Lib and possibley Zuk out tonight

League of Legends isn't so much an RTS as...it's.. kinda hard to classify. In fact, it's part of its very own genre because it's so hard to classify - Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, MOBA. It all started with a Warcraft 3 map called Defense of the Ancients. Basically there's a large battlefield with three lanes separated by forest, and divided in half - one for each team. Small, easy to kill NPCs spawn in groups at the center of each team's base, and filter down through the lanes until they meet their opposing counterparts. Each team has three turrets and an inhibitor - the turrets get progressively harder to kill the closer they are to the base, and can only be killed in sequence. Behind the last one is the inhib, which is one of the goals in the game - killing it gives you extra-strong NPC units that break down buildings really fast. If you manage to kill one of the three inhibitors, you can push on to the Nexus, which is the end goal - breaking it wins the game regardless of scores or time spent playing. It's got the two more turrets defending it, the strongest on the map, and all three heal slowly if they're not destroyed. The inhibitors respawn periodically, and the three Nexus buildings can't be hurt unless at least one inhib is down. That's the RTS portion of the game - no base construction or unit creation, just wanton destruction of the enemy's structures.

What makes it an Arena is that there are around 80 different unique characters, with another being made and added to the game every 2 weeks or so. You pick one at the start of the match, and nobody else on your team can play that. Each one gets five abilities - a passive ability, three 'regular' ones, and an Ultimate. They all range wildly from champion to champion, and most of them are wholly unique, while some are similar (there's over 300 now, some are gonna be close). Each champion gets a specific name and title (Karthus, The Deathsinger for example, or Ashe, The Frost Archer), unique voice acting (with very well known actors for some), and what sets League of Legends apart from all the other DOTA clones is that each one has quite an indepth story behind them, including why they're fighting, where they came from, and sometimes their relations to other, already released champions. As time's gone on, they're getting more and more complex, it's nice. Anyways, you gain experience and gold by killing other players and NPCs, and each level you get a skill point you can put into one of your abilities. Each ability ranks up to level 5, and your Ultimate goes up to 3 and can only be learned or upgraded at 6, 11, and 16. Level cap is 18. Passives either stay the same (Karthus' lets him cast spells and fight for a few seconds after he dies), or scale up on their own as you level (Nasus heals himself when he attacks by a little bit more every few levels). The gold comes into play by letting you pick up items to customize stats - a champion most consider to be a tank can be built for straight up damage, or the squishiest person can be made into an ironclad juggernaut through items. The intriguing bit is that it's a bit like crafting - you can get base items (Say, a Ruby Crystal that gives you some bonus health), and you can then upgrade or combine those base items into more advanced ones for a bit more gold (Ruby Crystal + Gold = Heart of Gold, which gives more health, and gives you some gold every few seconds), and then those can be combined or upgraded into even more advanced items, which are generally only built as the game gets fairly long (Heart of Gold + Warden's Mail + Cloth Armour + Gold = Randuin's Omen). Most other MOBA games have this to an extent too, but League of Legends makes sure you always have every recipe in plain sight - selecting an item in the shop tells you exactly what went into it, and everything that can be made from it, while also giving easy to navigate menus to find items by category.

In short, it's kinda like an RTS/RPG hybrid. You play a single character like WoW, and level up, learning new abilities or improving old ones, while organizing with four teammates to try and outplay your opponents through strategy and tactics, but you can completely change the character you play with each and every match. You as a player get levels too, letting you unlock runes and talents to customize your gameplay further - you might want to play a tank one game, and get your runes and talents set up to give you bonus armour and magic resistance, maybe some extra health right at the start, or play a rogueish DPS character who benefits from attack damage and crit things instead. The game offers practically unlimited choices, and every single match is completely unique, as you react to counter whatever your opponent does to react to your own choices. It's also got a way better playerbase than most of its competition, due to a rather interesting take on punishing bad behaviour. At the end of each match you can report troublemakers with a selection of categories (Griefing, Verbal Abuse, Intentionally Assisting The Other Team, etc), and once you reach the player level cap, to show you're experienced enough to know how the game plays, you can then volunteer to look over a few of these reports each week, choosing to punish people who deserve it, or pardon people who reported unfairly. If enough people select to punish, the person goes to an actual Riot employee who looks it over and decides if it's banworthy behaviour. Each time you get someone's case "right", in that you selected the option most other people did, you get a bit of ingame currency as a bonus, letting you buy runes or unlocking new characters, which you normally have to play the game to build up.

In short short, it's unique. The only games that come anywheres near it are other MOBAs, but they generally focus more on killing as many opposing people as you can and blitzing through to the enemy's base while they're all dead. LoL has that too, but to a much lesser degree. Being sneaky and occupying the enemy team while someone goes across the map and blows up a turret (Go to hell Yi, you backdooring bastard) before they can respond works very well, as does splitting your team up to put pressure on multiple places at once. Tactics are actually important. Combined with the phenomenal level of customization, the richly detailed story, the biweekly balance patches to fix any major problems quickly, and the sheer amount of joy that comes from winning a long game against evenly skilled opponents, it's something that's really, really fun. I've got a bunch of games I've played recorded, I might get around to posting a few to youtube at some point to demonstrate what it's all like...

.. Well that was more than I actually intended to write. Anyways. Most of the older guildmembers have been playing the game for six or seven consecutive years now. I mean, I've been in the guild for almost five, with just a handful of WoW-breaks over the years. WoW's unfortunately just... failing at being new and exciting for a lot of us. TBC was fun. Wrath was decent. Cataclysm was great at the start, and then went into a decidedly mediocre end game. The new one would have to try very hard to make up for Cataclysm's general lack of interest-grabbing content, and the bleeding pandarens aren't the way to do it.