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?

I think it’s safe to say that the League of Legends community is as restless as it has ever been. It has been more than half a year since the last major feature release, and promised feature updates remain unreleased months after their announcements. Several high profile players have made long forum posts with titles like, “@Riot why I’m losing interest in your game,” and, “Riot’s downward spiral.”

The thing is, I still have a lot of fun with League of Legends. My personal beef with Riot is that a game that once had as active a development cycle as I’ve seen has grown stagnant, relying on bi-weekly champion releases to keep the game fresh. I started playing the game in December of 2009. Just three months later there was a new map, not just in development, but in the matchmaking rotation. Somewhere along the way there was a client revision. Four months after the Twisted Treeline release came Season One, complete with ranked matches and a new client experience.

It has been more than six months since Season One launched. In that time, there has not been one major feature release to the game (sorry, tutorial modes don’t count). Magma Chamber was announced in September, as was an upcoming graphical overhaul. Both features remain unreleased. There is still no team/clan support. We still don’t have normal stats available, despite the fact that they’re being recorded. The achievements pane, which was introduced last July along with the Season One release, remains unused.

In short, it’s time. In fact, it’s past time. A major content update is long overdue for the game. Riot has had a lot of opportunity to expand the game and stay at the forefront of MOBA design. Without a serious release in the near future, I think we can reasonably expect the game to start bleeding players, either to other MOBA franchises or to different games altogether.

This is old news, and it’s been sitting in my Instapaper just waiting to be posted. Early last weekend, Morelio confirmed on the official forums that Magma Chamber would be a 5v5 map and no larger, as some have speculated.

Here’s the quote:

5v5, with a goal being to allow more splitting up and skirmishing than SR.

At the outset, I think it sounds great, though one sentence can hardly get at the way a metagame will develop around that sort of map. I would love to see smaller skirmishes instead of the big teamfights we have today. It makes some of the marginal characters, like Nidalee and Swain, much more effective. Who knows if that will actually work.

As for release, I’d bet we’re looking at 2011. I don’t see Riot releasing the map, even for testing, in the midst of the holiday content. Release for testing in January, launch in March, Season Two in June?

Many of you have probably seen the issue of PC Gamer where this was all debuted, but in case you haven’t, Riot’s posted the news to the Announcement forums for your perusal. The biggest news for what’s on the horizon is, yes, finally, a new map.

For my part, I’m not all that excited. I really don’t mind that there’s only one 5v5 map right now. There are so many different champion and build combinations that the variety doesn’t have to come from different settings, it comes from the way the games play out. In fact, I don’t really like the last new map Riot put together. It snowballs way too hard and allows for very limited character selection. At the onset, I’m worried that the new map will suffer the same problems, or different problems that are similar. If Miss Fortune taught me one thing, it’s that Riot is willing to release mechanics that are at conflict with the fundamentals of the game. Miss Fortune virtually breaks the laning phase for most characters, and I don’t want to see another map that breaks 60-70 percent of the available champions’ ability to contribute.

But enough of my fears and worries. They won’t do any more than give me Nostradamus-style credibility (which is to say, none) if things do indeed go wrong.

The new map is called The Magma Chamber, and promises to the “premier arena for [League] use.” You have to wonder what that means, but let’s cover the rest of the details first.

Deep within the obsidian mountain from which the Institute of War is sculpted lies the League’s most intense Field of Justice to date – the Magma Chamber. Before the time of the League, the Chamber was the heart of a powerful, but now dormant, volcano. Ancient magma flows cut out a gigantic cavernous room that the League has reshaped for its own purposes. This battle arena was built specifically to address the increasing number of disputes between Demacia and Noxus. It is one of the largest Fields of Justice found anywhere on Valoran. To that end, teleporting platforms provide champions with the ability to rapidly relocate to strategic points in the arena. The magic-infused stone and cooled magma that dominates the structure of the arena will force champions to work together more closely in pushing toward the enemy’s nexus. It will be harder for a champion to rely on their summoner to traverse hazards and obstacles. The League is preparing this Field of Justice to be the premier arena for its use; as such, a slew of new monsters and minions await champions in what will surely be their greatest challenge yet.

Things we know:
1. It’s hot
2. It’s really hot
3. You can teleport around
4. You might only be able to teleport around
5. It’s really big

From the sound of things, there’s no jumping over walls, no Body Slamming off the little ledges into hot magma. Of course, that could be totally wrong. “It will be harder for a champion to rely on their summoner to traverse hazards and obstacles” is so vague there isn’t really a way to know what that means, but my guess is you don’t have lane-jumping capability. That’s something Riot has hinted at for some time.

We also know it’s going to be big – one of the biggest in Valoran which makes it…bigger than Summoner’s Rift? Maybe. The good news is that there is a plan (I hope) for the rest of Valoran’s Fields of Justice. That’s good news.

What I’m most interested to see, though, is the teleportation system. Is there a delay? Is it instantaneous? Can you use it in combat? Do you have vision at the destination point? We won’t know any of this, obviously, until the map’s out in practice games for widespread playtesting.

On the whole, I’m anxious for The Magma Chamber’s release. Anxious, because I really want it, but I really want it to be good. If it’s not good, then I definitely don’t want it.

It’s a fun read, and it does give me hope that we’ll see the new map by the time Spring rolls around. As I’ve said many times on this blog, I primarily play with two friends – we’re looking forward to the map for obvious reasons.

There is at least one more change to be made before the map is quite ready. Here’s the teaser for that change from the original post:

The Twisted Treeline originally envisioned needed a lot of work to bring it in line with the goals of the Design Team. In order to balance it to be on equal footing across the various champion types, to allow for multiple opening strategies, and to keep the game length under control, many different aspects of the map required extensive tweaking from the original design. Ultimately, the Twisted Treeline of today is a very different place than the one that debuted on October 21st, 2009.

And there’s more to come! The Design Team has authorized me to tease you all with the promise of at least one more, game changing feature that they intend to pull from their proverbial bag of tricks. Stay tuned!

Source: LoL Forums