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?

One of Riot’s PR managers was kind enough to put together a content roundup from the various sources that got a sneak peek at Dominion earlier this week. There’s some good stuff out there, including the video Berseking put in the comments of a post here (which is now at the top of the post). I figured I’d put up the links so you guys can grab the information that’s out there and get a closer look at the map.

Joystiq
“Dominion certainly turns the genre on its head, in a way that retains the elements that are now standard, and tweaks the gameplay in brand new ways. Riot promised players that it would do something “surprising,” and it wanted to bring something new to the genre, so Dominion seems destined to enable both goals.”

IGN
“Dominion, an entirely new game type for League of Legends, is more exciting than a rollercoaster built on top of a giant rollercoaster car that is actively moving on another rollercoaster. On fire.”

“Dominion is playable at the upcoming Gamescom and Penny Arcade Expo consumer trade shows, and — according to Riot — it goes live shortly thereafter. It’s also freely available to all players from the moment it comes out. Ohhhhhh yeeeeaaaah!”

Eurogamer
“This represents an enormous addition to a game that has been traditional, almost conservative in adhering to its DotA-influenced style of play, and where the focus has almost always been on the development of new characters or new tactics. This Riot has started a revolution, and one that has arrived at just the right time.”

PC Gamer
“From start to finish, each Dominion match felt like it was filled with back-to-back battles, and with the hectic back-and-forth nature of the map, it’s never over til it’s over.”

Gamespot
Video interview with Volibar

Kotaku
“Riot Games describe Dominion as an “accelerated version of the classic League of Legends” with matches lasting about 20 minutes. Gamers will have their first chance to check out the game later this month at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, and later at PAX Prime in Seattle.”

Destructoid
“Riot Games has addressed this issue by introducing something entirely unheard of in the genre. Enter Dominion, the newest gameplay mode that overhauls the classic system to accommodate a more fast-paced, action-packed gaming experience.”

GamesRadar
“There are tons of great mechanics and features that encourage lots of back-and-forth as both teams battle over control of the map.”

G4 TV
“For League of Legends veterans who’ve been waiting a long time for a new mode, you definitely won’t be disappointed with League of Legends Dominion.”

ZAM
“In a nutshell, Dominion is League of Legends distilled into pure adrenaline.”

The Escapist
“The result is a League of Legends experience that has quick and furious combat right at the get go and sustained throughout the average 20 minutes of play. After my first hands-on I couldn’t help but scrawl 23 minutes of awesome in my notepad.”

With all the hype from Rioters over the course of the week, it looked like we might finally see an actual release announcement for Magma Chamber. Well, that didn’t happen, but I think Riot did us one (maybe two) better. Today Riot announced Dominion, a new game mode for League of Legends that’s also played on an entirely new map, the Crystal Scar.

The game mode seems to play a lot like Arathi Basin in World of Warcraft. Two teams fight for control of certain waypoints around the map and accrue points based on how many waypoints they control. Riot says games last roughly twenty minutes, a time frame in which most Summoner’s Rift matches are just getting started.

For my dollar, Dominion is a brilliant release, provided we can play it before the end of the year. There are a lot of people who still enjoy Summoner’s Rift, who are still learning the playstyle for the map or, in some cases, still learning how to play a MOBA. For the veterans, though, Summoner’s Rift can be stale at times. I love the idea of jumping into a 20-minute slugfest on a map that forces players to be in combat at all times. Riot mentioned to several media outlets that they’re trying to make sure the game doesn’t snowball into victory, a goal that makes a lot of sense considering the similarities to other capture-and-defend gametypes in various games.

For all of my excitement about Dominion, I’m also being a bit cautious. Sorry, Riot, but you’ve burned me before. I think it’s a great sign that Dominion will be playable at both Gamescom (August 17-21) and PAX Prime (August 26-28). That could mean the new map/mode are ready for a late September/Early October release. If the past has taught us anything, it’s to be wary of feature releases coming out of Riot offices. Dominion looks to be so fleshed out, though, that I can’t imagine it going live any later than October 15th.

What do you think? Is Dominion going to rock face or stagger toward release?