League of Legends
League of Legends
SK Telecom T1 destroys Sandbox, moves to LCK playoffs semifinals
William Davis
SK Telecom T1 is moving on to the 2019 LCK Summer Playoffs semifinals after demolishing Sandbox Gaming. The second round of the playoffs was not as close as many expected. Sandbox looked disorganized and overall lost on the rift, allowing SKT to close the series with a clean 3-0. They will face Damwon Gaming next. SKT started the series with a convincing victory. In pick and bans, Sandbox went for …
League of Legends
2019 LEC summer playoffs schedule features G2 and Fnatic rivalry
William Davis
The 2019 LEC summer playoffs start on Friday with the top six teams this season competing for a spot at the final in Athens. G2 Esports already secured a spot at the 2019 Worlds Championship, where they will look to continue their international dominance. Splyce and Rogue will kick off the 2019 LEC Summer playoffs. Rogue comes into the match as the underdog, as this is a young roster that lacks …
League of Legends
Cloud9 and Team Liquid prepare to face off for LCS summer title
Nina Forneloza
The grand final for the 2019 League of Legends LCS Summer Split has been decided. Cloud9 will face Team Liquid for the biggest domestic trophy in North American League of Legends.. Team Liquid enters the finals having defeated Clutch Gaming in a series that went all the way to its fifth and final game. Clutch Gaming defied expectations by taking two games from the reigning LCS champions and Mid-Season Invitational …
League of Legends
Teamfight Tactics patch 9.16b nerfs Draven, Jinx, brawlers
Syed Mujtaba Naqvi
Teamfight Tactics has gotten a new patch update with, Riot Games implementing patch 9.16b on August 21. This mid-cycle patch mostly includes balance changes to various units. Draven has been perceived thus far as a permier solo carry in TFT. However, the new patch lowers both his health, from 700 to 650, and his attack damage, from 75 to 70. Although he continues to be strong, he’s not the dominant …
League of Legends
Doublelift compares himself to Uzi heading into LCS summer final
Nina Forneloza
Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, the star AD carry for North American League of Legends squad Team Liquid, has made some bold comments about his form for the upcoming World Championship and LCS finals. Team Liquid will face Cloud9 in the final of the 2019 LCS Summer Split. If they win, it will be the fourth consecutive LCS title for Liquid and will cement Team Liquid’s place in history as the first …
League of Legends
2019 LCK summer playoffs schedule set for SKT, Griffin, more
William Davis
The stage is ready for the 2019 LCK summer playoffs. After ten dramatic weeks of competition, five teams made it to the next phase of the tournament. The LCK follows a King of the Hill format, as whoever wins moves up to the next round to play a higher seeded team. This is a single-elimination bracket that starts with a best-of-three wild card match. Starting in round two, all of …
League of Legends
LoL Clash test release date announced for North America
gabhernandez
Long awaited by fans across the region, Clash tests are set to hit North American League of Legends servers by August 24. The news was announced on the official LoL website. Much like previous tests, team creation will open up a few days beforehand, with players allowed to start drafting on August 19. Unlike previous iterations of Clash, the test will be condensed from Friday through Sunday, to just Saturday …
League of Legends
Offline mode possibly coming to League of Legends soon
Syed Mujtaba Naqvi
League of Legends players have discovered what seems to be an offline mode within the game’s Public Beta Environment (PBE) server. Players have long been wanting an option to hide their in-game activity from their in-game friends. The offline mode, as the community has named it, has been asked for on numerous occasions on both Reddit and Riot Games’ official forums in the past. Riot is now possibly testing its …
Cain wins LCS Coach of the Split, FakeGod awarded Rookie of the Split
William Davis
League of Legends
Riot Games revealed the 2019 LCS Summer Rookie of the Split and Coach of the Split. The votes are in and the winners of these important categories were revealed ahead of the 2019 LCS Summer Playoffs semifinals. 100 Thieves’ top laner Aaron “FakeGod” Lee was awarded Rookie of the Split honors. FakeGod joined 100 Thieves Academy back in 2018, after being spotted at the Scouting Grounds event where he …
Cloud9 qualifies to 2019 World Championship, extends Worlds streak
Nina Forneloza
League of Legends
By reaching League of Legends’ LCS summer split finals, Cloud9 have qualified for the 2019 World Championship. Attending the tournament will mark the seventh consecutive year that the organization has competed at the year’s biggest League of Legends tournament. Both Team Liquid and Cloud9 have secured qualification by reaching the LCS finals, as the winner of the LCS Summer Split will automatically qualify for the tournament and the second-place finisher …
Team Liquid headed to LCS final after victory over Clutch Gaming
William Davis
League of Legends
Team Liquid is heading to its fourth consecutive LCS final. While the road was not as easy as the previous season, Liquid earned a spot in the 2019 LCS Summer finals. They punched their ticket at the expense of Clutch Gaming, who turned out to be a surprisingly stiff challenge for the favorites. Liquid will face Cloud9 in Detroit. What many were expecting to be a 3-0 day, ended up being …
Cloud9 dominates Counter Logic Gaming, heads to LCS finals
William Davis
League of Legends
Cloud9 punched its ticket to the 2019 LCS Summer finals with a convincing victory over Counter Logic Gaming. Cloud9 is not repeating the same mistakes from the spring semifinal. This time around, the team managed to close the series in game four and prevented a possible reverse sweep. Cloud9 started the series with two dominating wins. Game one and two played out in very similar fashion with jungler Dennis …
Deman returning to League of Legends to cast LCS Summer Playoffs
Syed Mujtaba Naqvi
League of Legends
After years away from casting League of Legends, Leigh “Deman” Smith is returning to the game. Speaking on Twitter, the longtime commentator and host revealed that he will be hosting an official cast for the LCS Summer Playoffs semifinals. Dan “Foxdrop” Wyatt will serve as his co-host. Deman was a popular League of Legends caster for the European LCS, today known as League of Legends European Championship. Though fans enjoyed …
Coca Cola selling exclusive LoL-themed bottles in Turkey
William Davis
League of Legends
League of Legends merch is getting better by the year. Coca Cola has released a set of League of Legends-themed bottles in Turkey. The drinks featuring the images of champions like Irelia, Lucian, Lee Sin, Vayne, Yasuo, Blitzcrank, Kayn, and many others hit the shelves of a number of major convenience stores in the country. The League of Legends-themed bottles include an exclusive code that can be used in-game to …
Jin Air Green Wings becomes first LCK team to post a winless split
William Davis
League of Legends
The recent series between Jin Air Green Wings and Griffin in the 2019 LCK Summer Season wound up being a surprisingly important one. On one hand, the victory puts Griffin fingertips away from finishing the regular season in first place and qualifying for the 2019 League of Legends World Championship. On the other, the defeat put Jin Air in the LoL history books as the first team to end a regular season …
FC Schalke 04 upsets G2 Esports in final week of LEC Summer Split
William Davis
League of Legends
FC Schalke 04 is ending the regular season on a high note. The fourth-ranked LEC team pulled off a major upset versus G2 Esports, toppling one of the strongest teams in the world. Though both already had a spot in the playoffs locked up before the clash on Friday, the victory shows that no team is safe. True to its style, G2 locked in a creative and surprising composition. Top laner …
LEC partners with Pringles, gives away skins for LEC Summer final
Syed Mujtaba Naqvi
League of Legends
Riot Games has announced it has partnered up with Pringles for the upcoming League of Legends European Championship Summer Finals. Pringles, the Kellogg Company’s canned potato chip brand, will be distributing around 115 million Pringles cans featuring a code for the partnership’s raffles. League players and Pringles consumers across Europe will be able to enter a daily raffle that will reward two players with a legacy skin. The raffle will …
G2 Esports recruits Hafu as debut Teamfight Tactics player
William Davis
League of Legends
G2 Esports is extending its reach of influence into Teamfight Tactics by adding popular player Rumay “Hafu” Wang to its streaming roster. The official G2 Esports Twitter account sent out a video in which founding CEO Carlos Rodriguez discussed the growing popularity of TFT. Towards the end of the video, Rodriguez reveals that Hafu will be joining the organization due to her high level of play and experience in the …
Teamfight Tactics’ highly experimental changes coming to PBE
Olivia Richman
League of Legends
Despite Teamfight Tactics receiving a major update in Patch 9.16, Riot is already discussing some game-changing future alterations. The auto-battler’s lead designer, Riot Mort, took to Twitter to discuss some big changes the team is considering. The future patches seem to mostly revolve around healing and anti-heal mechanics, including updates to items that would dramatically affect evolve the game’s meta and playstyle. The changes are currently on the Public Beta …
Riot Games is selling Echo Fox’s LCS slot to a new buyer
Syed Mujtaba Naqvi
League of Legends
After over two months of the drama related to Echo Fox’s ownership and investors, Riot Games has decided to terminate the organization’s participation in the League of Legends Championship Series. The Echo Fox drama is finally coming to an end in the LCS, as Riot has announced its North American franchised league and Echo Fox have agreed to vacate Echo Fox’s current LCS spot. This follows Riot having given Echo …
League of Legends
is among the most popular widely-played video games in the world. It has been a consistent trendsetter in the gaming industry, whether as a model for other free-to-play titles looking to monetize their players or as a guiding light for how professional esports can be both successful and sustainable.
It hasn’t always been so though. League of Legends was released in 2009 as an uncertain new project, a game with large aspirations but little proven. In the years since, it has developed into the dominant title that it is today, and one of the biggest games on the planet.
League of Legends drives success of MOBA genre
League of Legends stands out in part because it may arguably be the very first original game released to truly fit into what we now understand to be the increasingly
popular MOBA genre. Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas are a very particular type of game genre that carry out competition between two opposing teams of players on a map. These games test a mix of competition, tactics, and quick reactions, a potent combination that has proven equal parts popular and durable over the years.
While League of Legends was certainly among the first full releases to focus on the genre and its new ideas, it wasn’t actually the origin point for any of it. That distinction belongs to
Blizzard release WarCraft 3,
and more specifically a modified game mode titled
Defense of the Ancients.
WarCraft 3 was a real-time strategy game that featured prominent hero units who could gain in power as they accrued experience points to level up their abilities, and gold to purchase powerful items. Defense of the Ancients was a
user-made game mode
which emphasized these heroes by giving each player control over one such character and teaming them up against an opposing squad of players. It was a dynamite success, inspiring myriad clones and, eventually, an entire genre of games.
But while League of Legends wasn’t the first to bring about these concepts, it was certainly
effective in executing on them. Early developers at publisher Riot Games had a clear idea of what they wanted to accomplish with the creation of League of Legends, and it would be hard to argue against their success given the runaway popularity achieved by their iteration on the MOBA formula.
LoL incorporates esports sustainably
Just as impressive as the long-term success of League of Legends as a game is the continued success of the title’s esports scene. While esports has known multiple peaks and valleys over the years, Riot Games has consistently managed to maintain the prominence of LoL esports. This has been accomplished through an emphasis on
regular regional play
and
sustainability.
Most esports and competitive games at the time used a circuits system, scattering major tournaments for the best teams across the year. Instead, Riot divided the world into separate playing regions. Each region has its own
competitive league
in which the best professional teams play weekly. The best teams in each league are then brought together for an
annual World Championship event
at the end of the competitive year. This allowed for domestic fan followings to develop across such regions as
Korea,
China,
Europe, and
North
and
South America. Fans would closely follow the teams in their region, and from that familiarity would feel invested in cheering them on when they clashed with teams from other regions at the game’s biggest international event.
This basic blueprint has continued to prove successful for Riot Games over the years, though it has expanded and been modified with time. In response to the success of the World Championship, Riot introduced a second international tournament in 2015, the prestigious
Mid-Season Invitational. In 2025,
First Stand
was added to bring LoL esports to three international events per year. Once again the scene was enhanced and this indirectly expanded the opportunities for
League of Legends esports betting. In the meantime, the regional leagues have spread out to include
more regions and lower levels, solidifying their identity.
The basic formula remains the same, however.
Encourage fan support on a domestic level, and then carry that support and interest over to
the global stage. It’s a formula that continues to power League of Legends esports, and looks set to enable it for many years yet to come.
At Win.gg, our coverage of LoL esports spans from the broader competitive updates and their impact on the scene to in-depth high-profile match previews with team analysis, head-to-head analysis,
LoL betting odds
sense-makers and predictions. All of these based on the insights of our experienced esports journalists.
League of Legends
League of Legends patch 9.17 to nerf Qiyana, buff Pantheon, more
By
Syed Mujtaba Naqvi
League of Legends
SK Telecom T1 starts LCK playoffs run with victory over Afreeca Freecs
By
William Davis
League of Legends
Eat Like a Pro cooking show features LEC players and coaches
By
Olivia Richman
