Article by James Chen

Another year, another preseason, and another storm of utter chaos as player-poaching, rules changes and hostile takeovers sweep the international scene. A couple years ago, just three teams doing player swaps would've caused consternation, but nowadays the frequency of trade almost makes one wish for a formal draft system so at least everything happens all at once instead of via piecemeal and rumor mills.

Well, that's not happening anytime soon. So here's what to expect in the coming year, where-ever you might want to expect it.

North America (NA LoL Championship Series)

Oh, MakNooN. There was so much hype for Team Fusion, and they're still one of my favorites of the NA Challenger circuit, but they just couldn't hold it together under pressure. Sure, their players are individually great—you have no idea how happy I am that "Nientakill" Nientonsoh's back as AD Carry, where he should've stayed, or that we get to see "Do Dive" Maknoob chase nerds down with Poppy. That in North America? Yes please. I'll not just watch but actually cheer during the games.

If only they made it in.

Sadly, we live in a world where sheer charisma and top-lane style points don't win you nothin . You gotta actually beat teams to get in, and Fusion's got a choking problem when things get serious. Instead... well, CLG might have clinched 2nd at the last IEM, but it was a hollow achievement in light of both western circuits' massive roster disruptions, Dignitas is a full-blown mess, Coast can't stop embarrassing themselves with petty dramas, and nobody has the slightest faith in Team 8.

Are we stuck with another year of C9 vs TSM for top honors? Curse and Curse Academy (pending a name change and new sponsor) are potential spoilers, which any long-term North American fan knows is code for "will take 4th place again," though at least Quas, Piglet and Xpecial on Curse represents a core of talent strong enough to take seriously. And absolutely nobody has any idea what's going on with Team Impulse, other than that they were formerly LMQ. Though I did promise AD Carry Apollo not to make fun of TiP for until the end of the first week of the NA LCS now that he's sporting his awesome actual name instead of the nigh-unpronounceable WizFujiiN.

Maybe it's time to give the Challenger Series our fullest attention. Not only does the new circuit look like a promising way to foster talent, but Team Roar also recently returned from bootcamping in China, with the express intent of not pulling a CLG after all their efforts in learning the gung-ho ways of Chinese League of Legends. Roar vs Fusion? Hell yeah, that's watchable. Pass the popcorn.

Europe (EU LoL Championship Series)

Ryu in Millenium? Seriously? The guy that fought Faker to the most exciting best-of-five ever played on Summoner's Rift (OGN Champions Summer 2013, Grand Finals), and nobody in the usual top tier teams wanted him? In fact, the most remarkable thing about the EU LCS spring split is how hard it is to care about it. Rekkles on Alliance is a nominal upgrade sure (though I think Tabzz is unjustifiably mistreated by the public at-large in the exchange), but Alliance's gain triggered a cascading loss for Fnatic as their roster was outright gutted. Gone, too, is Gambit Gaming, with their recent IEM Cologne win less a demonstration of strength than it is a spotlight on just how badly shaken the western scene is after all these changes.

The European scene is now one where xPeke and Amazing are Challenger circuit players, and Darien doesn't get to make ridiculous hype videos anymore. How the hell is that fair?

But worry not. There is one reason to keep paying attention to the European circuit, and they are the Unicorns of Love! Are they the best team to ever grace the European circuit? Probably not (Moscow 5 might always hold those honors). Are they by far the most entertaining? Certainly for the spring split! Their unpredictable and dynamic gameplay, at sharp contrast to the low-risk approach of their regional peers, was rumored to have attracted even Team Liquid's attention, even despite the organization's apathetic history with League of Legends. Thankfully, to everyone s delight, they decided that the UoL moniker was too good not to go indie with.

Thank you, Unicorns. Fight on, Unicorns! Please keep Europe weird.

China (LoL Pro League)

2014 saw the single most ruthless act of international rivalry ever witnessed in e-sports history, and the impact of it will be felt this year. China's wholesale purchase of Korean talent was impossible to miss—the scions of CCP billionaires saw two years of Star Horn Royal Club taking second against the Koreans and decided enough was enough. If they couldn't outright beat South Korea at a DOTA-esque game, where China's traditionally been the powerhouse region, they'll just neuter the lot of them. So out went the eyewateringly high, six-figure USD contracts, and in came almost literally the entire South Korean scene! Kakao, Rookie, Flame, and even their coaches—a wholesale purchase of the people that defined a world-class esports infrastructure.

Of course, whether it was also the single most expensive act of a cargo cult's left to be seen, because few if any of these high-profile talents speak a word of Mandarin. Now would be an excellent and profitable time to be a Chinese-Korean interpreter, but such a position surely wouldn't actually be allowed to take up space in a gaming booth at any tournament. The Chinese teams were beaten for top honors twice in a row due to fundamental differences in team play and strategy, not because of individual talents—the mass exodus of Samsung coaches might help, but the spring split's going to be full of bloopers in the meantime.

There's also the specter of seediness that has an unfortunate habit of trailing money of such magnitude. Rumors persist of cheated players, bait-and-switch contracts, and conflicts of interests over ownership. I got into e-sports in the first place because it was a delightful engine of narrative drama, and the LPL's got all the hallmarks of a crazy political thriller.

It could be because I'm getting old, but academic institutions rewarding students for playing video games still feels like a concept torn straight from Back to the Future. But it's happening: the University of Pikeville in Kentucky will offer 20 scholarships for high level League of Legends players when the semester commences in Autumn. 

Pikeville isn't the first college to do so, with Chicago's Robert Morris University introducing a similar scholarship last year. While plenty of colleges and universities compete every year as part of the Collegiate StarLeague, few actually offer scholarships based on League of Legends performance.

"It will be a regime a lot like athletics," the college's New Media Director Bruce Parsons told WYMT TV. "They'll have to have a certain GPA (grade point average). We'll look at them like student athletes. There will be practice time and video time when they have to study other teams for upcoming competitions."

The move is part of the mainstream's ongoing embrace of eSports and, in particular, MOBAs. ESPN broadcasted last year's Dota 2 International tournament, which was popular enough for one source to claim that the network intends to "double down" on its eSports coverage. 

Making the internet a friendlier place for League of Legends may be Riot's most ambitious project for the week, but it's not the only thing the studio is getting up to. It's also announced that it will award a "classic Mystery Gift" to anyone who managed to get through 2014 without being a jerk.

Did you manage to get through all of last year without a chat restriction, ranked restriction, 14-day ban, or permanent ban? Then you, my friend, are eligible for the reward. "Don't be a dick" is a pretty low bar as these things go, but luckily it's not an indication that League of Legends is some festering hate-pit of inhumanity: In fact, as of November 2014, 95 percent of players had never been punished for any sort of bad behavior.

There is one other catch however: You'll have to be level five or higher, and there must be a minimum of ten skins you don't own. If that's you, then you're in—and if you're not in, maybe you should think about making some new resolutions for 2015.

The great thing about the internet is that I just have to plug in a couple of cables and it works without any need to understand why it works. That is, unless it stops working, in which case I can pace angrily across the room until it starts again. It's pretty magical.

But some people not only understand how the internet works, but want it to work better. Based on Riot's latest announcement, you can count them in this latter category. They've got a plan to make League of Legends faster and more stable for its players—in the US and Canada, at least.

"Currently, ISPs focus primarily on moving large volumes of data in seconds or minutes," explains Riot's 'Ahab' on the LoL forum, "which is good for buffered applications like YouTube or Netflix but not so good for real-time games, which need to move very small amounts of data in milliseconds."

In addition, ISPs can bounce around the country, rather than running directly to its intended destination—raising the user's ping even if they're in relatively close physical proximity.

The solution? Rather ambitious. "We re in the process of creating our own direct network for League traffic and working with ISPs across the US and Canada to connect players to this network."

According to Riot, that network could be ready as early as March. After that, it will be a case of getting the agreements in place with ISPs.

Should it work, Riot expects to see "less ping time, less network packet loss, and more stable connections." For more, you can see the full forum post and subsequent Q&A session here.

Article by James Chen

At times, the name of a genre can be a debacle all unto itself. It was obvious why Riot Games went with the MOBA moniker for League of Legends—even as "Multiplayer Online Battle Arena" is a mouthful of generic and nondescriptive marketing crap, at least it didn't outright advertise its competitors like "DOTAlike" or "DOTA-esque" would've done. True, the histories of either games and all of its kind are clearly traced back to the original Warcraft 3 mod (itself tied back to StarCraft's Aeons of Strife), but the stupidest thing a company can do is give free publicity to its erstwhile rivals, and Riot's genre rebranding's largely done the intended job.

There's an alternative term that's getting increasingly slung around, though, that might be a much better description of what this genre's fundamental gameplay actually is. The term "battle arena" implies that the genre's centered around combat mechanics, and the name "Defense of the Ancients" implies a passive win condition and gameplay focused around efficiently weathering attack.

Both give newcomers a false impression. You don't win by fighting all the time—not directly, anyhow. You don't win by sitting back and reacting to the opponent. You win by pushing the lane, stomping your muddy boots all over the map, and hammering your steel-shod toes against the enemy base. This is a Lane-Pushing Game, and the proof of it is hard-baked into its design.

In League of Legends case, the 2015 update was explicitly tuned with this in mind. The new and updated items are all deliberately or implicitly designed for map control. In fact, it's hard to be more obvious than by looking at the new Elixirs.

Elixir of Fortitude and Elixir of Brilliance have been replaced by a set of mid/late game consumables:

• Elixir of Ruin
  • Grants bonus health, bonus damage to towers, and the Siege Commander buff
  • Siege Commander: Nearby minions gain bonus damage to towers. Minions also gain movement speed based on your own movement speed.
• Elixir of Sorcery
  • Grants bonus ability power, mana regeneration, and the Sorcery buff
  • Sorcery: Damaging a champion or tower deals bonus true damage. This effect has a cooldown against champions but no cooldown against towers.
• Elixir of Iron
  • Grants increased size, slow resistances, tenacity, and the Path of Iron buff
  • Path of Iron: Moving leaves behind a path that boosts allied champion movement speed
• Elixir of Wrath
  • Grants bonus attack damage and the Bloodlust buff
  • Dealing physical damage to champions heals for a % of the damage dealt. Scoring a kill or assist extends the duration of this Elixir by 30 seconds.

Chug chug chug chug

Traditionally, elixirs have been a late-game afterthought—their relatively high cost and impermanence might win you the next immediate fight, but at the cost of setting players behind opponents who ve saved up for permanent items instead. The new elixirs are even more expensive, unfortunately, and cannot be stacked on top of each other—yet the relevance of at least half of them will likely determine the quality and strategies of next year's competitions. And that is because their intended purpose largely mitigates the disadvantages of their predecessors.

What's a team going to do when their entire front line of turrets are down? Not a whole lot. When we talk about map control in lane-pushing games, we're talking about where a team and player can safely operate—at least at the start, the enemy team isn't going to encroach upon your half of the map too often, as the static turrets on your side will make mincemeat of them if they press the issue too far. Turrets don't regenerate or respawn, at least not in most games of the genre (Dawngate, now defunct, is the lone exception I know of), making their demolition of the highest priority: once a turret's down, the surrounding area of the map's at best a no-man's-hand now, with a ganker around every corner and an ambush in every bush.

Thus, the new elixirs directly write the 2015 playbooks: statistical gain is less of a priority than territorial loss. The bonus turret damage from Ruin and Sorcery makes up for the delay on finished items—as does the global increase to base stats gain—and a team that's put on its back foot isn't going to keep you from farming off the deficit anyhow.

In fact, it's hard to pinpoint any categorical changes that weren't intended to throw an almost obnoxiously bright spotlight and emphasis on lane-pushing strategies. In the case of respawning objectives: both Baron Nashor and Dragon's been changed to emphasize damage on turrets and increase in minion DPS. In the case of the jungle revamp: the vision control granted by killing large jungle creeps heavily encourages invasive play so as to further deny territorial control to the enemy team.

Even in the case of the inbound jungler items: contextualizing them with the jungle changes makes it clear that they, too, are focused on territorial control. They're either designed to set vision control in a hurry, by demolishing the Scuttle Crab or Wolf camps on your side as soon as possible, or wrest control away by Smiting off the enemy side camps while the opposition is busy elsewhere. There are also "dueling" versions that help a bit with ganks, but given the overwhelming mechanical influence on territorial control, I see them being used much more often as means in which to fight back the opposing jungler's impertinence.

Acquired taste

Now, that's fine for the professional-tier players, coaches and analysts, who have had an interesting time revamping their playbooks and approaches, but what does it mean for us humble grunts in the solo queue trenches? Does it benefit us at all?

Well, hopefully. It's written on the walls, scribbled into the tooltips, and highlighted repeatedly by the game's design: gold is fine, kills are dandy, but the only way you're gonna win this game is if you push the lane. Newcomers to the game in the 2015 season, and especially those reaching account level 30 for the first time, will at least have all these new tools on hand that beat them over the head with the true nature of this game. This isn't a "battle arena"—the purpose of the game isn't go hunting for elusive pentakills. You can die a dozen times and all mistakes are forgiven if you're the one that sneaks into the enemy base and puts that last hit on their nexus.

It's a good lesson to teach. We'll see how effectively it's been taught when the ladder resets in a couple months.

League of Legends' huge prize pool haul for its 2014 World Championships has been surpassed, with Hi Rez Studios' Smite bringing in more crowdsourced dollars for its own World Championship.

At the time of writing the prize money sits at $2.14 million, the third highest tournament reward in eSports history, but it'll certainly be higher than that by the time the Smite World Championship rolls around.

Admittedly while Smite has smote League of Legends' record haul ($2.13 million), it's still a ways off Dota 2's The International fund, which this past year hit a frankly absurd $10 million.

The Smite World Championship takes place January 9-11 in Atlanta, Georgia and will see the world's best eight Smite teams face off.

First place takes home 50% of the pool, second takes 20%, third 15%, fourth 10% and fifth to eighth all get 1.25% apiece. So regardless of where a team finishes, they're getting at least $26k. Sweet.

You can still make that prize pool go even higher by contributing - otherwise known as 'by purchasing Odyssey items for exclusive rewards'.

Or you can just sit back, slack-jawed at the amount of money on offer. I'm probably going to do that.