Season One

Season One is a competitive time frame that League of Legends began hosting on July 13th, 2010 in patch V1.0.0.96. It marked the official kickoff of competitive League of Legends and there are some events and partnerships planned for it.

Pendragon announced that the start of Season 1 was on July 13th. Season 1 is scheduled to end on June 21st, after the Season 1 Grand Finals.

During Season One, new champions were released.

Champions available
Champions are being rotated during seasons, including "in-season" champions, this means while you can play all the champs in Normal Games, there will be some Champions that won't be allowed in the Ranked Games:
 * That's a very insightful question. We thought a lot about that, and in the short term, we're going to keep releasing champions. In the longer term, as we roll out competitive seasons, our first season will include all champions, but our additional seasons will feature a reduced set of "in-season" champions. This means that -- while you can always play all champions in [casual play] -- the featured competitive mode will have a reduced set of champions that rotates periodically as we cycle through seasons. This allows us to revitalize the metagame; if a particular strategy is getting really strong, one way to make things interesting is to just change the champion rotation. And it also reduces the learning burden for someone coming in, so they don't have to learn 60 champions -- they only have to learn 35 or 40, or whatever number we determine.

Features
The following features were confirmed on the June 15 preview of the Season 1 and have been implemented since the beginning :
 * Ranked Games - Once Season One begins, summoners of Level 30 will be able to indulge in our ranked game system. At launch, ranked players will be able to join one of three queues: 3v3 Premade, 5v5 Premade, or 5v5 Solo. Players will receive an individual rating for each of these queues.
 * Ladders - Once Ranked Play begins, players who choose to participate will have their Elo ratings displayed publicly on the League of Legends Ladder. On the ladder, players will be able to see just how they stack up against the rest of their fellow summoners. The ladder will be available on the League of Legends Community Site.
 * Draft Mode - Champion selection during ranked play will take on the form of a live draft. In 5v5 premade and 3v3 premade, the first phase of this draft process will provide the inviter of each team with the opportunity to ban the use of two champions. Banned champions cannot be selected for use on either team, so choose wisely!
 * After bans have been dispensed by both sides, the teams will begin the draft process. During ranked play, draft picks will be exclusive, meaning that a drafted champion will not be available for play by the opposing team. The team who received the second ban will begin the drafting process by drafting a single champion. Following that, the game will follow a 1:2:2:2:2:1 draft format for the 5v5 brackets and a 1:2:2:1 format for the 3v3 bracket.
 * Through this system, we hope to encourage players to embrace a wider range of champions, allow for teams to effectively counter popular strategies, and develop a familiarity with their opponents and counter accordingly. Initially Draft Mode will be available both in Ranked Play and in practice games. Casual games still utilize blind pick during champion selection.
 * Improved Visual Styles - Since our launch back in October of 2009, our UI Team has been hard at work improving the visual components of the PvP.net interface. With the substantial renovations required to support Ranked Games, now seemed like the opportune time to give the game a facelift. We wanted the new look for League of Legends to be brighter, more visually appealing, and easier to use. I could elaborate further, but I think that once you get a look at the accompanying screenshots their work will stand on its own.

Grand Finals
Season 1 will conclude with a $100,000 Grand Finals featuring the best teams from all over the world. Teams will qualify for the grand finals by competing in a circuit of local, online, and global events. At the end of each event, top placing teams will not only be rewarded with cash and prizes, but will also earn ranking points that establish them as the best in their region. Many summoners will thrive, but only one team will earn the title of Season 1 Champion. The Grand Finals are scheduled from June 18th to June 21st, 2011 at in, Sweden.

The season one regional qualifiers for Dreamhack took place on the weekend of May 27-28, 2011. The 8 top placed teams in each of the north America and Europe divisions competed for a total of 3 seats in each division at the tournament. Combined with 2 seats from Asia this deiced the 8 teams to compete at dream hack. Details of the Regional Qualifiers tournament can be found here. The Friday after, On July 3rd the season 1 finalists where announced. The Qualifier stream had a total of 300,000 unique viewers with a peak of 69,000 people watching at one time.

Dreamhack 2011 - Season One Championship
'''Live! Streaming and up-to-date information at the Official Season One Championship website'''

Competition started on the 18 of June, 10:30 CEST.

Marketing
G4 TV asked Riot Games to share a bit of Season One to X-Play. League of Legends was on G4 TV's X-Play on Monday, July 12 2010 at 6:30 PM Eastern and Pacific.

Cinematic trailer
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