League of Legends


 * ''This article refers to to the actual game, to see the in game entity visit The League of Legends

League of Legends (or as it was previously known, League of Legends: Clash of Fates) is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) video game developed by Riot Games, to operate on the Microsoft Windows operating system. It was first announced on October 7, 2008 and released a year later on October 27, 2009. The game was in beta from April 10, 2009 to October 26, 2009.

Two main protagonists for the popular Warcraft III mod, Defense of the Ancients: Allstars (commonly abbreviated as DotA), Steve "Guinsoo" Feak and Steve “Pendragon” Mescon are involved with Riot Games in the process of making of League of Legends. Guinsoo created DotA: Allstars from the original DotA, created by Eul, by adding his own mix of content, including over 40 heroes, numerous items, and various gameplay changes. Guinsoo then passed DotA: Allstars on to its current developer, Icefrog. Pendragon, who is the Director of Community Relations for Riot Games, helped create the DotA: Allstars website along with its forums, and is still currently working on DotA: Allstars alongside of League of Legends.

Development
The idea of a spiritual successor to Defense of the Ancients that would be its own stand-alone game with its own engine, rather than another Mod of Warcraft III began to materialize at the end of 2005. League of Legends was born "when a couple of very active DotA community members believed that the gameplay was so much fun and so innovative that it represented the spawning of a new genre and deserved to be its own professional game with significantly enhanced features and around-game services."

Riot Games was co-founded by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill. They partnered with some of the key creative minds behind the creation of DotA-Allstars, Steve "Guinsoo" Feak and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon. Riot Games officially opened its office in September 2006, and currently has about 100 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."

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.

General
Players are formed into 2 even teams anywhere from 1-5 players on each team. Each team starts at opposing sides of a map, near what is called a "Nexus". To win a match, a team must destroy the opposing team's Nexus. To do so, each team must work through a series of towers called "Turrets". Turrets are often placed along a path to each base often referred to as a "Lane". Along the way, each player must gain levels from killing the opposing team's "Minions" (Small NPCs that constantly spawn and attack the other team), and buy "Items" to advance their character. In League of Legends specifically, each player starts at level 1 at the beginning of the match and can obtain the maximum of level 18 with their champion, leveling 4 different abilities on the way.

Matchmaking
League of Legends is a session-based game. Matchmaking occurs based on the average Elo ratings of each individual player.

The game can be currently played in three different modes: normal, practice, and ranked.
 * In a normal game, the server tries to match up players of equal skill level. It is possible to enter an arranged team of players, in which case the arranged team is considered to be more powerful than the individual players.
 * Practice mode allows players to create their session and set its properties, or find an existing session to join. Bots can also be added to fill in player slots.
 * Ranked games are competitive matches open only to players who have reached the highest level, level 30.

Fields of Justice
Maps in League of Legends are called Fields of Justice. There are currently two Fields of Justice that the players can choose from:
 * Summoner's Rift resembles the DotA map. It has 3 lanes and supports 5 players per side.
 * Twisted Treeline is a smaller map with only 2 lanes. It supports 3 players per side. Now available in Normal Game mode.

A match puts two teams with a fixed number of players against each other. Each team has its base, which contains the re-spawn point, item shop and nexus. The two bases are connected by lanes. Periodically, waves of minions spawn from the nexus. Minions are AI-controlled troops that walk down the lanes, engaging any enemies they encounter. The lanes are lined with turrets that engage enemies within range. Once a turret is destroyed, it cannot be rebuilt. A new element in League of Legends is the inhibitors. Each lane has an inhibitor on both ends. If a team destroys the enemy inhibitor, more powerful "super minions" will spawn for that side. Unlike turrets, inhibitors respawn after a fixed amount of time.

Besides the lanes, the maps also contain "jungle" areas. Neutral monsters inhabit the jungle. These monsters can be killed by a champion for bonus gold and experience. Some powerful neutral monsters grant the killer a buff such as the on Summoners Rift giving the champion that killed it the  that will help them in battle. Another special terrain feature is the brush. A brush blocks the line of sight of units, allowing champions to hide and set up a gank. The goal of each team is to destroy the enemy Nexus. The first team to achieve this is the victor. It is also possible to surrender using a voting system.

Champions
Each player controls a single Champion. There are 82 different champions in the game, each with unique characteristics. Certain champions are tagged with properties such as 'tank', 'fighter', 'mage' or 'support' to describe their play style.

At the start of each battle, every player has the ability to choose a champion to fight for him in battle. The choice of champions is limited by what the player has unlocked. Each week, certain champions are made temporarily free so that players can try them out without unlocking them.

Champions gain experience by killing enemy minions, champions or buildings. After reaching a certain amount of experience, the champion levels up. Each level increases the champion's stats and adds an ability point that can be spent to improve one of the Champion's unique abilities. The maximum level for a champion is 18.

Players can gain gold by landing the killing blow on an enemy minion or by killing a champion. Some abilities and items also generate extra gold. The acquired gold can be spent at the item shop for various items. These items boost stats of the champion. Some items can be combined into more powerful items by following predefined recipes.

Summoner
The Summoner acts as the persistent element in the game,the summoner has the ability to summon heroes into the battle arena,summoners also have a mental link with their summoned champion. Summoner accounts are used to track statistics and scores for each player.

Summoners gain experience points and Influence Points for each battle they participate in. They level up by getting enough experience, unlocking new ways to influence battles.

Summoner spells
The Summoner can choose 2 summoner spells to bring with it into an in-game session on the Fields of Justice. These spells significantly impact gameplay, and have a high cooldown while costing no mana. All spells can be improved by masteries.

Distribution
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, including Australia. No public announcements regarding other countries has yet been made.

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.

For distribution in Europe, Riot Games signed an international licensing partnership with GOA, the videogames department of Orange’s Content Division and Europe’s largest gaming portal. After some issues with the European version of the game, Riot later decided to break the contract with GOA and self-publish the game instead.

In North America, Riot Games will self-publish and operate the game and all of its customer service aspects.