious to go back to my computer and play it some more. I have denied invitations for food and sex so I can keep playing league. I took the day off work yesterday so I could continue my streak. Pretty soon I will have to tone it back a little, but right now I find myself completely sucked in. This game I called "simplistic", "boring", and even "stupid" a few days ago I am now recommending to all my friends and writing blogs on team liquid about how great it is. And it really is, its a really great game.
One of the things I like so much about starcraft 2 is it is such a complicated game. I have played literally thousands of games of starcraft II and have watched probably more games than that, and I have really only begun to explore its depth. Watching league of legends on stream and in tournaments as I had done before, I could not catch on to exactly how much was going on. I didn't realize that a game with cartoonish graphics, over the top animations and such silly characters could have such a deep level of strategic underpinnings governing its play. Now that I have begun to play more, I am beginning to understand. I am finding that I can make a lot of comparisons between starcraft 2 and League of Legends.
I think the best way to describe League of Legends from a gaming stand point, is it is an almost pure strategy game. Chess is a good example of a pure strategy game; anyone is capable of being a master of chess at any given day. The people who are best at chess aren't necessarily gifted in any sort of physical capacity, they just understand the game and the strategies involved better than anyone else. Starcraft II has an exceptionally higher barrier for entry for pro level play, because of the heavy reliance on good mechanics to execute strategy well. League of Legends is not this kind of game. Sure, it does take slightly more coordination than texting on phone with the number pad, but not by much. I have been playing league for two days now, and at no point did I feel like my fingers were too slow, or my multitasking too poor to keep up with everyone else.
Instead the game almost brutally rewords good decision making over player with poor decision making. The hallmark of a good league player isn't their mechanics, its in knowing exactly how much they can get away with. If you leap in on a character with three of his friends near by while standing by a tower, you are going to die. But sometimes you can pop out of the shadows and dive on the same character anyway, kill them and get out unscathed if you are playing the right character and know what you are doing. For instance, the character I have been playing is Katerina, a ninja/rogue sort of champion that is super mobile and dishes out a fairly hefty amount of damage but has relatively low hitpoints. If you can play her right, you can use her blink ability "shunpo" to be everywhere at once and reap kills better than almost any other character, all while getting out without so much as a scratch. Or you can be like me a lot of times, where I will dive on someone and almost take them out, only be ambushed by two other players and set back to my summoning pool for a mandatory time out.
Most surprising to me when I started to play, was how much good fundamental play in league of league legends there was. The goal of any champion is to push their lane as long as possible; you need to gain levels fast and you need to get the last hits in on minions so as to "farm" your gold. The players with the most gold in a league game are the most successful characters, and for good reason; gold gets you valuable items that make or break the effectiveness of your champion. Because league has an "economy" and a broad sense of the word "tech" due to the acquisition of skills and items, there exists an element of "timing" and a great deal of multivariate in "strategy" as a result. It is possible to play several different versions of the same game, with the same characters, on the same map even in the same pushing lanes by subtly rearranging and manipulating the choices and order of acquiring skills and items and how you use them. For instance, my katerina character relies heavy on her shunpo blink ability to both start fights, chase down weak enemies, and flee from danger. Until I get her boots that increase her movement speed and decrease the recharge time on her skills, I can't really be very aggressive in taking down enemy heroes. Once I get that ability I can lunge at champions more. And when I get her gunblade item in the late game, I suddenly find myself with the ability to not only leap on weak character but start them with strong ones, because the gunblade provides the necessary extra damage ability to finish off full health champions.
I have only played the game for a short time, but I am already catching on to different tactics. "Rushing", "harrass", and "late game focus" all have valid context in the game and ways to describe them. There really is a lot to it. And, unlike starcraft II, league of legends in genuinely fun and fairly relaxing. The community is filled with a bunch of whiners and complainers (probably afforded from all the opportunity to talk in game unlike sc2), but that doesn't mean everyone isn't having a good time or is necessarily stressed out or even angry. For those who haven't tried it, I highly recommend it. You might be surprised by how much the game has to offer, even to someone as intelligent and sophisticated as a starcraft II fan  .
 
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I didnt think much of LoL before I tried it, now I love it. Its a great free game.
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That's one of the reasons why its probably one of, if not the most popular game in the world at the moment. It just hooks new people in and keeps them interested with the gameplay and whatnot. Riot is one hell of a clever company
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Haha, I started reading and wondered if this was a really elaborate troll. XD
Anyway, I think you've hit on why people like to play LoL, no matter what all the TL haters say. It's simple to pick up, there is not a high mechanical barrier, it's fun and relaxing. As for strategy, I think as you progress you will understand this more as teamwork. There is a strategy to it, but it's a lot different than the kind of strategy of SC2. The teamwork part relies on cohesiveness, personal responsibility and skills, and good communication to win. Anyway, if you are looking for a more complex version of LoL ever, that would be DOTA2. The one thing about is that the colors in DOTA just seem so muddy after looking at LoL. (A small thing and probably doesn't matter to many people, but asthetics greatly affect how much I enjoy a game, and that is the number one complaint I have heard from friends who play LoL and then started playing DOTA2, lol.)
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I remember trying it and just hating it, but I also am not a fan of micro based games like LoL. While I think its a terrible game for me, I do imagine they are doing something right other then f2p to get so many people to play their game. Always good to have fun playing games and not just serious sc2 1v1 
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Whenever I've tried LoL I've never liked it very much. But that's probably because I play DotA 2 and HoN all the time. :p
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Have fun once you start figuring out even more thing such as pulling the lane, zoning, executions, team compositions and forcing misplays. Pushing your lane isn't always a good thing. And remember, it's a team game. Having a brain and thinking is just as important if not more so than mechanics!
And don't forget our lovely LoL Subforum! /shameless-plug
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Nothing wrong with enjoying other games aside from Starcraft.
I enjoy LoL and BF3 myself actually. But Starcraft is still number 1. I will pass up an invitation to play other games if it means I will miss Proleague games.
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On March 13 2012 09:48 mothergoose729 wrote:
I have denied invitations for food and sex so I can keep playing league.
Food... yeah I can see that. ... wait ...
FOOD AND SEX!!!??!!
o.O
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Question to the OP:
This is your first MOBA ever? In other words, you have never played Dota or HoN or similar types of games like that?
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I like LoL because there's some semblance of interaction with other people, as compared to Starcraft which feels so isolated. I play LoL to relax quite a bit these days.
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On March 13 2012 10:26 Zapdos_Smithh wrote:
Question to the OP:
This is your first MOBA ever? In other words, you have never played Dota or HoN or similar types of games like that?
OP already answered:
"The only game I had played similar to LoL was the dota clone in starcraft 2 customs. "
Nice blog btw 
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I'm glad to see many people of the Starcraft 2 community playing LoL as well. Although for me, I played since the first day of the LoL beta before it was known and I LOVEDDD IT! My friends and I were hooked for about 1 and a half - 2 ish years but then it just started getting bad tbh :/ such a shame
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On March 13 2012 10:42 lubu42 wrote:
I'm glad to see many people of the Starcraft 2 community playing LoL as well. Although for me, I played since the first day of the LoL beta before it was known and I LOVEDDD IT! My friends and I were hooked for about 1 and a half - 2 ish years but then it just started getting bad tbh :/ such a shame
Always the people who say something is bad when they get bored or frustrated with said item.
On topic, I just picked it up recently with similar trepidation and encouragement. Tried a couple games, was bored of whacking creeps. Then I started to see how knowledge factors into the game. There are so many champions it takes a long time to learn what they're capable of and how to play with and against them.
Overall, it's very fun and laid back. Sc2 feels so much more demanding of my attention.
Oh yeah, using the ignore feature in games makes some of them tolerable.
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What I think sets LoL apart from other mobas like HoN or DotA is the possibility to customize the basic stats of your hero with the runes and masteries. While the effect maybe isn't that big, it allows you to play with the stats to make them fit your playstyle. That's why I would choose LoL over HoN or DotA. However, it isn't really the type of game I like, but there are some nice aspects the other mobas simply do not have.
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I have denied invitations for food and sex so I can keep playing league.
At the same time?
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The ease of it, as you said, is the biggest attraction. I was pretty competitive as far as my star-crafting goes, and it was often filled with frustration and lonliness (this was, at a time, when getting the boot from my first "big" clan, so practice was barren, and laddering was just rampant for me.. terrible experience)
My friends kept begging and bitching, so I just gave into it. I had played massive amounts of WC3 and DotA years and years prior, so MOBA was nothing new. Regardless, it had a very special element - LoL is a more casual game, meaning there was a propensity of having more friends I knew playing it. Skype calls were rampant, always full, and always fun, just slamming out games hours at a time. So this lead to my super inactivity of SC2 until I grew absolutely tired of LoL's staleness and riot's terrible inability to balance.. Then got into dota 2 beta through a friend! Haven't touched league or sc2 once since.
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LoL is easy to get into but not exactly easy to get good at. You're pretty much looking at people who get to the bronze league equivalent in LoL who come away loudly vocalizing their dislike for the "ease" of the game and spamming every single LoL thread on TL.
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On March 13 2012 09:48 mothergoose729 wrote:
Now, it's two days later, and I have probably logged in something like 12 hours and somewhere between twenty and thirty games. Not only do I like league of legends, I am currently nothing short of addicted to it. When I am away from the game, I am thinking about it.
Same, except I've been playing more than 2 days.
The community is filled with a bunch of whiners and complainers (probably afforded from all the opportunity to talk in game unlike sc2), but that doesn't mean everyone isn't having a good time or is necessarily stressed out or even angry.
The number of whiners increases dramatically to the point where I had to ignore 3 allies on my team and 2 enemies on theirs in one game. People get more diehard in ranked, people complain slightly less in normals, and now, even in Coop vs AI there are 2 people complaining about KS.
I really wish I never got into this game. It's fun to think about but horrible to play. It's no fun to lose to things that are outside your control and to either get yelled at or see other people yelling. People genuinely do get angry and not have fun in this game.
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Well written, I think you hit on the core reasons of why LoL is so attractive. It's something I play frequently when my friends are on, because one of the main factors behind it is the team strategy. You really need to communicate with your team (especially at the higher levels of play) calling mias and such. It's a world apart from Starcraft in many ways, but the strategy and complexity is almost as deep. It's a great way to take a break from the APM intensive SC2 but still have fun playing a skill game.
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I can`t play Lol anymore. This game is so addicting i had to quit. It was taking over my life haha.
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On March 13 2012 10:19 Angra wrote:
Whenever I've tried LoL I've never liked it very much. But that's probably because I play DotA 2 and HoN all the time. :p
This, I find that if you don't really like LoL it's because you simply play another DotA game. A couple of my friends play HoN, and I'll be honest I don't really like it. They just happen to feel the same way about LoL, that it's not really for them. Sometimes they say the graphics throw them off, but hell you get used to to it pretty quick, other times they just come out and say they prefer HoN over LoL because they played HoN first.
The only thing that bothers me with LoL is how you literally need to play 1000s of games to really get into the higher echelon of competition. If you play ranked matches right as you hit level 30 often times you find yourself weaker and less effective than other players because you need masteries and all that jazz.
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Fantastic blog and very articulately-written. I similarly had low expectations of LoL when I first tried it but I absolutely love how it rewards the intelligent player (e.g. Flash) over the mechanical player (e.g. Bisu). The best thing about it is the team element imo; it keeps the game fresh and you never feel like you're alone in a dark basement like you do with SC2.
Simple, less-mechanical games don't necessarily lack depth - in fact the limitation is often the player's imagination rather than the game's design.
Easy-to-learn, hard-to-master, high skill (knowledge) ceiling, team element = heaps of depth, replayability = probably a fantastic game.
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On March 13 2012 12:38 Hidden_MotiveS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 09:48 mothergoose729 wrote:
Now, it's two days later, and I have probably logged in something like 12 hours and somewhere between twenty and thirty games. Not only do I like league of legends, I am currently nothing short of addicted to it. When I am away from the game, I am thinking about it.
Same, except I've been playing more than 2 days. Show nested quote +
The community is filled with a bunch of whiners and complainers (probably afforded from all the opportunity to talk in game unlike sc2), but that doesn't mean everyone isn't having a good time or is necessarily stressed out or even angry.
The number of whiners increases dramatically to the point where I had to ignore 3 allies on my team and 2 enemies on theirs in one game. People get more diehard in ranked, people complain slightly less in normals, and now, even in Coop vs AI there are 2 people complaining about KS. I really wish I never got into this game. It's fun to think about but horrible to play. It's no fun to lose to things that are outside your control and to either get yelled at or see other people yelling. People genuinely do get angry and not have fun in this game.
I think if you play any team based game with random players, you need to be ok with losing when its not your fault. Its a fun game to play. I try and keep that in context. I wish when I started playing starcraft one of my primary goals was to never get frustrated or angry. I would probably be a better player today.
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On March 13 2012 14:17 mothergoose729 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 12:38 Hidden_MotiveS wrote:On March 13 2012 09:48 mothergoose729 wrote:
Now, it's two days later, and I have probably logged in something like 12 hours and somewhere between twenty and thirty games. Not only do I like league of legends, I am currently nothing short of addicted to it. When I am away from the game, I am thinking about it.
Same, except I've been playing more than 2 days.
The community is filled with a bunch of whiners and complainers (probably afforded from all the opportunity to talk in game unlike sc2), but that doesn't mean everyone isn't having a good time or is necessarily stressed out or even angry.
The number of whiners increases dramatically to the point where I had to ignore 3 allies on my team and 2 enemies on theirs in one game. People get more diehard in ranked, people complain slightly less in normals, and now, even in Coop vs AI there are 2 people complaining about KS. I really wish I never got into this game. It's fun to think about but horrible to play. It's no fun to lose to things that are outside your control and to either get yelled at or see other people yelling. People genuinely do get angry and not have fun in this game. I think if you play any team based game with random players, you need to be ok with losing when its not your fault. Its a fun game to play. I try and keep that in context. I wish when I started playing starcraft one of my primary goals was to never get frustrated or angry. I would probably be a better player today.
It's not winning or losing that necessarily makes me unhappy. Maybe that's true for you. I find the raging and everything else to be much worse.
I loved BGH in Broodwar and losing wasn't really that big of a deal. Problem with BGH(or any team game I guess) though was you realize that early game builds tend to win more because once one ally dies to a rush, the game is over. Therefore it really wasn't profitable to do late game builds (anything slower than vultures), and the best games that drew on for 40+minutes rarely happened.
Now imagine broodwar except leavers occur twice as often and you can't just leave the game when a leaver does occur. Imagine you get ragers about noob allies that go on and on about how X and Y sucks and you should have banned Z and the jungler should have ganked A and the top shouldn't have fed B and C...
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lol i am still am one of thoughs sucky players silver i know i know its sucks lol don't get me wrong i switched to zerg and i am a lot better than i was with toss so i feel you on that note but i still got a long way to go
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wait till u go to high elo. they all do the same stuff, every1 so passive wards everywhere.... try dota from what u say i think ud like it more
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Why would you talk about Korea any ways unless it's about Starcraft and how you have improved watch day nine good YouTube player knows mor about thE game than the makers of Starcraft 2 watch him and you will be set :D sonics blog but why so long
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Yea i find that everyone who gives the game a fair chance at least will definitely be attacted to the genre ( moba/arts/dota) and enjoy it. They are a very social game which you can enjoy with your friends. The team aspects are really compelling too.
Some people who have been playing Dota for a long time struggle to enjoy LoL fully which is understandable ( metagame more stale and young, dislike paying for runes/heroes/etc) as LoL is much younger while Dota's metagame and balancing have been developing for nearly a decade now so dota feels deeper. LoL wil grow in time though, M5 has shown everyone that lvl 3 tower diving is a viable strat just like Virtus Pro did with Dota.
But to anyone who has not tried any game in the genre would be in for a pleasant surprise. A few hundred games in, you will see why this game can be competitive in a pro level and how it really needs you to cooperate with your team which is an aspect of the game which has no skill ceiling
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I honestly think this genre of game is one that the first one you really play a lot is the one you tend to prefer. It amuses me because I understand that, fundamentally, Lol/HoN/Dota are basically the same thing. I can't stand LoL though. The lack of denys, removing health pots when hit, and cartoony texture just bother me. That being said I believe that if I had tried LoL first i'd probably find HoN's style more irritating. I'm not sure.
That being said LoL is a good game for a free game and Riot had PERFECT timing to catch such a large player base. S2 kinda fucked their shit up and only now is HoN getting back up there to 70k concurrent players...which is shit tiny compared to LoL.
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LoL is one of those casual games where you can sit back and relax.
Unfortunately, a lot of the community is pretty tryhard, which kind of sucks. :/
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I am also just like you OP. I was a stuck up RTS gamer, was even GM in NA and SEA, however I lost some motivation to ladder and tried LoL with a friend (this was few months ago) and I haven't looked back since. LoL really is a great game, it takes a lot of skill.. people who say it doesn't take skill really don't know what they are talking about. You can learn the game very fast but at the same time its very hard to master. The amount of strategies involved are limitless with 90+ champions, and many runes and masteries your options are endless.
LoL right now is the biggest esport and it will only continue to grow. It has already started getting popular in Korea, I believe if a few big names from sc2 switch to LoL it will spark a huge wave of korean players moving to LoL.
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It's interesting so many people are addicted to LoL. I have tryed to play it countless times on the recommendation of my friends, but I really can't get into It. I don't find it fun, enjoyable, or challenging. I can see why so many people can find it addicting and fun, but it's really just not my cup of tea. I just stop playing after a few games and don't play it for months.
I'm always down to try new games, If I were to get a Dota 2 Beta Key, I would definitely check out that game, but MOBAs don't really entertain me.
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On March 14 2012 23:43 Toppp wrote:
It's interesting so many people are addicted to LoL. I have tryed to play it countless times on the recommendation of my friends, but I really can't get into It. I don't find it fun, enjoyable, or challenging. I can see why so many people can find it addicting and fun, but it's really just not my cup of tea. I just stop playing after a few games and don't play it for months.
I'm always down to try new games, If I were to get a Dota 2 Beta Key, I would definitely check out that game, but MOBAs don't really entertain me.
I came to LoL with really low expectations. I played it for a month or two and then I had no intention on playing this anymore. It gets completely boring if you don't have 4 mates playing with you, because 1 guy can ruin the game for 9 others, which is the case for 95% of the games.
I also find Riot to be doing a shitty job at enhancing this game. When I started, I already hated the fact that there is just 1 map all the fucking time. Now, a year later, nothing has changed, but every two weeks there is a new op hero, while the rest is completely unbalanced.
They should of stopped making champions when they had like 40 and started balancing. As riot knows, people don't want balance to play this game, they want new stuff to pwn with. This means this game will never be even close to balanced.
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On March 13 2012 21:17 Jayme wrote:
I honestly think this genre of game is one that the first one you really play a lot is the one you tend to prefer. It amuses me because I understand that, fundamentally, Lol/HoN/Dota are basically the same thing. I can't stand LoL though. The lack of denys, removing health pots when hit, and cartoony texture just bother me. That being said I believe that if I had tried LoL first i'd probably find HoN's style more irritating. I'm not sure.
Personally, I played LoL religously at first (during the beta), but after a while I just started playing on/off. Then I tried out HoN and fell in love...and now I'm in DotA2 because HoN is going in a weird direction. But maybe I like HoN and DotA2 more because LoL Beta felt a lot closer to DotA2/HoN back then.
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personally i switched to LoL primarily during the sc2 beta because i realized that i didn't enjoy sc2 as much as broodwar and was looking for another game to fill that gap.
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EPT
