In a fairly quiet release, Riot has set Dominion live on its servers. That’s right, it’s live. On a Monday, no less. Unexpected? Absolutely. Even the unexpected I was expecting would have been Tuesday morning, so today was certainly a pleasant surprise.

If you’re looking for a way to spend your Monday, consider jumping into some games of Dominion. It’s a blast.

I’m hesitant to write this post, mostly because I have a bad feeling I will be proven wrong, but I think we could actually see Dominion release this week. Dominion’s beta availability continued through this weekend, with limited hours available each day. From what I can tell, Dominion is a completed project. All that remains to be determined is whether Riot’s hardware can handle the surge in players and/or the different game modes.

There are also two quotes from Tamat on a recent rant about Dominion availability.

First:

Beta has been successful so far, we’ll have a launch date announcement for you next week.

Also:

Expect the unexpected. All I’m going to say.

It’s the second one that really has me hopeful but also concerned. I’m concerned because we’ve heard that so many times it holds absolutely no meaning anymore. I’m hopeful because if I take that sentiment to heart, Dominion will be out this week. This week is the only week that would be unexpected. The following week is October, and that’s far from unexpected.

Things have been extremely quiet at Riot headquarters of late. The forums have been utterly devoid of red posts concerning Dominion, the end of Season One, and the beginning of Season Two in the last week or so. This wouldn’t be all that shocking – Riot has always struggled to provide good communication about timing – but we had been hearing about those things and in quantity for the three weeks or so prior.

From the time Dominion was announced until about three weeks ago, Riot was pumping the Dominion hype. We got the Dominion minisite, gameplay vids at the major gaming news outlets, plenty of screenshots, and chances to play the game at several industry events. We saw Rioters play pros, Rioters play Rioters. We got excited.

Next we were told about the end of Season One and the rewards that end entailed. For the first time since the launch of Season One players had something more than just winning/losing/farming IP to worry about. It was a great announcement, and hopefully a challenge a few people enjoyed as much as I did.

This past week, though, it was dead silent. I thought that meant Dominion was on the way. I thought that meant we’d see it before Q4 of this year, which is when every other game I’ve been excited about for the past several years is coming out. Sadly, that’s probably not the case. RiotRara finally posted in the forums today regarding the timing of Riven and the patch that follows her.

Here’s the quote:

Riven, and the changes within her patch, will be coming next week. As we previously announced, Season One will conclude with our next scheduled game update. Therefore we will also be calculating the Season One Ladder rankings and rewards during downtime for this patch.

Additionally, there will be an extra week (3 weeks total) between the Riven patch and the patch to follow. This extra time will ensure we bring you the best content possible in League of Legends.

I can’t imagine “best content possible” is code for anything other than Dominion. Three weeks from next Tuesday is October 4th. I’m not impressed, Riot. Not at all.

Things have been awfully quiet from Riot’s offices over the past two weeks. We got the Talon release a week-and-a-half ago, but since then the only thing we’ve seen is the Karthus/Cassiopeia disable. Red forum posts have mostly been of a community flavor, with really nothing in the way of significant game discussion. Obviously the prevailing theory is that we’re about to get our paws on Dominion.

I hope it’s true. By this time we usually have at least a Champion Sneak Peek and sometimes an Art Spotlight. Riot will have some very restless customers on its hands if Dominion isn’t ready by patch day of next week (which I would like to stress again is Tuesday).

The Dominion launch is sort of a precarious thing for Riot. People will obviously be shot up about having a new game mode to play, but we’ve also been promised all sorts of things in the past that just haven’t been delivered. I hope Riot gets this one right.

There’s a lot to get excited about with the upcoming Dominion game mode, but I’m excited for one major feature above all else – the lack of a lane phase. It’s not just that I think the lane phase has gotten stale, which it has, or that I don’t really like trying to last hit, which I don’t. I’m excited about Dominion’s lack of a lane phase because it means teams will be playing with one another more. Honestly, I think the change could be the one thing with a shot at injecting some positivity into the LoL community.

I’ve thought a lot about why the LoL community tends be a negative environment, and I think it pretty much boils down to this – for the first 15-20 minutes of a game, it isn’t a team game. It’s 3-4 solo experiences (3 lanes and a jungle) that have the potential to ruin the team part of the game that comes much later. In some cases, your teammates actually become your enemies. If bot lane feeds 5 kills in the first 10 minutes, it’s going to be a very tough game. Because games are fairly long, it can often feel like that feeding lane has just wasted whatever amount of time you spend in the game.

Dominion should remove or at least reduce that initial intra-team tension. From the very beginning of the game, players have to work together to succeed. The way that the map is designed, teams will still split up, and there will still be moments that it feels like your teammates have screwed you. I think the key difference is that you’ll be playing as a team from the beginning, instead of playing as 3 solos and one team lane.

To that end, I’m really pumped about Dominion. What are you looking forward to?