History

League of Legends is a free to play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) created by Marc Merill and Brandon Beck, the founders of Riot Games. League of Legends was inspired by Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) which was a custom map for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Merill and Beck used the game engine from Warcraft III to build League of Legends in only 4 months to exhibit it at the Game Developers Conference in 2007. In 2008, Riot Games reached an agreement with Tencent, a company based in China, to test launch the game in China. It was released on October 27, 2009 with the full name of the game being League of Legends: Clash of Fates with 40 characters to play, but later simplified the name to League of Legends.

Riot Games Logo Alistar Master yi

Gameplay

The gameplay is a straightforward, two teams of five begin on either side of "Summoners Rift," the map, with one team on blue side and the other on red side. Whoever destroys the nexus, the big crystal in the base, first wins the game. While in Summoners Rift players have three different dedicated lanes on the map where "towers," defensive checkpoints, are located. First there is "Top Lane" which is on the left most lane, then "Mid Lane" which is the middle lane, and then "Bot Lane" which is the lane on the far-right side of the map. Additionally there is a finally area called "Jungle" where a team member is tasked with killing monsters to gain levels, experience, and Gold instead of killing minions like the other lanes. The game is presented in an isometric view, also called 3/4 view, where the player sees the characters and map from an overhead and slightly angled view.

Game movement is mouse based only and each character has spells/actions they can use during the game. The game uses a currency called Gold which players can use to buy items in their base's item shop. These items can be used to help gain more stats for characters to make them stronger in combat and fight against the opposing team. To gain gold you must either destroy towers, kill minions which spawn in the game in each lane starting at the game, kill the opposing team members, and achieve objectives. The player can also gain experience through the same methods to level up their character and gain even more strength to level up their spells/actions.

Minion caster Blue Nexus Blackfire Torch item