Riot didn’t make much of a stink about the League of Legends birthday last year, but it seems this year there’s going to be something of a celebration. As part of the festivities, Riot put together a timeline that follows the development of the game since October of 2009.

I think this is a pretty cool tribute to the development of the game, but I hope Riot sees the timeline like I do: a reminder that they can do better. When I look down the list of developments I see several things that I never use, a couple things that were hyped up and underwhelmed, and one real thing that has the potential to extend the life of the platform for a player.

Twisted Treeline

Twisted Treeline started out strong but quickly dried up when players realized that only so many champs are actually viable on the map. With the rise of Tanky DPS I’ve been playing Treeline again, mostly because there’s more variety there, but Riot stopped worrying about balance for that map a long time ago. This one doesn’t add any life to League of Legends. It’s an occasional diversion from the big show.

Season One

Season One also looked pretty cool at the beginning. Ranked play brought us draft mode, a feature that I had really been missing prior to its release. But Season One went on so long I forgot it was even happening. In that time the game remained relatively unchanged, seeing just a few meta-shifts along the way.

Riot did start to develop a spectator mode for the game, which helped the visibility of the larger tournaments. This would be a nice injection of life for the platform, giving each player more ways to learn how to improve at the game. On the whole, though, Season One doesn’t add much to the platform for the average player.

Battle Training & Co-Op vs. AI

I have never used Battle Training and never will. I’d also say chances are good that once a player has seen the mode a couple times, they won’t be going back either.

As for Co-Op vs. AI, my experience with the mode was poor enough that I haven’t gone back. My allies constantly flamed me for any and every decision I made. I’d rather have the ragers from ranked than the trolls from this game mode. That said, I know some players enjoy it and it’s certainly kid friendly. This one seems okay for a very small subset of the player base. I would love to see more data on who is playing Co-Op vs. AI.

The Tribunal

I’m still surprised the Tribunal made it to the live feature list before things like achievements or spectator mode. I realize Riot must have been swamped in complaints about player behavior, but for me, the Tribunal just isn’t worth the time. I can’t even imagine the amount of management it takes on the back end. And frankly, my games haven’t improved dramatically since the Tribunal released. People are still rude. People still afk. There are just too many players for this kind of system to effect dramatic change that we can see on a player by player basis.

Dominion

This is the big, shiny pot of gold at the end of Riot’s timeline. When Dominion launched I played it like a fiend. I haven’t played a ton in the past couple weeks, but a few games here and there have still been fun. It’s obvious that Riot is committed to keeping this game mode balanced, which puts it ahead of Twisted Treeline as far as diversions are concerned. I don’t think Dominion is perfect, but it’s something new with totally new gameplay and I think a lot of players are enjoying it.

None of this is to say that I don’t like League of Legends. I love it. I’ve spent hundreds of hours on it, both in playing and in writing for this blog. The day is coming, though, when some shiny new toy will steal me away from LoL. When I look at this list, I don’t see much that will pull me back should my new toy grow stale. I hope Riot has a few tricks up its sleeve.

I have a couple good friends that I frequently join up with to play Twisted Treeline. It’s not a perfect experience by any means, but it allows us to play a draft mode together and the games are relatively short. The best part about TT is definitely game length, but the map leaves an awful lot to be desired in terms of balance.

The time issue actually carries over to Summoner’s Rift for me. I rarely queue for 5v5 unless I know I have an hour to spend and even 3s can take 40 minutes if the game goes long. That’s a pretty long chunk of time to commit to a game, especially if it ends up being a loss. I’m sure we’ve all had games that are going so poorly that there’s no hope of victory but teammates hang on and refuse to surrender. Those types of games make me long for a quicker experience.

DotA had an “easy mode” toggle that could be used with each gametype, granting bonus gold per second and I believe extra gold for towers. It increased the pace of the game by allowing players to passively reach a level of farm more quickly, similar to the way Twisted Treeline generates per-second gold faster than Summoner’s Rift. I actually think it would be cool to have an “easy mode” playlist in League of Legends, a mode in which the XP and gold rewards were tuned so that 30 minutes looked like 70 minutes does now.

That mode wouldn’t work very well on Twisted Treeline. The 3v3 map just snowballs out of hand far too quickly. Games would likely be decided by the first fight (and in some cases, they still are). For Summoner’s Rift, though, I think it would give casual players more opportunity to fire up a game while the baby’s napping, in between classes, or just before heading to bed. Speaking of which…

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?

I know I’ve flip-flopped a bit on TT in the past – excited to frustrated and back again – but my final verdict was that it’s a fun map, but only until you get sick of seeing the same few characters. Well let me say, with the release of draft mode and the ranked 3v3 queue, TT is back to being fun.

I was particularly curious about the 3v3 draft games because it’s where I’ll likely spend most of my time in the ranked team queues. I never have five people consistently playing with one another, but three is much more manageable, and with draft mode it’s a lot more fun. I like that I can remove Shen/Jax/Shaco from the equation and see where people end up. Granted, there are still quite a few toons that people consider top tier for TT available, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the variety I’ve seen. Hopefully that will continue as my ELO continues to rise.

I also just noticed today that you can’t ban toons that the other players can’t pick. If they haven’t unlocked everyone, you’ll only have the toons they’ve unlocked to ban (plus the week’s free rotation). It’s nice that you can’t then waste a ban on something your opponent would never have anyway.

Where are you guys spending your time? Solo, 5v5, or 3v3?