LoL and the DotA Based Game Genre

League of Legends is a DBG "DotA Based Game" title created by Riot Games.


Who are the people behind League of Legends?

As you may already know, the League of Legends development team includes Steve “Guinsoo” Feak, a DotA Allstars map editor before the infamous Icefrog, and Steve “Pendragon” Mescon who started the a Dota fan site.

What you may not know, is that the League of Legends team also includes many game industry veterans, who collectively have shipped dozens of successful titles.

* Tom “Zileas” Cadwell (Design Director) – Formerly at Blizzard as the Play Balance Lead for Warcraft III: Frozen Throne, and a key designer on World of Warcraft, Tom brings his focus on mechanical and technical design, and his experience as one of the world’s most recognized Starcraft players to the table to help make League of Legends a balanced and polished play experience.
* Shawn “Babagahnoosh” Carnes (Lead Creative Designer) – Shawn has spent over 15 years working in the gaming industry, beginning his career working at Wizards of the Coast during the first four seasons of Magic the Gathering, and more recently working at Blizzard helping develop lore for World of Warcraft, and designing the World of Warcraft: TCG. He’s responsible for ensuring that League of Legends is set in an interesting world with unique and creative champions.
* And many more…

Riot is a company of gamers who have fallen in love with DotA and want to take the experience to the next level. We believe that League of Legends is helping to pioneer a new genre of games called the DBG genre or "DotA Based Games" that we’re excited to help bring to a global audience.

In addition to a dedicated team of developers for North American, we have partners in Europe and Asia who will help us establish League of Legends as a truly international title.

What are some of the big differences between the play-style of League of Legends and DotA?

Since the development of League of Legends began, we wanted to focus on capturing the elements of DotA that made it fun and competitive while removing the elements that hindered the game or were unintuitive. Some of the biggest differences between League of Legends and DotA include:

DotA includes many mechanics that incent defensive behavior. We want players to get right into the action, so we’ve made being more aggressive more rewarding such as increasing gold earned from Champion kills and assists. Top-level games often include 5v5 battles at level 1 with both sides competing for team objectives

When you’re playing League of Legends, we want you to always have something to do. We’ve balanced the game around shorter ability cooldowns, and bigger mana pools, ensuring that you’re always able to do more than passive right clicking. This makes the game feel more active, and makes the average game shorter. Good players start using spells aggressively right at the beginning of the game.

In DotA, many abilities, runes, physical attacks, and terrain mechanics have a random component to them. We’ve removed many of the random elements of DotA's gameplay to make you more reliant on skill instead of luck.

In League of Legends, Brush is a tall grassy terrain that provides a Champion with a form of invisibility, you can see out of it but enemies can’t see in! It’s great for ganking and juking.

We know that teamwork is one of the most important parts of DotA, but we wanted to put even more focus on it in League of Legends. In addition to the pre-game team decisions such as Summoner spells and Runes, we’ve added a number of team objectives to the map, such as epic monsters, (which replace DotA’s runes), and team experience for killing towers. Games are decided by which teams win team fights – not which guy solo farms an agility carry.

League of Legends has a persistent meta-game called the Summoner system – In League of Legends, players are known as “Summoners”, powerful magic users who summon powerful champions to fight for them on their behalf on our various map scenarios called the Fields of Justice. The Summoner is a tied to the player’s account, and represents the in-game identity of the player. As the players play the game sessions, their Summoner will actually level up out of game and gain power which they can use to assist their champion in each match. The summoner system adds a tremendous amount of strategic depth to the game by allowing players to customize their experience based on their play-style through runes, masteries, and summoner spells. We will also track stats, rank, teams, and clans through the summoner system, reinforcing the players’ identity within the community and adding weight to a players reputation.


I heard that League of Legends doesn't have denying, is that true?

It’s true, even though League of Legends is a DotA based game (DBG) we’ve intentionally decided to remove denying from the game. We know this is a huge change for some people, but we have some really good reasons for removing it!

* It enlarges the early game imbalance between ranged and melee Champions, and we think it is more fun for all Champions to be at least somewhat competitive at all phases of the game.
* It leads to passive play, and slows down the game. We feel that high-activity; high-action faster games are more fun. By not having denying, there’s a stronger incentive to push. Additionally, it prevents strong lane control which is ultimately about passive play. Team fights more than anything else are what make this genre fun, and faster games mean more team fights.
* It is weird. Killing your own guys?

League of Legends encourages competition?

The League of Legends pre-season, which begins on October 27th 2009 is an opportunity for competitive players to begin putting together their teams, building their strategies, and polishing their skills for Season One which will begin in early 2010. During pre-season, many competitive features will be added to the PVP.net multiplayer platform including:

* Automated, and player-made tournaments
* Even more in-depth stat tracking and advanced player profiles
* Clans and pre-made teams with in-depth stat tracking
* Ranked play and ladders with unique and exclusive rewards
* Additional competitive game modes
* Replays and Spectator mode


Will League of Legends be updated as often as DotA is?

We view the pre-season of League of Legends as the beginning of a long journey. Our plan is to keep our full development team allocated to League of Legends for a long time to come, regularly releasing new Champions, Maps, platform features, and more. We are currently releasing updates weekly, and have no plans to slow down.