Thread: League of Legends - free standalone dota clone (plus more)

I highly recommend this game. It has great teamplay and MMO Aspects.
You can choose from a variety of champions and ramp up XP to earn persistent bonuses to your account. Participate in great teamplay battles with your friends to destroy the opposition.

https://signup.leagueoflegends.com?ref=4b4f3a8d67660
(Yes, it's a referrer link. I put a lot of time into making this post so please follow my link. Thanks )

check out the website for more info. I was really impressed with this game, it's a candidate for Game of the Year and it's completely free, though you do have an option to pay to unlock some stuff faster, if that's your cup of tea. But I've found it to be a completely fulfilling experience without paying a dime. The game has a great community and will suck you in.

BTW- Don't be worried because it's free, the quality of the game is amazing.

Gameplay: Okay currently there are 2 maps available. There are promises for more game-types available, but ... yeah there's only 1 game type available. The gameplay is pretty simple, Each side has their own Nexus on opposite sides of the map, the objective is to * drum roll please* destroy the other team's nexus. In the most common played map ( and the only one you can play in non-practice games ) there are 3 lanes you can take to get to the nexus, with 3 enemy turrets along the way. You can obviously guess the turrets hinder your progress, and hit hella hard. Destroying these turrets grant you gold, an increasing amount depending on how deep into the lane you are. In-between the lanes ( called the Jungle ). There are monsters at designated locations ( all of which are marked on your minimap, though if an enemy kills the monsters there the indicator doesn't disappear on your map unlike if killed by you or a teammate ). Killing a normal group gives standard gold/xp. There are 4 significant monsters though. A Golem, Lizard, Dragon, and Baron Nashor. Of course these guys are tougher than the regular monsters, though the provide buffs, or in the dragons case over 100g for each person on the team. I'll stop boring with the details of the basics since you can always read up on the webpage now that I think about it. Just felt liek it would be something worth pointing out for people that have never played a DOTA-esque type game ( like I was ).

Champions: Every week, Riot makes a handful of champions available for free. There are no restrictions on who can be selected to be free so even the teir 3 champions will at one point be available for free. Also when new champions are released, I've played for about a month now, and I've seen two champions released ( Nidalee and just recently Poppy ), they are usually free for the first week. Normally at the end of the game you are awarded IP ( Influence Points ), just consider it one of the two types of currency ( the other being riot points which you have to pay for ), and you can buy champions with that. In terms of balance. In my opinion I do feel that there are some imbalances *cough* Twitch *cough*, but I guess that's to be expected with having so many champions in a game.

Maintenance: Oh how I hate thee. Maintenance is "scheduled" once a week. You see what I did there? Every week since I've been playing with the exception of yesterday, there has been extended maintenance cause of some bug that they found. Even though I said yesterday went through fine, yes we got to play, but it was taken down 3am the next day (today) due to a matchmaking bug that cause lower level summoners to play against higher level summoners in unfair advantages so it was taken down for 3 hours, and comes back up in 15m hence my boredom I guess. I think this is my biggest gripe, but I guess what can you do ;/

Summoner Abilities: In addition to the four skills/spells each character has, you can select two from a global set. These allow you to work with your teammates to create a well-balanced team, but they also allow you to customize heroes to fit your individual playing style.

Runes: You can also buy runes using IP or Riot Points, they pretty much give a small boost to whatever stat you get. LIke say +.6 % Crit Damage. Think World of Warcraft's Jewelcrafting Gems.

Masteries: Every time you level, you get a mastery point. You can spend mastery points on masteries (small passive bonuses) in three trees: offensive, defensive, and utility (general). Masteries include things like -1% ability cooldown, and other small bonuses. I thought they would make the game unfair for low level players, but they really don't. It just helps you customize your hero a bit.

The Community: This game has a great following and a wonderful community. There is a huge focus on teamplay, so people start to group up and form teams. Right now it's in pre-season, but when the season starts you will be able to make official teams and clans. People play while talking on vent (there's a free official vent server for the game), and they are generally very nice.


Screenshots:



More: http://news.bigdownload.com/2009/04/...ts-are-chilly/