DOTA fans here is a game that you should be watching out for. International game publishing company, Garena Online, is currently gearing to launch its flagship game title in the Philippines called League of Legends.
League of Legends or LOL, is a free-to-play DOTA style of gaming that combines elements of role-playing and strategy genres with addictive battle action. It boasts of industry powerhouse veterans behind its team such as Blizzard Entertainments, Tom Cadwell and Shawn Carnes as well as Steve “œGuinsoo” Feak, the original creator of DotA Allstars, and Steve “œPendragon” Mescon who started DotA-Allstars.com.
Game play is very similar to DOTA with teams of five trying to overrun an opponents base with heroes and creeps but LOL has a more aggressive game play and is less random. In DotA, many abilities, runes, physical attacks, and terrain mechanics have a random component to them. LOL removed many of the random elements of DotA’s gameplay to make the players rely on skill instead of luck.
Aside from the basic game features, LOL introduces new and advance gameplay systems such as:
Mastery Trees
Mastery Trees allow you to customize your summoner to whichever way you want it to be, giving your champion more depth. There are 3 types of trees; offensive, defensive and utility.
Runes
Runes provide passive bonuses to your Champion and must be earned by playing the game. As you level your summoner up, you will be able to add more runes into your rune book, making your champion more powerful.
There are 4 Rune Types:
- Marks (offensive)
- Seals (defensive)
- Glyphs (magic)
- Quintessence (all-purpose)
Player Profile / Summoner
Players in League of Legends take on the role of a Summoner – a gifted Magi who has the power to bring forth a champion to fight as their avatar in the Fields of Justice.
The summoner feature brings a never before seen game persistence in the MOBA (Massively Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre with players leveling their summoner to unlock more mastery points and rune slots.
Summoner Spells
Summoner spells allow you to assist your champion and teammates in various ways. On top of the default 4 abilities of each champion. A Summoner can choose 2 more additional spells to bring into battle.
Though the game play is similar to DOTA, League of Legends offers a lot more features that makes it truly the next generation MOBA (Massively Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) type game.
Some of the basic game features of LOL include:
- Anti-leaver protection
- Game reconnects
- Advanced match making system
- Video scaling
- Match history
- Game statistics
- Buddy lists
As part of its launch, Garena is planning an abundance of events including tournaments, leagues and raffles. Just recently World Cyber Games Inc. (WCG), organizer of the premier international video game competition, announced that League of Legends will be one of the featured Promotional Game Titles at the WCG 2010 Grand Final. These are the type of things we can hope to expect from Garena LOL.
League of Legends Minimum System Requirements:
- 2 GHz processor
- 1 GB RAM
- 750 MB available hard disk space
- Shader version 2.0 capable video card
- DirectX 9.0 capable video card
- Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7
Visit LOL.ph for more info about the game.
