The first day of the League of Legends [official site] Mid-Season Invitational saw eight of the fifteen Round Robin group stage matches play out between six of the best teams in the world.

The kickoff match put the home side, North America’s Team SoloMid, on the back foot as Europe’s Fnatic pulled the rug from under them with a surprise Cassiopeia pick on top lane. But it was the Korean scene’s SK Telecom T1 who asserted steady dominance as the day wore on – it’s their event to lose at this point.

Midway through the day’s schedule I sat down with shoutcaster Rivington “RivingtonThe3rd” Bisland III to get his take on the lay of the meta-land and what the teams had brought to the Rift so far.

… [visit site to read more]

Greetings from the Sunshine State! Which is apparently what Florida is called even at nighttime. I’ll be out here covering the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational for the next few days so it’s probably a good idea to explain a) what the Mid-Season Invitational is and b) when the various bits of it are happening in case you want to follow along.

… [visit site to read more]

The sacred tectonics of League of Legends [official website] have shifted – ARAM mode, which for y’all four of you who don’t play is a single-lane battle featuring randomly assigned characters, now includes a new snowball feature that changes the entire rhythm of the thing.

With Patch 5.8, players will be able to use a snowball in ARAM that will mark an enemy when thrown and allow you to teleport to them. League fans might recognise this whole snowball thing from a temporary game mode released last year, but it seems like Riot Games is taking it on board for the long-haul.

… [visit site to read more]

Teemo. Bane of my life, idiot in a stupid hat. My sin, my soul. Tee-mo.

For those who live safely outside the enclave of League of Legends [official site], let me introduce you. Teemo is the game’s official mascot of trolls and an absolute pain in the behind to play against. So Teemo players should get their ults ready in anticipation because Riot Games has released a fancy new Legendary skin for the little guy.

… [visit site to read more]

Remember how the 2015 League of Legends World Championships are in Europe but “Europe” hadn’t previously been narrowed down in any way? Well that vagueness has now given way to detail – Paris, London, Brussels and Berlin.

It feels like a tour of familiar haunts in some ways – Paris was the scene of last year’s All-Star event, London hosted one week of the 2014 European LCS summer split and Riot recently moved their EU LCS base of operations from Cologne over to Berlin.

… [visit site to read more]

Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. THIS WEEK, however, she will be digging into how one MOBA can influence another:>

Three lanes, patches of jungle, a bunch of player characters, items and minions, oh and a base to defend. When you put it in those terms League of Legends and Smite [official site] don’t seem too far apart. But the devil’s in the detail and it’s what you do with that detail that counts. But from watching the first pro season of Smite it felt like a lot had been borrowed, or at least learned from other MOBAs in terms of playstyle particularly League of Legends. With the second season of Smite well underway I got in touch with Graham ‘Hinduman’ Hadfield a Smite expert caster with a League of Legends background to find out how close the two really are and whether Smite is branching out.

… [visit site to read more]

In honour of April Fool’s Day Riot have resurrected the skill spam-tastic Ultra Rapid Fire game mode in League of Legends.

The official story is that URF found its way back onto servers after an energy drink spillage derailed an attempt to upload New Ultra Rapid Fire mode (billed as an attempt to slow the game to a crawl, “delivering a slow, sophisticated, and stoic strategic showcase that tests teams abilities in new and dynamic ways while not restricting the highest tier of play to those with sub-millisecond response times”).

I must admit I was vaguely hoping for wizard chess when I read that. ALAS. On the other hand we do have the return of the hyper-aggressive LoLfest that is URF.

… [visit site to read more]

Over on the League of Legends dev blog, Jeffrey Lin and his colleagues on the player behaviour team have been digging into ideas like reform and punishment for players who misbehave. The series of posts has just concluded so I’m going to highlight some of the interesting snippets they shared over the last few months. Some of the concepts are familiar but I don’t think we’ve covered them on RPS before.

… [visit site to read more]

Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. THIS WEEK, however, she will be telling you why she’s preferring pro League to pro Dota and what any of that has to do with medical soap operas:>

I’ve been away from my own PC for big chunks of the last couple of weeks. It’s mainly been for work reasons so in addition to not being able to play any Dota or League I’ve also been able to watch very little. The semi-absence has been irritating, in that I’ve missed gaming but it’s allowed some nebulous inklings and ideas to form into actual thoughts and opinions.

The most interesting was that while I prefer playing Dota to League, I prefer watching League to Dota.

… [visit site to read more]

Earlier this year Riot held an Ocean Week event for its Oceanic League of Legends players. The end result of that is that Riot will be building an artificial reef themed around their champion, Nautilus and setting it down in the ocean to be populated by coral and fish. It’s early days for the project but I sent over a bunch of questions ANYWAY and Daniel Ringland Riot’s eSports Manager for the region did his best to answer them.

… [visit site to read more]