Welcome back, everybody. I hope you’ve been enjoying your holidays so far. My heart goes out to those of you at work today, so I’ll be trying to put some posts up to help fill your time at the office. My own holidays have been great (thanks for asking), though I’ve probably gained a solid ten pounds as a result of my own crippling gluttony.

The first bit of news today is that Riot has opened the League of Legends merchandise store. As of right now, you can pick up a graphic T-shirt with a variety of champions for about $20. You can also have the T-shirt customized with your summoner name, which is pretty nerd-chic. There are also posters on sale for $10.

I’m guessing we’ll see the typical gaming swag added to the store over the next couple weeks. Coffee mugs, hats, hoodies, etc, should all be making an appearance, but I’ll be interested to see if they come up with something cool. The shirts are pretty cool and the prices are reasonable. If you’ve got some extra holiday cash to spend, get out there and spend it.

I got an interesting email today, the contents of which you can find above. That’s right, I’m under investigation for potential violations of the Summoner’s Code. To say the least, I’m shocked.

I won’t deny that I rage from time to time. I absolutely do, though recently I can only think of two games in which I may have been reportable, and in both cases I was retaliating. That doesn’t make it okay, but it’s not like I’m running around verbally abusing people without provocation. Frankly, it can be tough to keep it cool when a player who is 0-11 by 15 minutes is berating his teammates for their failures to “support him.” Again, I’m not saying I’m in the right. It is just a game, and raging doesn’t do me any good (or anyone else), but sometimes my frustration comes out my fingers.

The second issue is that I haven’t really been playing that much recently. Either I’ve been reported in every one of my recent games, or action is being taken long after the complaints were originally made. I suppose it could also be that Riot has a “report threshold,” past which you get investigated, regardless of the amount time that has passed since your last report.

I’ll certainly keep you guys up to date. I think I keep a pretty level head for the most part, so I doubt too much will happen. It will be interesting to see how the League of Legends penal system works from the inside.

I hope you all got to enjoy a lovely holiday (those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, anyway) and have the good fortune to slowly get back to work today. I woke up early to get caught up on all the goings on over the weekend. It was nice to spend a few days unconnected, but I always start to feel a bit panicked when I see more than a hundred emails, a slew of comments, and all the forum posts/RSS feeds I have to catch up on. I’m getting there, slowly but surely. A lot went down over the weekend so let’s get caught up, shall we.

First, we got Trundle’s official skill list. I’ll be covering that in another post today. Riot also teased what is likely the Olaf legendary skin, Brolaf.

Next up, Riot joined in the Black Friday madness by offering several champions at reduced prices and deeply discounting several skins. My personal favorite is the Grungy Nunu sale, which brought him from 975 RP down to 243. The sale goes until the end of day today so make sure you get to spend some RP.

Riot also prepped for the Noxus vs. Ionia event, for which select summoners will be representing the two nations as they aim to resolve their conflict. I think this is a pretty cool lore-based event. I’m always happy to see the game offer a limited field of champions. It definitely makes things more interesting. You can read more about the event at the official forum post. A livestream of the match will be available on December 10th.

Some of you may recognize the name Jon St. John. Yeah, he has a badass name in real life, but he’s also done voice acting for one well-known and incredibly delayed badass: Duke Nukem. Well, Jon St. John has a new project, and one that could be of interest to LoL players. He’s doing voice acting for Valve’s version of DotA.

I don’t really have any details, and frankly, the DotA moniker comes from JSJ, not from Valve. What we do know is that Valve hired IceFrog (the mind behind DotA (along with Zileas)) to make something to please DotA fans. Jon St. John posted to his Twitter account this weekend that he has been doing voice work for DotA at Valve Software. I’m not sure why he would call out the name of the game without hearing it from Valve, and if they didn’t give him the go ahead, you can bet he wouldn’t be talking about it.

This doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot for the LoL community, but it could be bad news for any HoN fans out there. I’ve played a bit of HoN and been completely unimpressed, so it’s not like the name DotA will kill a game like LoL. It could kill HoN, though, especially with the kind of money Valve has. What could be a problem for LoL is just that – the money.

Valve could very easily sweep in on LoL territory with more bank, more developers, but more importantly, more support. With better server uptime and the bankroll to back a quicker development cycle, Valve could make a dent in the LoL player base. That’s not to say Valve will do that, just that it could with the resources it has. Valve was notoriously slow with some of the TF2 developments, though, even if TF2 has a massive player base. Let’s also not forget that IceFrog did work on HoN, and we can all see how well that’s going.

In short, I think it’s totally possible that Valve is working up a DotA clone and it has the potential to make a bit of a stink for the big players in the MOBA world. There are so many variables, though, that Valve has a long way to go before

I know from the comments that a couple of you have been wondering where I’ve been. Posts have been a little sporadic over the last week, but I can happily invoke Paul Newman from The Color of Money when I say, “Baby, I’m back!” I had been busy with some other projects for work and I got out of town over the holiday weekend to visit good friends from college.

I’ll have full updates on the changes to LoL over the course of the day today, but in the meantime, here are a few updates from my weekend in upstate PA. First, Hudson Four Grain Bourbon Whiskey is incredible, and a great bottle to share with three other friends. Using grubs on a hot day can land you some enormous bass. Halo 2 on a LAN is still one of the best ways to wait out a rainstorm and always bring chips when there’s salsa or you’ll be horribly disappointed.