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:
http://www.blogcdn.com/news.bigdownl...l1_9april4.jpg
http://www.blogcdn.com/news.bigdownl...ydec150007.jpg
http://www.blogcdn.com/news.bigdownl...ionsoct710.jpg
More: http://news.bigdownload.com/2009/04/...ts-are-chilly/

If you want unrestricted access to all the heroes, isn't it something like a $20 one time payment?

Also, this is basically a stand-alone port of Defense of the Ancients, which was originally a multiplayer map for Warcraft III that got a huge following in its own right and has a large number of variations, the most popular I believe being DotA Allstars. In addition to LoL, Heroes of Newearth is also going to be a stand-alone port of DotA, but I think HoN is going to be much closer to DotA Allstars than LoL is.

I was actually invited to the HoN beta (don't ask me how though--I don't remember), but the terrible community repulsed me. DotA has a reputation for having a playerbase full of assholes and jerks, far moreso than you'd expect even for an Internet multiplayer game. It makes it very hard to climb the extremely steep learning curve.

The challenge isn't so much from just operating your character but more from the metagame. You only have 3 skills plus an auto-attack, but you have to select which skills or passive abilities you're going to invest in while leveling (it's impossible to have them all). With dozens of heroes, you have to learn which heroes counter what, which heroes synergize well with whom, and what your hero's role should be given your team's composition. In addition, there is an extraordinarily complicated gearing system with a ton of basic gear, "recipes" which give you better gear by combining the basic items, expensive super items, etc. And on top of all this, you have to learn about positioning, memorizing the spots on the map that allow you (or your opponent) ambush an enemy by surprise, how to use randomly spawning power-ups called runes effectively, etc.

Despite its colorful, cartoony appearance, this isn't a game for a casual player. You're not going to be able to play it unless you invest some time into learning all the ins and outs. Unfortunately for you, this means reading up on tutorials, watching a ton of replays, and dealing with hecklers while you learn at a glacier pace how to use, spec, and gear each of the characters.

Yes, it's something like $20, but it isn't necessary. you don't need all the heroes right away because you should focus on learning to play one or two.

Also, it's 4 skills and an auto attack. Plus in LoL you also have a unique passive with each hero.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ArmedMonkey

Also, it's 4 skills and an auto attack. Plus in LoL you also have a unique passive with each hero.

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Oh right. 4 skills, my bad.

And a unique passive, eh? Are the heroes based on those from DotA, or are they newly-designed?

Some of them obviously have elements from heroes in DoTA (ie have some of the same skills), but unlike HoN, there are no heroes who are straight analogs to DoTA.

I've been playing this game way too much recently. I was worried a little at first, because numerous friends have mentioned the DotA was full of douchebag assholes and I had expected to find the userbase just migrated over. Some of it has. For the most part, though, people are working together as a team, unless they have no clue at all of what they're doing. Generally, anyone who has a good idea and mentions it gets most of the team or part of it to help them, and most people seem to be pretty good about it, except some assholes who just mouth off to each other for the course of the battle.

I've only really played two types of champions thus far. Sivir, a generally support, but mildly tanky character who has ridiculous crowd control and provides boosts to teammates around her is generally my choice to play, although playing any support character requires you to have a tank or two who actually know what they're doing to benefit from your auras. Without that, you can't carry the whole team yourself unless the other side is completely retarded, which doesn't happen as often as I'd wish. The other is a ranged DPS black mage variant who does horrible things to other mages around him. He's awfully good at jumping out of the bush and finishing off a weakened enemy champ, but he's also pretty squishy depending on the build.

All and all, I really enjoy playing, mostly due to the few higher-level people who were willing to take me into a game and show me what I should be looking for, or what to concentrate on. Also, for the people who are just good at the game and don't mind someone new to the ropes making a mess sometimes so long as they know he isn't retarded.

I'll be honest, I prefer Heroes of Newerth. The community may be filled with fuckwits but the game itself is better.

I second that. Heroes of Newerth is 10x's better. Graphics are awesome.

Third. I thought HoN wouldn't run on my computer but amazingly enough it runs very well, and I thought I'd have no problem running LoL but my computer can't handle it. The rune system and what not was so confusing I haven't touched it in months but I'm sure it's improved since then but for now I'll just stick to DotA and HoN. Some of my friends computers can't support HoN =( so I still stick around on DotA with them.

The only thing I hate about playing HoN is being paired with crapwhore noobs who never even heard of or played DotA, but, everyone's gotta start somewhere.

And I just love the stat tracking on HoN, it almost brings more competitiveness to the game and people are more reluctant on leaving, and reconnection yadada but I guess if we were to talk about Heroes of Newerth there would be another thread.

But yeah, LoL doesn't interest me, I gave my account away and all my beta invites a while ago.