Preview: League of Legends: Clash of Fates (PC)

 The first mention I ever heard of tower defense/push* games was, of course, Defense of the Ancients, the wildly popular mod to Warcraft III. Some podcaster or another was talking about it in relation another tower defense game, Demigod. So I listened, and eventually bought Demigod just see what it was all about.

Now, mind you, I had never played DotA, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but I quickly came to enjoy Demigod and the whole tower defense thing. But, like some others, I felt that Demigod lacked depth. It was a highly polished and visually game, to be sure, but it was lacking in the number of demigods and battle maps it offered. In the end, while I enjoyed the game, I didn’t think it was worth the original sticker price precisely due to this lack of depth. And, yet, I still had a taste for the genre and I still play Demigod.

Quite some time  later, while reading a gaming magazine, I ran across a small article on League of Legends, or LoL. Yeah, yeah, my first reaction was roflcopterpwnstehlawlswtf?! Who in their right mind would call a game LoL (or LOL or lol)?! Some of the guys from the DotA community would, as it turns out. And once you get past the abbreviated name, the general response** to the game seems to be quite positive.

Why the positive response, you may ask? Well, there are some very specific reasons. First, 2 of the guys from the DotA community are developing LoL; namely Steve “Guinsoo” Feak who developed DotA: Allstars and Steve “Pendragon” Mescon who developed the fansite for DotA: Allstars. So, when people say that LoL is the spiritual successor to DotA, they aren’t kidding. Though I did read some random community posts somewhere that Icefrog (to whom Guinsoo passed the DotA torch) is actively developing another commercial title on the tower defense model. Second, there seems to a great deal of depth to the game’s content; as in 40 or so playable champions and some 200 items. I haven’t found a count on the number of maps yet.

So that’s the good news. But is there any bad news?

The only off-putting news that I have run across so far has been the fact that LoL will be free to play and, thusly, will rely on the purchases of the collector’s edition and microtransactions (for Riot Points) for its revenue stream. My opposition to microtransactions is totally my own – I have never liked them – and depending on how Riot handles the whole thing, the microtransaction angle could be a moot point. However, if LoL is a great game and its developers fail to make a profit precisely because it is free, then we all lose out.

All things considered, I want to play LoL and I am eagerly awaaiting it’s release. Keep your eyes on our PC Games blog for more information about League of Legends, which is scheduled to be released anywhere from late September 2009 to October 2009 depending on who you talk to or what you read.

*At this point, I still refuse to use the term MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) as I feel that the acronym simply sounds stupid.
**Here I must disclose that I have not played the game yet and so must confine myself to commenting on only what I have read from both official and unofficial sources.