Happy birthday League of Legends! Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the game and as a treat for players, Riot Games is releasing a new astronaut skin for Teemo! Players can also download an mp3 of the season one trailer music!
Be prepared, because Teemo is boldly going where no yordle has gone before!
Riot Games has been quite consistent with their new champion updates and, while they have just released the newly re-worked champion, Lux, this week's "Buyer's Guide to League of Legends," will be on the champion introduced about two weeks back: Swain, the Master Tactician. Now, before I begin, many of you have probably watched Phreak's Champion Spotlights where, while he does a great job of highlighting his champions' individual strengths, I would warn you against just directly copying his build for all games that you play, especially as you move up the competitive ranked brackets. Some champions can end up feeling quite sub-par if you don't build items that capitalize on their strengths in relation to teams, and sometimes Phreak's item builds (like for Swain) can be problematic as teams get more organized and roles become more defined.
Riot Games is calling all players to get creative and make their own League of Legends Halloween costume! The deadline is October 25 and all submissions must be handmade. Judges will be looking for creativity, execution, and overall attractiveness. Winners can recieve 5,000 Riot Points or a brand new secret skin, so break out the cider and hot glue!
Submissions can be sent to contests@riotgames.com and must include three extra pictures of your work in progress.
Will you be going as your favorite champion for Halloween?
Before I begin on the guide, a hearty congratulations goes out to Riot Games and League of Legends for winning an astounding five awards at the Game Developers Choice Online Awards! The team earned awards for Best Online Game Design, Best Online Visual Arts, Best Online Technology, Best New Online Game and the Audience Award. This means that this weekend will be a great chance to check out any Champion you want, as all Champions will be going free-to-play this weekend in celebration. And now, on with the Buyer's Guide to Sona!
It was only two weeks ago that Riot Games first introduced Sona, the Maven of Strings, but she has already made herself quite comfortable within many top-tier premades around the world. I've been playing Sona with great success - so much to the point that she has become my new go-to support champion when my team really wants to get that win of the day (it used to be Zilean, to give you an idea of the role I play her in).
The winners of the inaugural Game Developers Choice Online Awards have been announced, and Riot Games took home five awards for League of Legends! The game earned awards for Best Online Game Design, Best Online Visual Arts, Best Online Technology, Best New Online Game, and the Audience Award!
To celebrate, Riot Games will be making all Champions free-to-play this weekend in League of Legends. Also, all summoners will receive a 4 Win IP boost by Oct. 13. Congratulations, Riot!
In other award news, Blizzard took home the Best Community Relations Award for World of Warcraft, and EVE Online won the Best Live Game Award. Aion earned Best Audio for an Online Game, and Social City was named the Best Social Network Game.
Ultima Online was inducted into the GDC Online Awards Hall of Fame. "I am thankful to be part of an amazing team, but more importantly I’m humbled by the experience and force that helped shape an industry … before there WAS an industry," Producer Calvin Crowner said on the Ultima Online site.
It's official: Counter Logic Gaming has won the first World Cyber Games gold medal in League of Legends for North America! The team, which represents the United States and Canada, took home the grand prize of $6,000 for its hard work.
SK-Gaming of Germany and Switzerland fought bravely against Counter Logic Gaming and earned the silver medal, along with $3,000 for Zylor, Severus, Osaft22, SleazyWeazy and Reyk.
Congratulations are in order for CLG's Bigfatjiji, Elementz, Chauster, HotshotGG and Kobe24. League of Legends may be free-to-play, but having some skill in the game sure can pay off in the end!
I gotta say, I'm really excited for this new map! League of Legends fans around the world will be delighted to hear that the team is bringing in a new map, titled "Magma Chamber," which will feature some strategic, fast-paced 5v5 combat. In their press release, they note that while Magma Chamber does have the same capacity as Summoner's Rift (10 players total, 5v5), this new map will focus less on large team fights (like Summoner's Rift), but will instead emphasize "smaller, more tactical fights, map awareness and victory in specific lanes." They note that this will be accomplished via a "richer jungle" and "more isolated lanes that are difficult to switch between." As well, there will be new neutral minions with new buffs to give, in addition to further surprises.
So what does this mean for your average LoL-player? Well, look forward to a different meta-game to be employed in Magma Chamber, most notably the rise of stronger duo-champion lane combos, in addition to teams being able to move away from the standard "two tanks, two DPS, one support, lots of area-of-effect damage" mentality, and more into the realms of aggressive, mobile teams capable of multi-lane pushing. We'll just see how it all turns out in the end! You can read up on the official lore of Magma Dungeon after the jump!
For the past week now, the League of Legends (LoL) forums have been ablaze with discussions centered on two very hot topics: LoL's problematic server stability and massive discussions as to whether or not the newest champion, Miss Fortune, should really be worth 6350 IP / 975 RP (in other words, she is the highest "tier" of cost in relation to other champions), given the perceived "lack of originality" with her skills. Now, for the former matter, while it can sometimes be frustrating when servers go down for hours on end, server problems tend to be unavoidable, especially given LoL's monumental global growth. What I'm interested in, however, is that second question, especially given the fact that this is a Buyer's Guide to League of Legends! So the question for today is… is Miss Fortune really worth her hefty price tag?
Courtesy of the friendly people over at PC Gamer who appear to have an endless pipeline of information straight from the Riot Games' office, it seems as though League of Legends may soon be due for an artistic overhaul, featuring a fairly significant jump from its 'cartoony' ways to what appears to be a more realistic, grittier artistic style. While there doesn't appear to be an ETA available for when Riot Games plans to implement this new art style (with their one-year anniversary coming up... who knows!), the guys over at PC Gamer are promising some more current news and information in addition to going more in-depth with the complete graphics overhaul, including some new information on Magma Chamber, Riot's latest 5v5 map (but bigger!), and LoL's upcoming new champion, Irelia. To get the scoop on all of the above, just pick up the latest issue of PC Gamer, coming to newsstands in a few days, and help support your print industry!
It definitely sounds like we've got some exciting news coming up for League of Legends fans around the world, so stop complaining about those server downtimes, and let's look forward to some of these great new additions!
Great news for Pirate loving League of Legends fans around the world, as Riot's latest champion addition is Miss Fortune, the gun-toting bounty hunter of the seas! Miss Fortune seems to be a gank-oriented champion who focuses on quick movement around the map, combined with her powerful gun-based abilities. Of particular interest is her incredible passive, Strut, which allows Miss Fortune to gain 25 movement speed every second (up to a maximum of 80) after falling out of combat for 7 seconds. This means that Miss Fortune can basically zoom around the map with a pair of Boots of Movement, rivaling the travel power of other scout champions, like Teemo and Nidalee.
Check out Miss Fortune's impressive ensemble of abilities after the jump!
