Pandion Knights

League of Legends (previously known as League of Legends: Clash of Fates) is a game based on the Defense of the Ancients map for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne developed and published by Riot Games for Microsoft Windows.  It was first announced on October 7, 2008 and released on October 27, 2009. The game was in a closed beta from April 10, 2009 to October 22, 2009. It then transitioned to open beta until release.

Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, the previous designer of the popular Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne custom map DotA Allstars, and Steve “Pendragon” Mescon, the administrator of the former official support base for the map (www.dota-allstars.com), are involved with Riot Games in the making of League Of Legends: Clash of Fates. Using the original DotA created by Eul (the original Defence of The Ancients map for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos) as a base, Guinsoo made DotA Allstars by adding his own mix of content, largely expanding the number of the heroes, adding recipes, numerous items and various gameplay changes. Then Guinsoo with version 6 of the map passed DotA Allstars on to its current developer, Icefrog. Pendragon, who is the Director of Community Relations for Riot Games, helped create the previous DotA Allstars website along with its forums.

Development

The idea of a spiritual successor to Defense of the Ancients that would be its own stand-alone game with its own engine, rather than another Mod of Warcraft III began to materialize at the end of 2005. League of Legends was born "when a couple of very active DotA community members believed that the gameplay was so much fun and so innovative that it represented the spawning of a new genre and deserved to be its own professional game with significantly enhanced features and around-game services."

Riot Games was co-founded by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill.[ They partnered with some of the key creative minds behind the creation of DotA-Allstars, Steve "Guinsoo" Feak and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon. Riot Games officially opened its office in September 2006, and currently has about 40 people working on League of Legends, "including their robust technology platform to service and operate the game as well as a team dedicated to community relations."

According to Marc Merrill, when creating the various champions in the game, instead of leaving the champion creation to just a few people, they decided to open up the champion creation process to everyone in the company based upon a template where they could vote on which champions made it into the game.

Gameplay

The game will be sessions based with two teams of 5 players fighting each other with Champions called forth by the player, represented by a Summoner, the persistent element in the game, used to track statistics and scores for each player. In the future there are plans to add diferent maps, 3 vs 3 and other variations. Diferent game objectives, like capture the flag has been one of the rumored possibilities.

At the start of each battle, every player has the ability to choose a champion to fight for him in battle. According to the Game Features section on the main page of the website, there will be "dozens of unique champions with diverse skills and abilities" for the player to choose from. There will be "over 200 uniquely crafted items" that the player can buy, and combine to help them in their battles. League of Legends consists of three tiers of items. First, there are the basic consumables that give temporary bonuses or regeneration for the Champions, the middle tier involves basic gear that provide the Champions with permanent statistical or combat boosts, and finally the legendary items that are created as a result of combining multiple lesser items.

Currently League of Legends has both a persistent element which is the Summoner as well as session based play where your Summoner calls forth Champions that influence session-based play in a dynamic way. Champions have a level cap of 18 and can level up on the battlefield (a.k.a. "Fields of Justice"). Each Champion in Leagues of Legends will have varied playstyles, from support to tank to nuker. As the champion levels, it gains permanent health, mana, and statistical boosts. It also gains ability points it can use to learn new abilities that are unique to each champion. Champions also gain gold from killing the enemy player champions, AI controlled monsters, and other minions in the battlefield. The gold may be spent back at your base on any of numerous items that grant abilities and statistical boosts to aid the champion in and out of combat.

The first announced map, the Summoner's Rift, is similar to the map in DotA. As in DotA, you start in your own base and fight to conquer strategical points and destroy the enemies' turrets until you finally try to destroy their base. The enemy team, however, will try to do the same. Strategy, tactics, skill, and above all, teamwork, will be the difference between winning and losing.

Features

• Take on the role of Summoner as you build your masteries, select your available spells, equip your Runes and call forth your Champions to battle
• Select one of over 40 unique Champions, each with unique special abilities and innovative gameplay mechanics
• Level your Champion from weak to powerful and make RPG-style advancement decisions from improving abilities to equipping items in fast paced battle scenarios
• Play on hand-crafted, stylized map scenarios to outsmart and defeat the enemy team
• Go head-to-head in competitive multiplayer matches with and against your friends, or compete in solo matches against configurable AI bots
• Create or join teams to work with others and become the best in the League
• Earn in-game rewards to show off your impressive accomplishments through a ground breaking meta-game experience
• Robust community features and support including automated matchmaking, rankings and more!

Summoner

Each player will have their own Summoner, this is the only aspect of the game that will be constant and represents the player in the game. Summoners summon champions to fight on their behalf on the fields of justice, and can gain levels as when their champions are successful in battle. As the Summoner's level increases, the player will be able to access new talents, abilities, equipment, and other various content.

• The Summoner's Abilities can be used by the champions in the in-game sessions. A champion may only choose up to 2 summoner abilities to bring with it in any battle session.
• The Summoner will be able to wear 6 pieces of equipment. Each piece will empower its champion with small bonuses such as a Health Bonus, Damage Increase, or Mana Regeneration, etc.
• Each Summoner will also have its own customizable Talent Tree called "Masteries". Details on the Talents available and how they will affect the champion have not yet been announced.