League of Legends
League of Legends
Into the Arcane: Council Archives locks onto Caitlyn
Nicholas James
Into the Arcane has been a browser-based narrative event where League of Legends players have been able to dive into documents concerning their favorite champions from the hit animated series Arcane. After Arcane’s finale on November 20, Riot hasn’t slowed the rollout of announcements, from Project L to the locations for the 2022 World Championship. Caitlyn gets this week’s spotlight in the continued Council Archives showcase, which coincides with each …
League of Legends
Riot reveals Worlds 2021 viewership, and it smashed all records
Tokoni Uti
Worlds 2021 was already known to be the biggest event in esports history, but it wasn’t clear just how much bigger it was than anything else. Riot Games has announced that the 2021 World Championship final reached more than 73 million peak concurrent viewers, an increase of almost 30 million from the previous year. The exact peak reached 73,860,742 viewers, up from 46,067,896 in 2020, while the average minute audience …
League of Legends
Worlds 2022 locations announced for USA, Mexico, and Canada
Nicholas James
Worlds 2021 hasn’t been over for a month and Riot is already announcing the cities that will host the 2022 World Championship, which will be taking place in North America. From Mexico to Eastern Canada, League of Legends esports fans from all over the continent can look forwards to esports’ biggest event coming to their neck of the woods next year. The Worlds 2022 event will begin in Mexico City, …
League of Legends
Arcane Season 2 is coming, is in production right now
Nicholas James
Riot Games didn’t even leave a single day between the finale of Arcane’s third act and the announcement of Arcane’s second season. Arcane has been a smash hit with League of Legends fans and newcomers alike, sporting a 100% critic score and a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Riot Games has announced that while fans will be able to get an Arcane Season 2, it won’t be next year …
League of Legends
Arcane Season 2 confirmed by Riot Games CEO
Nicholas James
Riot Games’ smash-hit animated series, Arcane, finished its first season today but it seems as though a second season is likely to come. The dark, stylized take on Piltover and Zaun has gotten rave reviews from established League of Legends fans, newcomers, and critics alike. After a slight cliffhanger ending, fans are clamoring to know about further seasons, wanting to see more of the story elements left in limbo after …
League of Legends
LoL players already hate the Chemtech Drake, and here’s why
Nicholas James
The 2022 preseason went live this week, bringing a long list of major changes to the League of Legends experience on Summoner’s Rift. And players are upset about one change in particular. The most noticeable changes are the new dragons, Hextech and Chemtech. Each of them brings unique effects to Summoner’s Rift when they take over. While the Hextech drake’s portals got all of the initial attention, Chemtech drake’s camouflaging …
League of Legends
League of Legends enters Magic: The Gathering with Secret Lair
Nicholas James
Magic: The Gathering, the titanic collectible card game from Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, has been reaching out more and more into other worlds with its exclusive Secret Lair series and the announced Worlds Beyond products. The most recent fanciful setting to get its incarnation in Magic is League of Legends’ Runeterra, through new animated show Arcane. Secret Lair x Arcane was announced earlier this week with two variations, …
League of Legends
Faker re-signs with T1 for the 2022 LCK season
William Davis
Big news dropped from the T1 camp today that the legendary mid laner Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok will be staying with the organization for the upcoming season. This was revealed in an announcement by T1, which said that Faker has re-signed with the organization that he has been a part of since he started playing professionally back in 2013. Alongside the news was a short statement by the star player which …
How to play Qiyana in preseason 2022
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Qiyana, the empress-to-be of Ixtal, has grabbed League of Legends fans’ attention after showing up throughout the 2021 World Championship. With the brand new preseason hitting the rift, here’s how to play Qiyana just like the best players out there. From the jungle to the mid lane, Qiyana is a mechanically intensive champion to play and can require lots of careful setup in order to annihilate your opponents. Qiyana as …
How to ward better in League of Legends
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Wards are one of the most important and underutilized tools in a League of Legends player’s arsenal. Being able to have vision of a part of the map that your team isn’t in can be an incredibly powerful gain in information for your team. Learning when and how best to set up vision can be difficult, but there are some useful rules of thumb that can help you get the …
Biofrost joins Dignitas to make LCS return after a one-season break
William Davis
League of Legends
An old face is returning to the LCS for 2022 as Vincent “Biofrost” Wang has officially joined Dignitas as the team’s new support. After one year away from the competitive scene, Biofrost will be returning to the LCS but under a new banner. It will be with Dignitas that Biofrost makes his comeback after playing for TSM up until his break after the 2020 World Championship one year ago. Biofrost …
Why Rekkles’ move to KCorp in the LFL is risky
Nicholas James
League of Legends
This year’s offseason for professional League of Legends has been a wild ride to many fans. Martin “Rekkles” Larssen’s departure from top-tier competition and the LEC to join French organization, Karmine Corp, in the LFL was one of the most shocking. To many fans, this move is very unexpected given Rekkles’ status as a mainstay of top-level League of Legends play in Europe for many years now. Some fans speculate …
LoL preseason bug makes Lulu untargetable due to her Pix passive
William Davis
League of Legends
The League of Legends preseason patch has finally hit the live servers but it unfortunately has brought some nasty bugs with it. Only a few hours after the big preseason patch was released, a game-breaking bug was discovered on Lulu. This bug makes Lulu untargetable and is seemingly triggered because of a bug in the code for her Pix. When the bug occurs, Pix will be the one targeted by …
Who are Mylo and Claggor in Arcane?
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Mylo and Claggor are two of Vander’s adopted children and members of Vi and Jinx’s childhood gang in the new animated series Arcane. As Undercity Nights winds on, more and more fans are turning their attention to the new characters in the animated show. While fans’ first time hearing them may have been in Arcane’s first act, clues have been laid about their existence for a while. From previous clues …
These are all of the new changes for the LCS in 2022
Nicholas James
League of Legends
The top North American League of Legends professional circuit, known the LCS, has announced a sweeping series of changes to the way that professional play will function in 2022. Riot is doubling down on its investment in the amateur and Academy circuits, as well as addressing some players’ concerns about server location with a small scale recreation of the famous Chinese “super server.” During an already volatile offseason, Riot is …
Patch 11.23 brings the preseason to League of Legends
Nicholas James
League of Legends
League of Legends preseason ahead of season 12 is finally here, with Patch 11.23 arriving shortly. The new patch will bring new dragons, items, and runes for players to experiment with and hopefully enjoy. From teleportation gates to returning from death, these new changes will introduce some wild new mechanics to League of Legends. This preseason has had fans especially excited after a relatively tame set of changes made in …
DWG KIA loses ShowMaker, Canyon, and BeryL to free agency
Tokoni Uti
League of Legends
DWG Kia’s roster may look very different in 2022. Just weeks removed from their loss to EDward Gaming in the 2021 World Championship finals, DWG KIA’s Heo “ShowMaker” Su, Kim “Canyon” Geon-bu and Cho “BeryL” Geon-hee have allowed their contracts to expire in order to explore their offseason possibilities. All three players are now free agents and are free to negotiate with other teams. The trio saw their contracts expire …
Riot teases new Debonair skins for Brand, Zed, Draven, and more
William Davis
League of Legends
The next skin batch for League of Legends has been teased and will include new stylish cosmetics from the Debonair skin line. Debonair 2.0 will include skins for a total of seven new champions who will be joining the already existing skin line that is known for its classy high-end look. The receivers of a new cosmetic will be Brand, Master Yi, Zed, Leona, LeBlanc, Draven, and Malzahar. As a …
Ruined King is available now after Riot Forge Showcase
Nicholas James
League of Legends
The Riot Forge Showcase is over, and Riot Games’ publishing arm has given updates on games that are already announced as well as detailing new adventures for players around Runeterra. Riot Forge was announced as a part of League of Legends’ 10th-anniversary celebration as a way for indie developers to get their hands on the League of Legends IP and tell stories about champions who can’t get a story spotlight …
Explore Vi’s backstory through the Council Archives
Nicholas James
League of Legends
As Arcane’s third and final act approaches, fans are getting yet another chance to dip their toes into the vast world of Runeterra by exploring the Piltover Council Archives once more to uncover Vi’s criminal records. Previously, fans were able to leaf through Jayce’s diary and find out details of Arcane’s story in the week between acts. RiotX Arcane is running through its last couple of events in this week’s …
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.
