League of Legends

I recently started playing League of Legends, and I have to say, it's just about one of the funnest games I've played in a long while. If you're interested in playing, check it out here.

Players of DoTA will be very familiar with the game genre that LoL follows, and will especially be happy to know that the original developer of DoTA, Guinsoo. What I love about LoL, though, is that there are several improvements it has over DoTA, especially because it isn't being built off of Warcraft III anymore.

Don't get me wrong. I have always been really impressed at what the DoTA developers were able to accomplish using the Warcraft III editor, but there were a lot of shortcomings that really bothered me. LoL improves on these, keeping your hero selected at all times, but still allowing you to see stats of allies and enemies is a big one for me. There is a revamped hotkey system that makes using skills and keeping track of your hero much easier, and some of the common items you had to buy in DoTA like Town Portal are now built into every hero by default, allowing you to more fluidly manage your hero's inventory.

One thing I hated about DoTA was that, when a game was over, it felt like I really made no real progress. My hero was gone, I really had no major stat tracking going on (I was never very hardcore), and I was a little frustrated with having to start with a wimpy level 1 hero every new game. With League of Legends there is a system called the Summoner System. In LoL, you play a Summoner, one who summons Champions and brings them to the battlefield to defend them. So, in other words, you as the person clicking around on the screen are the summoner, and after each game you gain experience that allows you to unlock spells to cast, build up skill trees that give your characters stat bonuses, and a few other things as well. This keeps the game interesting across all matches, which is really refreshing to say the least.

The downsides to many DoTA players is that the game no longer has secret shops and doesn't allow denying. The LoL team explains themselves on the denying issue, stating:
"I heard that League of Legends doesn't have denying, is that true?

It’s true, even though League of Legends is based on DotA we’ve intentionally decided to remove denying from the game. We know this is a huge change for some people, but we have some really good reasons for removing it!

* It enlarges the early game imbalance between ranged and melee Champions, and we think it is more fun for all Champions to be at least somewhat competitive at all phases of the game.
* It leads to passive play, and slows down the game. We feel that high-activity; high-action faster games are more fun. By not having denying, there’s a stronger incentive to push. Additionally, it prevents strong lane control which is ultimately about passive play. Team fights more than anything else are what make this genre fun, and faster games mean more team fights.
* It is weird. Killing your own guys?"

For more details on the differences between DoTA and LoL, check out this link.

So, LoL is crazy fun, faster paced, and pretty well banaced. Definitely worth checking out.

Try it.