League of Legends
League of Legends
“Hopefully Odo will feed”: An interview with KOI Larssen
Tokoni Uti
In our interview with Emil “Larssen” Larsson, Larssen talks rough scrims, his transfer to KOI, and the squad’s upcoming bout with Excel. KOI is off to a grand start in the 2023 LEC season, winning its opening match 1-0 over Team BDS. Before the squad’s next match against Excel, mid-laner Larssen graciously sat down for an interview with WIN.gg to talk about his experience on the team. He opened up …
League of Legends
Riot addresses problems with the Jax update
Nicholas James
Recently, League of Legends developer Riot Games has released a Jax update, giving the champion new abilities and animations, but this Midscope Update hasn’t been without its problems. Riot Games has begun to focus less and less on full-scale Visual Gameplay Updates for old champions, in which both the gameplay, aesthetic, and story of a champion are completely revamped from the ground up. In their place, Midscope Updates have been …
League of Legends
Froskurinn retires from gaming, expresses disappointment
Nicholas James
Indiana “Froskurinn” Black has announced her retirement from the gaming space while expressing disappointment in her peers’ behavior, so here’s what we know about Froskurinn’s retirement. Froskurinn made her debut and much of her brand commentating League of Legends professional play in both China and later the European professional scene. After departing the League of Legends scene, she worked for G4TV as a host and content creator. She most recently …
League of Legends
How to see most played League of Legends champions
William Davis
You can say a lot about a League of Legends player just by looking at their statistics. Especially from the champions they play. League of Legends offers plenty of stats on a player’s profile. Still, a new website has all the players sharing their most played League of Legends champions in a visually appealing way. The over 140 champions in League of Legends are divided into six classes, Controller, Fighter, …
League of Legends
Riot Games admits mistakes, says season 2024 will be better
Nicholas James
After significant backlash over the Season 13 launch cinematic, Riot Games has come out to admit its mistakes and promise that Season 2024 will see improvements. Riot Games has been dealing with fan backlash for its decisions around professional play, in-game events, champion reworks, and the Season 13 launch cinematic. After a lackluster season launch cinematic that eschewed the expected champion-focused storytelling top-notch cinematic for a lazy flyby of Summoner’s …
League of Legends
SEA transfer leaves LoL players annoyed
Nicholas James
After League of Legends was taken away from Garena in Southeast Asia, fans expected improvements but have since been left annoyed by continued issues after the SEA transfer. League of Legends in the Southeast Asia region was previously managed by Garena, a third-party company given publishing control of the game by Riot Games in the area. Repeated misbehaviour, exploitative purchasing behaviour, and complaints from the Southeast Asian community led to …
League of Legends
Are these champ types the League of Legends MMO classes?
Nicholas James
Fans the world over are excitedly waiting for Riot Games’ Runeterra MMO, but what will the League of Legends MMO’s classes be? Riot Games has announced for a while that it is working on an MMORPG set in the world of Runeterra, the fictional realm created for the studio’s MOBA. It’s still a long way away, but lots of information can be inferred about it from Riot Games’ other properties …
League of Legends
Riot Games apologizes for Brink of Infinity cinematic
Nicholas James
Riot Games has apologized for the Season 2023 cinematic, The Brink of Infinity, after fans were vocally disappointed by the sudden drop in production quality. Riot Games has a tradition of releasing a cinematic trailer at the start of each year to hype up the incoming season of League of Legends. Since 2018, this has meant a high-production-quality trailer that focuses on champions from the game inside the fictional world …
“This can’t be real”: Tyler1 reacts to League of Legends Season 13 cinematic
Olivia Richman
League of Legends
League of Legends streamer Tyler “Tyler1” Steinkamp is angry at the new cinematic for Season 13. Riot Games dropped a two-minute teaser for the upcoming Season 13. The cinematic included no story or champions, leaving Tyler1 stunned. He isn’t alone — the majority of the League of Legends community has also responded negatively to the cinematic. On January 10, Tyler1 watched the video live on Twitch. He couldn’t hide his …
Riot Games launches Season 2023 cinematic to fan backlash
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Riot Games has begun Season 13 with its yearly cinematic, but the Season 2023 cinematic has launched to extreme fan backlash due to what seems to be a major step down in production quality. League of Legends fans have become accustomed to incredibly high-quality cinematics that depict the world of Runeterra and the happenings therein at the start of each year. This has been a pattern since 2018, when Riot …
All new Season 13 champions for League of Legends
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Riot Games has announced all the new Season 13 champions fans can expect in 2023, so here’s everything we now know about all of the new arrivals to League of Legends this year. From midscope updates to VGUs to entirely brand-new champions, 2023 seems like it will be packed with new experiences for League of Legends players. Here’s everything we know about new champions, champion reworks, and midscope updates that …
Fans have mixed feelings about the new ARAM
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Riot Games has recently made some massive changes to League of Legends’ secondary game mode, the casual-focused ARAM, and not everybody is happy about it. ARAM is a simple game mode concept, standing for All Random All Mid, and emerged from the early days of League of Legends when Summoner’s Rift was the only available game mode. After becoming its own distinct style of gameplay, the mode languished with little …
Everything we know about League of Legends Season 2023
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Riot Games has released its annual preview video, showcasing many of the changes and upcoming additions to League of Legends for Season 2023. Here’s everything we know. Every year, Riot Games takes the time to lay out a roadmap of all the updates, new champions, and changes being brought to Summoner’s Rift and beyond over the course of that year. The League of Legends developer has released its Season 2023 …
Aurelion Sol rework and release date revealed
Nicholas James
League of Legends
The Aurelion Sol rework abilities and release date have been revealed, here’s everything you need to know. Aurelion Sol is League of Legends’ resident star dragon, but Riot Games decided that his atypical abilities and playstyle have made him less popular than he should be. As a result, the League of Legends developer has taken to reworking the champion’s abilities from the ground up while leaving his aesthetic and theme …
All the changes coming to ranked promos in LoL Season 13
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Season 13 is nearly upon us, with the season starting on January 10, 2023, but there are some changes to ranked promos coming with it that will affect players differently. Ranked promotions have been the subject of community complaints and memes over many years due to their volatile nature. Otherwise known as promos, they are a set series of games, previously a best-of-five, that determine whether or not a player …
When does League of Legends Season 13 start and end?
Nicholas James
League of Legends
2022’s League of Legends season has ended, so with Season 12 behind us, when does League of Legends season 13 start and end? Every year in League of Legends is broken into seasonal categorizations, which bracket a year’s patches, new champions, competitive events, and more. For fans looking forwards to this year’s ranked play opening up, as well as other events, what can they expect? Here’s what we know and …
The best official League of Legends merch
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Want to show off your love for League with some sweet decorations or grab a gift for a Rift-obsessed friend? Here’s some of the best League of Legends merch to grab going into the new year. League of Legends is the world’s most popular game, so there are good odds you’ve got somebody in your life who plays if you don’t play yourself. This means there are also plenty of …
The TSM Triple controversy that got him fired
Nicholas James
League of Legends
TSM’s North American Challenger League mid laner has been fired following massive controversy that involved threats of gun violence, drug abuse, and more, so here’s what you need to know about the TSM Triple controversy. Stephen “Triple” Li is an amateur League of Legends player who plays mid lane, originating from Australia in the Oceania region. After it was announced that Li would be the Challenger League mid laner signing …
What are the new champions in LoL for 2023?
Nicholas James
League of Legends
2022 is over, and 2023 is coming, here’s what we know about the new League of Legends champions announced for 2023. There was a time when a new League of Legends champion would arrive every two weeks, but that twice-monthly schedule is long gone. Nowadays, it’s more common for three to four champions to be released during a given year. Two of the new champions for 2023 have already been …
The best and worst LoL champions by popularity in 2022
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Season 12 has come to an end, so how has the game settled over the year, and who are the best and worst champions by popularity in 2022? League of Legends has over 160 playable champions, but who have players gravitated to more than the others this year? Season 12 saw Nilah, Bel’Veth, Renata Glasc, and K’Sante added to the game, but have any of them cracked the top champions …
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.
