Side Note the First: I kept getting distracted so this is gonna be a long post. TL;DR, gushing and/or bitching about League of Legends. Go buy that. Wait, it's free.
Side Note 2: not feeling too good mentally today (Monday), so forgive any typos or anything. Woke up on the far wrong side of the bed, y'know? (By which I mean, I had this bizarre dream that ended with me waking up feeling like I had something or someone invading my brain that needed to die in a fire. Makes three times so far I've had that sense ... one of them long before hearing about the Mythos. Squicky. Each time they're met with violence - or at least the thought/impression of violent repudiation - of course.) Made me grumpy all day.
Side Note Three: Revenge of the Side Note: I got yet another search hit for "How do I leave Gilneas?" The answer is, you don't. You're stuck there for all eternity. All the other Worgen are hackers. The end. No, but seriously, just play through the storyline, that's your only option. Except for maybe a Warlock summon or something, I dunno. I don't even play WoW anymore, jeez.
Not my video, and you can't do this anymore. Got'cha!
Thanks to Soulsinger for finding this video, though.
Anyway!
I've been playing this game for a couple of days now (not as long as I've been playing Rift - sorry! I'll get to it, I swear!) and I think I've got a fair handle of what's going on with it anyway.
It's called League of Legends, and it's the genetically identical offspring of a very, very popular map named "Defense of the Ancients" from Warcraft III. It's also completely free to play ... in theory, anyway, we'll get to that in a bit.
So what you do, you download the game client, open it up, and play through the tutorial. It actually teaches you pretty much everything you need to know, which is handy since it's been ages since I've played WCIII, and I never really got into the online side of it when I did still play.
Let's be more specific though. LoL - and I love the acronym - is, like Plants Vs. Zombies and Gemcraft (another game I've been wasting time with off and on), a kind of Turret Defense game ... insofar as there are turrets, and it's generally wise to defend them. You can't really upgrade the turrets though. In fact, other than 'blow them up' and 'hide behind them like a sissy,' there aren't really a lot of other things you can do to/with/for the turrets, and, after they've been blown up, they're gone for good. So, basically, not like any of the other Turret Defense games on the market.
I'm going to back up even further and explain what Turret Defense means, since most of my followers are from the other 99,999 SM(TP, hahaha no, just SM) Blogs and the rest of my hits are from GILNEAS, WAT DO. Seriously, it isn't that hard.
Okay, so Turret Defense, generally goes thus: you've got a maze, or a lawn, or whatever, whereby the HORDES OF EVIL are trying to get at your goodies (townsfolk, brains, children, etc.). Your objective is, normally, to build turrets along the sides of that maze, which shoot down the HORDES OF EVIL as they come, at ever-increasing rates of speed and also DEATH.
In LoL, there are two mazes, pretty much exactly mirrored, facing one another. You play as a Champion of one of the HORDES OF EVIL, setting out to stab/burn/consume the entire other HORDE OF EVIL. In the face. At the end of each maze is a Nexus, which is essentially your/the other guys' townsfolk/brain/children/goodies/shiny things. Your objective is to blow up the other guy's Nexus while simultaneously preserving your Nexus from being blown up. Generally there'll be two to four other people/robots helping you out with that, along with the entire rest of your HORDE OF EVIL.
And honestly, gladiatorial matches where the combatants are made to fight endlessly without even the reprieve of a final death kind of makes both sides pretty evil, imo. I haven't given more than a cursory glance to the lore, what there is of it. Not exactly an RPG.
So that's awesome.
It's actually a really kind of cool game, and what little I've seen of it suggests that they're trying to constantly pump out new goodies. How are they funding that, if it's totally free to play?
Well, anything game-related is, technically, free to play. They give you a selection, which changes about weekly, of Champions to poke about with. It only takes six or seven matches to buy one with Influence Points (which is the currency you get from, y'know, actually playing the game). But the better Champions can only be gotten through a whole metric fuckton of Influence Points, translating into literally days of gameplay, especially if you get unlucky and lose a lot ... or, you can buy a handful of these Riot Points with real money, and play these awesome Champions now. So, exactly like real gladiatorial matches, only the Champions never get to buy their own freedom.
Which is how they get you.
Because, see, there are a lot of Champions, each with their own unique playstyle, ranging from 'set things on fire/death/NOMNOMNOM and hope nothing looks your way' to 'although you'll take five hours to kill anything, the same applies to your enemies hitting you'. So, you'll either be playing forever if you have any slight inclination to try out something new, or you'll be paying to play anyway.
In addition, everything cosmetic is bought through Riot Points, which is sad because there are a few skins I'd like but don't really want to shell out for. Good thing my two favorite champions' defaults are all right, I guess.
Oh, and Myk, if you're reading: so far I haven't seen much elitism in game, partly because I haven't seen much talking at all. The other part I think is that there are few to no barriers to entry, though. It's free, from a dedicated server that isn't going to tell you how tall you have to be for this ride, and the game really does its best to teach you what to do before you have to singlehandedly face down a horror from beyond or three. At once.
People get a kick out of denying you things that they have that you don't.
Because they're assholes.
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