Deal: League Of Legends Pre-Season

Well, sometimes the best of games sneak into to get you late at night, like Michael Meyers in Halloween: creep in silently but you know they've made a mark once the movie is over. Well last week a game that I covered both at E3 and PAX finally went public for all to play, and the best part it's FREE. That game, my friends, is League of Legends.

League of Legends is what they are classifying as a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA for short) that comes from the creative minds that worked on the precusor to most MOBAs, the Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III. Each player in the game gets to choose a champion hero that they summon to the battlefield to play alongside other player's champions against 3-5 live opponents. The dynamic strategy and play style that comes from varied human controlled opponents truly does make this game a battle arena that forces you to rethink your strategy each time you play.

Since the last time I wrote about the game, they've actually added almost 10 more champions to the roster, added in a tutorial section for new players, reworked the user interface both in-game and for the PVP.net system, and added a whole other map to the lineup. They've really been pulling out all the stops to add more content to the game before it launched, and it really shows. They also promise to continue to add more champions, maps, and items to th game as the seasons progress, and all for a very reasonable price.

Best part about all of this is that the game launched last week, and all for that lovely price I talked about of FREE. As part of the launch celebration, too, everyone that signs up and downloads the client can play any of the 30+ champions for free until Nov. 19th when the store is set to open, and will be earning Influence Points (IP) and EXP for playing matched games. This means you can play for free with any hero to see how the game plays and give you a leg up on in-game currency (IP) during this pre-season.

I've been playing the game for the past two months in beta, and am still playing it now that it's live, and it really quick and dirty fun. Matches last 20-40 minutes (sometimes longer depending on the match up) and the matchmaking system is actually fairly robust. There is a bit of grind to the leveling system, and currently the rune system is unavailable since the game's store to purchase runes/boosts/champions won't be open until the season starts on the 19th, but there are plenty of rewards to keep you excited while leveling up. I will admit that I can't fully guage how the end-game of LoL will play out without the pricing model of the store setup, but you'll be sure to hear all about it from me once we get more firm information on how much champions cost to unlock, what custom skins are available, and how the rune system works.

Well enough of my gushing about it, if you got some free time and an alright graphics card in your PC, download the game and see for yourself. Won't cost you any money, and I promise you'll have a good time.

League of Legends Download