About League Of Legends 1 Development 2 Release 3 Reception 5

Table of Contents:

• 
  About League Of Legends 1
  
• 
  Development 2
  
• 
  Release 3
  
• 
  Reception 5
  

ABOUT LEAGUE OF LEGENDS…

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  League of Legends (LoL) is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games for Microsoft Windows¹ and Mac OS X, inspired by the mod Defense of the Ancients² for the video game Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.
  

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  League of Legends (LoL) is a free-to-play game, supported by micro-transactions.
  

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  It was first announced on October 7, 2008, and released on October 27, 2009.³
  

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  League of Legends was generally well received at release, and has grown in popularity in the years since. According to a 2012 Forbes article, League of Legends is the most played PC game in the world in terms of the number of hours played.⁴
  

DEVELOPMENT…

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  Riot Games was co-founded by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill. They partnered with Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, the previous designer of the popular Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne custom map Defense of the Ancients, and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon, the administrator of the former official support base for the map (www.dota-allstars.com) to develop League Of Legends.⁵
  

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  Using the original DotA created by Eul (the original Defence of The Ancients map for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos) as a base, Guinsoo made DotA Allstars by inserting his own mix of content, greatly expanding the number of the heroes, and adding recipes, numerous items and various gameplay changes. Guinsoo then passed version 6 of the map on to a new developer, IceFrog.
  

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  Riot Games officially opened its office in September 2006, and currently has over 1000 people working on League of Legends, "including their robust technology platform to service and operate the game as well as a team dedicated to community relations."
  

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  According to Marc Merrill, when creating the various champions in the game, instead of leaving the champion creation to just a few people, they decided to open up the champion creation process to everyone in the company based upon a template where they could vote on which champions made it into the game.
  

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  The game was in a closed beta from April 10, 2009, to October 22, 2009. It then transitioned to open beta until release.⁶
  

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  In March 2013, Riot Games released a beta version of an OS X client in addition to their Windows client.⁷
  

RELEASE…

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  Riot Games has signed deals regarding the distribution of League of Legends in Asia, Europe, and North America. The game is expected to be released in the rest of the world also. The game has already released and is distributed in Australia, the United States, Canada, Europe, Philippines and South Korea. No public announcements regarding other regions has yet been made.⁸
  

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  In Asia, Tencent Inc., China's largest Internet value-added services company, best known for its QQ Instant Messaging client will be in charge of the distribution to Tencent's growing 300 million Internet user base through its leading QQ Game portal. The deal is one of only a handful of partnerships to bring a U.S.-developed online game directly to China.
  

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  In Europe, Riot Games has signed an international licensing partnership with GOA, the videogames department of Orange's Content Division and Europe's largest gaming portal. On October 13, 2009, GOA and Riot announced that they would start channeling server access for players located in Europe, to GOA's dedicated servers.⁹ This restriction meant that players located in Europe would not be able to play on Riot's servers in the United States. Due to negative community feedback, the channeling decision was rescinded October 16, 2009.¹⁰ In North America, Riot Games will self-publish and operate the game and all of its customer service aspects.
  

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  On May 10, 2010, Riot Games announced that they would take over distribution and operation of the game in Europe. To do so, Riot Games established a European HQ in Dublin.¹¹
  

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  On July 14, 2009, Riot Games announced that League of Legends will be free with "no catch". There will be a digital copy for download, but there is also a Digital Collector's Copy that will be available to purchase that contains exclusive skins, $10 credit for Riot Points, and 20 champions to access without unlocking them normally via gameplay as well as 4 "special" runes; the Collector's Pack is currently available for $29.99. Even though the game is free, Riot Games "plan[s] to continue to add content (characters etc...) with a full production team at very frequent intervals." Using both free-to-play and freemium models, the game is supported by microtransactions (see store) rather than ads or boxed copy sales.¹²
  

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  On February 25, 2010, Riot Games announced that League of Legends would be distributed in Southeast Asian countries by an unspecified publisher and blocked SEA IP addresses pursuant to its distribution agreement. The community has raised a number of concerns about the deal and the immediate IP block. On July 16, 2010, Riot Games announced that Garena would publish the game in Southeast Asia. Additionally, Southeast Asian players had the ability "transfer accounts" to import their progress stored in North American or European servers, into the Southeast Asian server.¹³
  

RECEPTION…

POPULAR RECEPTION:

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  In a release published in November 2012, Riot Games claimed that League of Legends had accumulated 32.5 million players, 11.5 million of whom play monthly, of which 4.2 million play daily, making it the most played online game in the world.¹⁴
  

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  In March 2012, League of Legends became the #1 title in Korean PC Cafes. In Taiwan, it is estimated that almost 5 percent of their entire population played the game, with almost 1 million players subscribed on the server. League of Legends is also very popular in the Philippines, and it is the second most played game in internet cafés in the country (just behind Defense of the Ancients).¹⁵
  

CRITICAL RECEPTION:

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  League of Legends has received generally favorable reviews, and currently holds a Metacritic score of 78 out of 100¹⁶
  

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  IGN awarded League of Legends 8.0 out of 10, highlighting an enjoyable game design, inventive champion design with good customization options and lively visuals. However, the game's confusing launch was criticized: it was felt that the title was released too early, with some features missing and others to be removed. Finally, the reviewer noted that high level players in the game have "little patience for newcomers," though the reviewer believed that matchmaking (not implemented at the time of review), would solve the problem by matching players of similar level together.¹⁷
  

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  The game has been criticized for server unreliability and unmoderated gameplay (such as player grief and harassment). A system to report players who misbehave in-game has been implemented, allowing a player to report others for undesired activities such as verbal harassment, intentional disruption of the game (e.g., 'feeding' the enemy team, making them gain kills and thus gold, by dying on purpose), staying away from the game for extended periods of time, and leaving the game. Riot released a peer review system called the "Tribunal" in May 2011.¹⁸
  

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  As of October 2012, Riot Games claims League of Legends has over 32 million registrations and averages 12 million players worldwide per day. Global concurrent users online peaked at over 5 million players as of March 2013. In July 2012 Xfire released a report stating that League of Legends was the most played PC game in North America and Europe, with 1.3 billion hours logged by players in those regions between July 2011 and June 2012¹⁹
  

1^ "League of Legends Home"

2^ Nguyen, Thierry (September 1, 2009). "Clash of The DOTAs". 1UP.com.

3^ "League of Legends - GameSpot.com". GameSpot.

4^ Gaudiosi, John (July 11, 2012). "Riot Games' League Of Legends Officially Becomes Most Played PC Game In The World". Forbes.com.

5^ "Riot Games Insider Team". Riot Games.

6^ "League of Legends pre-season to begin October 27th 2009!". Riot Games. September 29, 2009

7^ “Review: League of Legends makes its way to the Mac". MacWorld.

8^ Maierbrugger, Arno (25 July 2013). "Top PC games in Filipino computer cafés". Inside Investor

9^ "IP Restrictions in Europe". GOA (a subsidiary of Wanadoo, specialising in online gaming).

10^ "GOA and Riot Rescind IP Restriction Decision". GOA (a subsidiary of Wanadoo), specialising in online gaming. October 16, 2009

11^ "Riot Games to Publish League of Legends in Europe". Riot Games. May 10, 2010

12^ "League of Legends is Free Forum ". Riot Games. July 15, 2009.

13^ "Riot Games Partners with Garena to bring League of Legends to Southeast Asia". Riot Games

14^ Riot Games infographic

15^ Maierbrugger, Arno (July, 2013). "Top PC games in Filipino computer cafés". Investvine

16^ "League of Legends for PC". Metacritic

17^ "League of Legends REview – PC Review at IGN"

18^ Totilo, Stephen (January 13, 2011). "A New and Maybe Better Way to Stop People from being Jerks Online"

19^ Gaudiosi, John (July 11, 2012). "Riot Games' League Of Legends Officially Becomes Most Played PC Game In The World". Forbes.com.