Page 112 of 318

      Season One Championships are underway

      June 18, 2011 /

      The Season One Championships are well underway at Dreamhack over in Sweden. I’ve been watching for most of the morning, though I did miss the super early games. It’s been interesting to see not only the different comps and bans, but also what Riot has done to livecast the event. At the peak, I saw some 180,000 people watching the games, which is really impressive for the first season of a video game.

      Riot was also pushing its Twitter presence. I think the company is hoping to get “#esports” trending, though I’m not sure what sort of community presence there is on Twitter. Most of the time the #leagueoflegends hashtag is pretty sparse, but I would love to see a more active dialog happening there, even just for link sharing.

      I think the best part of the tournament to this point has been the preview of Spectator Mode. It looks really nice, giving the viewer a ton of data about what’s happening on the battlefield. As we’ve seen from a few of the games, though, data isn’t everything. It’s true that at the end of the game the winning team typically has the gold advantage, but I thought Epik’s Doublelift was totally screwed when he got killed twice in the first couple minutes of the game against Fnatic. Miss Fortune also remained nearly 100 creeps ahead of Doublelift through the end of the game. Still, Epik somehow managed to pull a win (which, come to think of it, was Westrice’s Akali game).

      At any rate, I’m really impressed with Riot’s commitment to making the championship an event for everyone, not just the players in the tournament. Have you guys been watching?

      Current Affairs, league of legends, News

      The things we take for granted

      June 17, 2011 /

      League of Legends champions.

      Riot senior producer Travis George put up a post on the forums yesterday evening asking what Riot had been doing well lately and for suggestions for improvements. It was a really nice way to ask for feedback, one that I think can easily be as valuable to a company as criticism can be. It can be tough to know, especially with a community as large as League of Legends. I’ve been trying to round out my MOBA knowledge lately, spending time with the few games that are out there and a couple different beta products. It’s been a great reminder of the many things that League of Legends does so well.

      For one thing, it is definitely the most responsive game. That sounds like a strange thing to get excited about, but play a game in which the controls and UI feel sluggish and you’ll know what I mean. Even basic things, like altering the cursor sprite so that I know a spell is queued up, don’t show in several other games. The only game that holds a candle to LoL in terms of responsiveness (from the MOBA world) is HoN, but even that feels a little slow at times.

      League of Legends is also hands down the easiest to understand by just watching the screen. I truly believe the downfall of many modern games is that they try to hard to look cool or edgy and just end up looking ridiculous. Demigod might be the only game that really made modern graphics look good (seriously, how cool was Rook), but even that game was a bit hard to grasp by watching the battlefield. I think any RTS player could easily sort out what is happening in a LoL match without much effort. I’m not sure the same can be said for several other MOBA franchises.

      This last one is a matter of personal taste, but I like that the League of Legends UI attempts to teach the player the game. That little line from turret to target is a perfect example of a teaching mechanic in game. The player gets immediate feedback when he steps in range of the turret. It’s clear who/what the turret is targeting. It’s also clear when it changes targets, allowing players to analyze what action caused the change. I totally take it for granted, but playing games that don’t have those features makes me want to pull out what’s left of my hair.

      I could go on for a while, but I would probably be violating an NDA or two with some comparisons, and that’s just not my style. The point here is that there is a lot of excellent design behind League of Legends that I probably don’t mention enough.

      Current Affairs, Editorial, league of legends

      Yorick ready for next week

      June 16, 2011 /
      yorick_splash

      It looks like I was wrong about the Yorick release schedule. We got the “champion approaches” post today, which usually means he’ll be out in the next week. While there certainly are a solid number of Rioters overseas, there are also quite a few on domestic soil, working to keep the game going. Hopefully that will translate into Yorick’s release on Tuesday.

      But enough of that – let’s check out the skills.

      Omen of War: Yorick’s next attack will deal bonus physical damage and summon a Spectral Ghoul that deals additional damage and moves faster than Yorick’s other ghouls. While the Spectral Ghoul is alive, Yorick moves faster as well.

      Omen of Pestilence: Yorick summons a Decaying Ghoul that arrives with a violent explosion, dealing damage and slowing nearby enemies. While the Decaying Ghoul remains alive, nearby enemies continue to be slowed.

      Omen of Famine: Yorick steals life from his target and summons a Ravenous Ghoul that heals Yorick for the damage it deals.

      Omen of Death (Ultimate): Yorick conjures a revenant in the image of one of his allies. If his ally dies while its revenant is alive, the revenant sacrifices itself to reanimate them and give them time to enact vengeance.

      Unholy Covenant (Passive): Yorick’s attacks deal more damage for each summon that is active. Meanwhile, Yorick’s ghouls deal some percent of Yorick’s Attack Damage and have some percent of his total health.

      I mentioned the other day that I wasn’t as worried about Yorick as I have been about Mordekaiser, but I am a bit worried that his passive will allow him to snowball in lane the way that Mordekaiser does. If his ghouls get too tanky, too quickly, he’ll be able to zone just about anyone out of lane while sustaining himself with a healing ghoul. I am glad to see that the collision ignore has been removed from Omen of War.

      Watch for him next week!

      Champions, Development, league of legends, News

      Champ of the Week: Click once, fool

      June 16, 2011 /

      Mordekaiser splash.

      It hasn’t been an easy week for the Champ of the Week. I’ve tried looking up some guides, watching a couple Mordekaiser streams, and even cranked a little In Flames up to 11 but nothing seems to help my Mordekaiser game. I really don’t like playing that has no crowd control, and I like even less how dependent he is on positioning to make sure that he doesn’t take a lot of damage in the early game. That said, I’ve had a couple good games, but they really had nothing to do with my own playing. They had everything to do with my opponents.

      From what I can tell, most of playing Mordekaiser is trying to bait your opponent into getting close enough for a Siphon of Destruction to land. The spell has a pretty high base, especially against the softer toons in the game, and generates quite a bit of shield. Unfortunately, players can walk out of it, and the smartest players just let you push them and wait for a jungler to come gank. If your team has a great counter jungler and your opponent can’t clear creeps very well, push and push hard. Unfortunately that situation is pretty rare, so you can either push your creeps to keep shield up in lane or you can struggle to stay alive without the shield. I had particular trouble against a Ryze the other day, though he also had Amumu coming out of the jungle regularly to keep me down. It was rough.

      As I think more on Mordekaiser’s lane style, he seems relatively balanced, so long as the opponent is someone with decent lane presence. There are quite a few champions without very good early presence who require a big farm to be relevant late in the, and those champions fare very poorly against Mordekaiser. Mordekaiser also snowballs terribly in lane. If he can get an early kill, he’s off to the races. That extra level/level-and-a-half puts him at a huge advantage with ult/ignite combo. His shield also gives him the early ability to tower dive with impunity, which is never fun for anyone.

      To be honest, I almost had fun in a game with him today, but it was because the Ashe I was laning against fed me two early kills and I was able to get Sorc Boots and a Sunfire before anyone on their team had completed a solid mid-game item. It’s hard not to enjoy crushing strong champions like Ashe and Warwick, but that situation has been a rarity for me so far.

      Check back later in the week for more impressions.

      Champ of the Week, Champions, league of legends

      Riot gives us a Yorick mini-preview

      June 15, 2011 /

      Morello dropped by the announcement forums today to give us a mini-preview of Yorick’s playstyle and ability set. Riot also released the art spotlight, which you can see above. I’m actually very excited to see Yorick on the Fields of Justice, much more so than the other Tanky DPS in the game, and mostly because I think he’ll be a bit different. Granted, I still think he’s going to be nasty in lane, but his ultimate sounds kinda cool without being the mess that is Mordekaiser’s Children of the Grave.

      Yorick deals damage in lane by summoning minions that have both immediate and persistent effects. One minion deals damage in an AoE and slows nearby targets but also leaves behind a ghoul that slows nearby units. The ghouls have a limited life span that can be further shortened based on the damage they receive.

      Yorick’s ultimate, Omen of Death, allows him to create a revenant of a still-living ally. If the ally dies while the revenant is up, that player is revived for a short period of undeath, during which I can only assume that player has control of his/her character again for a short time. It sounds less punitive than some deaths to Mordekaiser can be – often turning a fight into a 6v4 – while still being strong enough to warrant its use. I’ll be interested to see the different shenanigans people find for this ult.

      Don’t forget, Yorick isn’t due out until Dreamhack is over, which I would assume means the Tuesday after next.

      Champions, league of legends, News

      « Older posts Newer posts »

      © 2026 Fearless Gamer

      Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑