League of Legends - A great way to pass the time :D

[Shadow Chorus]

Sitting bored, waiting for the next post?  I know I'm sad just waiting for character bios to put Seth in, so it must be murder on those already introduced to the story . Anyways, I pass my time with League of Legends, and felt that I could pass it on to everyone else at the forum . It's a fun little game, like DoTA (BUT FUN! REALLY!), with a (generally) Friendly userbase, wonderful graphics, and is an excellent way to pass the time. So the link is below if you wish to try it out.

http://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4b86ff484e256

[Archdemon Stu]

I play A LOT of that game with my 5's team.  Alistar (though underrated) is my baby, with Malphite coming in a close second.  I'm generally the tank of the team, since adjusting to being anything else is a tad difficult considering my set attitude of "run in there and start smashing people so they target me and only me."

I will have to disagree with "friendly user base" though.  If you're playing normal games, they throw tantrums and blame their teammates in a heart beat in order to displace blame on their own faults.  Once you get around to doing ranked games though, they seem to be a much more friendly crowd that will even praise the other team if the other does something badass.

But it IS completely free to play, and has very low requirements of your computer.  I recommend it for anybody with a smidgeon of spare time.

[Angie]

I'm kinda happy that they finally got off their lazy fucking freeware asses and hired a decent artist or two to their design team. Jesus christ.

Still not enough to make me give a damn about it's warcraft-wannabe ass, though. I liked Heroes of Newerth more, but the community was a shithole so I never bought the game.

Here's hoping Valve's attempt at DOTA is better.

[Shadow Chorus]

I play A LOT of that game with my 5's team.  Alistar (though underrated) is my baby, with Malphite coming in a close second.  I'm generally the tank of the team, since adjusting to being anything else is a tad difficult considering my set attitude of "run in there and start smashing people so they target me and only me."

I will have to disagree with "friendly user base" though.  If you're playing normal games, they throw tantrums and blame their teammates in a heart beat in order to displace blame on their own faults.  Once you get around to doing ranked games though, they seem to be a much more friendly crowd that will even praise the other team if the other does something badass.

But it IS completely free to play, and has very low requirements of your computer.  I recommend it for anybody with a smidgeon of spare time.

I have a better crowd, running my tanks and mages. Singed poison reaping the benefits of being able to somehow find intelligent players.

I'm kinda happy that they finally got off their lazy fucking freeware asses and hired a decent artist or two to their design team. Jesus christ.

Still not enough to make me give a damn about it's warcraft-wannabe ass, though. I liked Heroes of Newerth more, but the community was a shithole so I never bought the game.

Here's hoping Valve's attempt at DOTA is better.

Blasphemy. Everyone says that heroes of newerth's graphics are better, but they are in fact wholly worse,and just the camera is zoomed out so it looks slightly more detailed. And League of Legends has had a great graphics team since the game was released to the public. I've actually been repeatedly told that Heroes of Newerth is better, but never been given any proof. And then I played Heroes of Newerth, and my point was proven. Its graphics are terrible. Its itemization is unfathomable, its heroes are pitifully overpowered and one-sided. The mage-hunter will kill any mage. End of story. Not even the Witch Hunter stands a chance. In league of legends, Veigar can easily be owned by Ryze if the Ryze is a good enough player. The items are easy to understand and build for the champion, thankfully. And the heroes, while currently less in number than HoN, are constantly growing and will soon pass them in numbers, and are already significantly more diverse and interesting than the heroes of HoN.

Anyways, off the topic of my HoN Rant....

LoL was made by the creators of the original DotA Allstars, which was, in my opinion, the only good DotA. I'm not much fond of DotA two, but to each his own, and I'll stick to my free game that beats up the pay-to-play that has all of the hype.

[Kitharsis]

I play this almost every day.  I usually run Nidalee but lately I picked up Garen and just roll my face over the keyboard and profit.

Some games the other players are all mature and respectful and everyone just has fun.

Others theres a bunch of whiners and a loudmouth who just blames everyone else for their 1-10-3 performance -.-

I'd love to get out of solo queue, on that note.

[Archdemon Stu]

I play this almost every day.  I usually run Nidalee but lately I picked up Garen and just roll my face over the keyboard and profit.

Some games the other players are all mature and respectful and everyone just has fun.

Others theres a bunch of whiners and a loudmouth who just blames everyone else for their 1-10-3 performance -.-

I'd love to get out of solo queue, on that note.

Speaking of Nidalee, my 5's just got DESTROYED by one last night.  My buddies on my 5's team were experimenting with new characters, sure, but I have to admit I severely underestimated the potential of that champion.  And good ol' Garen's spin to win.  I tried him for a bit, but I felt like he was kind of boring to play.

I'm kinda happy that they finally got off their lazy fucking freeware asses and hired a decent artist or two to their design team. Jesus christ.

Still not enough to make me give a damn about it's warcraft-wannabe ass, though. I liked Heroes of Newerth more, but the community was a shithole so I never bought the game.

Here's hoping Valve's attempt at DOTA is better.

I'd hope they'd wait for a bit to hire people a freeware game.  It's a very risky thing to start out with.  Now that people are buying skins left and right though, I'm very impressed with some of the artwork they're pushing out.  They're even going back and altering artwork that was sub-par.  They're a well funded machine now, and they're always updating and cleaning up.

And Warcraft-wannabe?  I played a lot-- I mean, A LOT-- of Warcraft 3.  The gameplay and artistic differences are like night and day.  There are no similarities except for the fact you right click to move, and there's an overhead view.  As for graphics, people often mistake "cartoony" stylization as bad graphical design.  It's actually very intelligent design, as it allows more players to enjoy the game that ordinarily would not.  Heroes of Newerth looks like they couldn't commit to either "cartoon" or "realism" and is stuck somewhere in between.  While their textures are indeed pretty, the animation is just grotesque, and that's an important graphical aspect to me.  Despite this fault in design, HoN would require a stronger video card and processor in order to run it.  LoL's favorable minimum requirements allow my friend from the stone age (and the best player on our pre-made) to enjoy some quality time with his friends, pwning n00bs.

Valve wouldn't be able to commit to it as solidly.  Their games rarely have updates or balance changes.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE their games!  But for something like LoL, HoN, or DotA, they need to do constant babysitting of the monster they've created unless they want to do it with a selection of 4 characters.  Valve doesn't have a good track record for updating more than every two months.  Just a something to consider. 

Also something to consider, Blizzard has said they're going to make their own similar custom game for the Starcraft II engine.  Blizzard's track record is a bit more healthy too, if you're looking for alternatives to LoL or DotA.

[john greymore]

I played the game when it first came out. Was freaking wonderful! Had a lot of fun with the new Ryze after they totally remade him. Who says Ryze only comes out early!?!?

But then they decided to split us asians from the american servers I think earlier this year (in march?). So Bah to them. I moved on.

Technically, some of the Singapore IPs can still access it, but since it works such that each time you log on the internet  you're given a random IP address, it's too random to count on.

[Angie]

Blasphemy. Everyone says that heroes of newerth's graphics are better, but they are in fact wholly worse,and just the camera is zoomed out so it looks slightly more detailed. And League of Legends has had a great graphics team since the game was released to the public.

First off, I would like to note that I am not discussing the objective quality of the graphics or their cartoony-ness or whatever because I don't frankly give a damn whether a game I don't play due to a general dislike of the format is pretty or not. I was commenting on the character design choices made by the League of Legends team and how they are incredibly uninspired (kind of like their world fluff, though not quite so bad), and how until extremely recently their promotional artists have been lousy and their concept artists either the victim of project leads with extremely poor judgment or of poor taste themselves.

Off the top of my head, Ezreal looks like the most generic of JRPG protagonists, Mordekaiser is the Overlord, Garren is a fucking warcraft paladin it's not even remotely disguised, I hate every single one of those little munchkin guys they look like something somebody's wife came up with and then bitched until they were included, and every single female design other than Kayle (who is catering in a different way entirely) is tasteless and crass. There are several designs that are passable, yes, but nearly the entire character base is forgettable in the end.

[Kitharsis]

To each his /her own.  I rather like the artistic style of LoL.  There's enough variation that champions don't really look alike.  Sure they might look like characters from other games, but that is unavoidable.

The little Yordles (the munchkins) are kind of annoying, I'll agree.  Nothing worse than Boy Scout teemo tearing your ass to shreds with his little blow gun.  But thats part of the charm.


Nidalee can get riduculous if the other team doesn't pay attention.  Her damn spear can hit like a truck if you're not looking.  I've found that I can tear through squishies pretty quickly, but tanks I usually ignore if I don't have help.

Garen is just fun, getting a bunch of tanky items and spinning in the middle of the whole other team while they focus you.  I was regaining like 200 health per second plus a boat load of armor and hp and laughing as the other team couldn't hurt me.

I might be leaning more towards Garen than Nidalee, as she can be pretty worthless depending on the enemy team composition.

PS:  Bummer they seperated the servers, John.  It would have been fun to have an Administorum LoL game going.

[Angie]

Sure they might look like characters from other games, but that is unavoidable.

Well, alright then.

[Soul Reaver]

I don't play either game (or even DotA), but I do want to point out that LoL is by far the better acronym.  It's like the acronym alone already implies fun!

[Cameron]

I don't play either game (or even DotA), but I do want to point out that LoL is by far the better acronym.  It's like the acronym alone already implies fun!

"LoL" pretty much represents my opinion on this game in general.

[Archdemon Stu]

Blasphemy. Everyone says that heroes of newerth's graphics are better, but they are in fact wholly worse,and just the camera is zoomed out so it looks slightly more detailed. And League of Legends has had a great graphics team since the game was released to the public.

First off, I would like to note that I am not discussing the objective quality of the graphics or their cartoony-ness or whatever because I don't frankly give a damn whether a game I don't play due to a general dislike of the format is pretty or not. I was commenting on the character design choices made by the League of Legends team and how they are incredibly uninspired (kind of like their world fluff, though not quite so bad), and how until extremely recently their promotional artists have been lousy and their concept artists either the victim of project leads with extremely poor judgment or of poor taste themselves.

Off the top of my head, Ezreal looks like the most generic of JRPG protagonists, Mordekaiser is the Overlord, Garren is a fucking warcraft paladin it's not even remotely disguised, I hate every single one of those little munchkin guys they look like something somebody's wife came up with and then bitched until they were included, and every single female design other than Kayle (who is catering in a different way entirely) is tasteless and crass. There are several designs that are passable, yes, but nearly the entire character base is forgettable in the end.

In all fairness, there's very few characters that could be mentioned in any movie, video game, or otherwise that I can't say is "similar" to another somewhere.  Absolute uniqueness in anything is very difficult to find these days.

Though, I will say this: I am SO mad at their art director.  They recently came out with Irelia, the Will of the Blades.  This is the artist's original rendition: http://www.nerf.hu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Irelia-263x300.jpg
Smooth composition, amazing line work, colorful but no overbearing, and well, she looks like she's going to kill somebody.  Her hands look somewhat strange, but it's a concept sketch.

Here's the finished product after the art director forced his hand: http://www.splotty.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/League-of-Legends-Irelia-Concept-Art-s.jpg
Not a bad character design overall, but I feel it pales in comparison to the artist's original.  Such a waste of talent.

"LoL" pretty much represents my opinion on this game in general.

It brings you joy and helps relieve stress?

[Kitharsis]

I don't even notice Irelia in games.

The original art was badass.  She looked as deadly as she is supposed to be.  But the design she ended up as is just too vanilla. 

I lost almost every game this weekend.  Between the feeder sion who blamed everyone else because he over extended and died every 30 seconds, or the non-english speakers who rage quit during a very close game it was just horrible.

If anyone ever has an open spot on their team for a Garen, Nidalee or to a lesser extent Pantheon, for the love of god let me know!  Summoner name: Kelvack.

[john greymore]

Hah, the new Irelia looks waaaaaaay too dynasty-warrior like and too 'happy' looking.

I met someone from Sweden who plays a badass Alistar. I'm not sure how much the gameplay's changed though, so it might not matter much.

[Archdemon Stu]

I'll add you Kith.  My summoner name is Essential Oils.   I'd love to have a Garen (with all his imbal) or Nidalee (with all her rockin' heals and harassment) on my team.

Good for Swedish guy.  Alistar is definitely my favorite tank.  His heals make your lane almost unable to be harassed early game, and his ultimate makes him extremely flexible on gear since he won't be needing much tanking gear unless the opposing team is stupid and targets him first every battle-- in which case, you should already be winning.  Honestly, with my team, I rarely use my stun and knockback abilities aggressively.  80% of the time I use them to protect my teammates from incoming attacks, since they tend to get ballsy and tower dive people.

[Kitharsis]

I tower dive with Garen so much its silly.  Run in, ult then ignite, pop Q W E and run out.  Good times.

Either I'm getting worse with Nidalee, or as I get up in levels my opponents are getting smarter -.-  Either way Garen is taking the lead in fun and wins and overall usefulness.  I think I prefer tanks to ganks.

I keep seeing you online but we're always in games at different times.  I've been getting luck in solo queue lately but knowing I'm playing with competent players would be a plus.  But then, you all might yell at me for noobishness

[Archdemon Stu]

Diving is 4tw.  If a character can't dive by lvl6, I probably won't play them.  If they lane good enough, they won't die, but if you add an element of unavoidable doom like diving... mmmm...

Yeah, I like having a group mostly for the sake of just knowing they aren't going to "GG AFK" if the enemy gets first blood is pretty awesome.  Oh man, just last night my 5's team pulled out a victory after we went 0-11 for the first bit of the fight.  We were being our "practice" characters (one of us was even Heimer, haha), and it turns out their Pantheon had about 500 ranked games under his belt with a 70% win ratio.  If I was with a solo queue team, they would have given up and gone AFK.

But yeah, I have like 4 friends in that game I haven't gotten to play with since we're all "in game" at the time.  I'll send you a tell when you're in game sometime, and I'll go make a sandwich or something while I wait.