Media Diary

Anna O’Brien 12MON.

League of Legends.

League of Legends (LoL) is an online multiplayer battle arena video game that was produced by Riot Games on October 27^th 2009. The basis of this game is to defend your team turrets and to destroy the opposing team's "nexus", a structure that lies at the base protected by defensive structures. As well as this you are required to kill opponents and mobs in order to gain XP and level up to unlock new champions. In the game there are over 100 champions to choose from, ranging from tanks to mages. I came to find this game through social media (e.g. advertisements) and through the hearty encouragement of friends. The sole purpose of this game is to entertain users and to act as a distraction from the humdrum of boring everyday life, allowing excitement through exhilarating and in depth character lore or thrilling battles against friends through online multiplayer.

I believe that the target audience for this game in particular is aimed at young teenage boys or even young adult males, who are typically traditionalists, which means they’re people who wish for everything to remain the same. I think that they’d fit well into the traditionalist category because the end goal of the game whatever mode you play it on, will always be the same, “Destroy the enemies’ nexus”. However in my personal opinion, I myself would fit into the category of a ‘Trendie’ or a ‘Groupie’ because one of my reasons for playing the game is to solely involve myself in conversation between my peers. Although the game is stereotypically aimed at boys, there are a lot of female characters in the game (e.g. Jinx or Miss Fortune) and there was a group of female players a few years back who went by the name of ‘Sirens’.

My reaction to "League" (Many people shorten it down to just League as it is a lot quicker to use) was genuine excitement, I couldn’t wait to get upon "The Rift" (League of legends has 4 maps which include : Summoner's Rift, The Twisted Treeline, The Howling Abyss and The Crystal Scar.) I, myself started playing "League" in late 2013 when the game was on "Season 4" (Every year the Season inclines by one after every Worlds tournament, as seen as there has only been 6 tournaments so far the game is on season 6.) Since then the game has improved and developed so much, the developers at Riot games have done a brilliant job with evolving their multi-million pound franchise; they develop the game through "patches”. Within these "patches" they will change a few champion's stats, change some item's stats, add new "skins" into the game or add a new event. (Skins are products that you can buy from the League of Legends' client's shop, these skins will change how a champion looks, how they use certain abilities or in some cases completely change how the champion is perceived.) At the end of every season they introduce a huge patch which change a lot of things at once, they have to do this at the end otherwise the pro players within the world's tournament wouldn't be able to play properly as they haven't played that patch, there are also patches called "reworks" in which they will pick an older champion and give them a fresh new "kit" which means they may completely change a champion's abilities.

Each team has 5 roles :

Top laner – The top laner goes to the top of the map where they kill "minions" to gain gold and experience, they tend to be very tank based up there.

Jungler – The jungler's job is to kill monsters within the jungle to gain gold and experience, they tend to be very high damaging champions. Their aim as a jungler is to help the "lanes" in fights or objectives.

Mid laner – The mid laner is a lot like the top laner except they tend to be mage or assassin characters, The assassins are played mid as it is literally the middle of the map like the name suggests so they game go to the other "lanes" and "help out" (Steal kills.)

ADC – Attack damage carrier is what ADC stands for, they go to the bottom lane of the map and are always accompanied by a support, they kill "minions" just like the other lanes but they need to build up their damage so they can kill the enemy team.  ADC's are always marksmans meaning that they are ranged.

Support – Support's main role in the early game is to keep the ADC alive and help them on their quest to gain damage, when the late game comes in the supports are mainly there to help the team/ keep them alive, if the ADC and support combination is good enough there won't be a late game.

People genuinely play League of Legends because it's a fun challenging game, plus no two games on league will be the exact same, as seen as there is 130 + champions in the game and it's a 5v5 game which means there's 10 slots in a game it means there is a total of 65.456 billion different games possible which shows that League of Legends will never actually be "completed" In the sense of playing every champion in every role which will challenge people to try to. League also has a ranking system built into it, this ranking system is a huge part of why people play as the rank you get is what you can boast about (unless you're in bronze which is lowest). The ranking system is why a lot of pro players want to play as once they get into the highest rank (Challenger) they are known as the greatest players in the world.

League of Legends has a huge tournament following as well, they host multiple team tournaments throughout the year, which are called The League Championship Series or LCS for short (That is just the American and European ones.) These tournaments have teams verse each other in a bid to see who is the strongest. Multiple teams enter and only 2 "win", they get prize money for winning which is around a quarter of a million pounds but the main prize is they move to the next tournament... WORLDS. Worlds features the 2 best teams from every other tournament, only 16 teams are entered into worlds, they all duel to obtain the grand prize of World Champions, This includes The summoner's cup (The main trophy of the game, which in the lore says you control the entire of Valoran.) £1 million+ , Skins dedicated to their team, the rank of world champion and many other things. The teams that have won are:

Season one – Fnatic

Season two – Taipei Assassins

Season three – SKT T1

Season four – Samsung White

Season five – SKT T1

Season six – TBC

As this essay is being written the Worlds tournament is underway and hopefully SKT T1 will win again this year (They are my favorite team.) The tournament lasts all October until Halloween which is when the finals are.

Some people will find League of Legends relaxing or fun where as others will find this game strenuous or horrible, I personally find the game so enjoyable as I main support champions such as Bard, Braum and Thresh. Whereas other people such as junglers will find it stressing when they are being called bad for not helping or a "Noob" for "feeding". The act of feeding is giving the enemy team free kills which in term also makes the enemy team win the game a lot faster making the game less enjoyable for your team.