League of Legends
League of Legends
100 Thieves vs Evil Geniuses LCS Summer fantasy & bet analysis
William Davis
The 2021 LCS Summer Split playoffs is heading into the second round of games of the upper bracket. One of those critical contests will be between 100 Thieves and Evil Geniuses, and it’s looking to be a very close match. The two teams have been evenly matched so far this season, so this might be the most exciting match of them all this weekend. With two prominent teams facing off …
League of Legends
LoL preseason 2022 brings changes to dragons, runes, and more
Steven Rondina
The preseason has long been a staging ground for League of Legends’ biggest gameplay changes, and 2022 will be no different. Riot Games released a preview of the 2022 preseason updates and it is set to be just as big as in past years. But unlike 2021 and 2020, the 2022 preseason updates won’t just be felt on Summoner’s Rift. Alongside changes to the game, an overhaul is coming to …
League of Legends
Explaining the LCK standings heading into the final summer week
William Davis
The 2021 LCK Summer regular split is coming to a close, with only one week left for the teams to fight for the best possible playoffs seed. All six playoff teams have been locked in, but there are still teams who can surpass each other in the standings and get a more favorable seed for the playoffs. With the top two seeds qualifying directly to the semifinals, there will be …
League of Legends
Riot wants to shift power on Lucian from mid to bot on patch 11.17
William Davis
With League of Legends patch 11.17 coming up later this month, Riot will be looking to put some extra focus on Lucian to shift his power from the mid lane to bot. For quite a while, Lucian has been a prominent pick in the mid lane but has fallen out of priority in his primary role down bot. These times might be over as Riot will be bringing some pretty …
League of Legends
MAD Lions pick up former pro Vizicsacsi as positional coach
William Davis
MAD Lions has made an addition to the coaching staff ahead of the 2021 LEC Summer Split playoffs by adding former professional top laner Kiss “Vizicsacsi” Tamás as a positional coach. The former top-lane star will be the positional coach for İrfan “Armut” Tükek in the top lane to help him get in the best shape possible to defend the LEC title. The Turkish top laner is still fairly young …
League of Legends
Watch Akshan revive his entire team after an enemy pentakill
William Davis
Players in solo queue are slowly starting to become morefamiliar with the unique mechanics of the newest League of Legends champion, Akshan. But a recent play shows why there is still a lot to learn, especially around Akshan’s revive mechanic. In a play that quickly started trending on social media, a Kindred player got a pentakill that ended up costing the game for his team. Usually, a pentakill will mean …
League of Legends
New leaked Arcane trailer shows wholesome moment with Vi, Jinx
William Davis
The upcoming animated series for League of Legends is approaching and fans have gotten another look at what’s to come. In a clip posted on Weibo, fans see a conversation between Jinx and Vi from before they became enemies. The conversation is taking place on a rooftop in Piltover, with Vi telling childhood stories to her younger sister, Jinx. During the fairly short conversation, Vi points out different objects and …
League of Legends
Top Esports’ knight tops LPL Summer kill chart despite shaky split
William Davis
The regular season of the 2021 LPL Summer Split has concluded and Top Esports mid laner Zhuo “knight” Ding stood at the top of the kill chart. In just 38 games this split, knight has racked up a whopping 221 kills. This is by far the most of any player in the LPL despite Top Esports not even playing the most games this split. With well over 200 kills this …
Fans ask why TF Blade is a League partner after latest trolling
William Davis
League of Legends
Popular League of Legends streamer and content creator Ashkan “TF Blade” Homayouni may be in danger of another League Partnership Program ban after a recent incident in solo queue. After being unbanned from the LPP recently, it didn’t take long before TF Blade was once again testing the limits in solo queue during a recent stream. The streamer was playing games on his smurf account when he got upset that …
The 2021 LCS Summer All-Pro teams have been revealed
William Davis
League of Legends
With the 2021 LCS Summer Split playoffs starting this weekend, the three All-Pro teams have just dropped and include players from a lot of different teams. The LCS has been unbelievably close this whole season, with five teams fighting for first place during the recent summer split. This is reflected in the All-Pro teams, with players from many different teams. included. TSM and 100 Thieves ultimately ended up securing the …
Doublelift says he is taking a long break from playing LoL
William Davis
League of Legends
Former professional bot laner Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng will be taking a long break from playing League of Legends after struggling to find fun in the game through grinding solo queue. Doublelift announced this during a recent update in which the former veteran shared his honest opinion on streaming solo queue and how all the fun in playing has been missing since his retiring last year. According to Doublelift, he has …
Jhin scaling and MF’s ult make huge combos in Ultimate Spellbook
William Davis
League of Legends
Ultimate Spellbook is entering its final days on the live server and a lot of fun and overpowered combos in the game mode have been discovered in the past weeks. Some have been more flashy and innovative than others, while some combos have just flat-out crush opponents. A simple but strong combo was recently discovered by a Jhin player that had access to Miss Fortune’s ultimate Bullet Time. Because of …
T1 vs. Gen.G: 2021 LCK Summer betting analysis
William Davis
League of Legends
The second to last week of the regular season in the 2021 LCK Summer Split is right around the corner and one of the key matchups will be between T1 and Gen.G, both of whom are fighting for the best seed possible moving into the playoffs. With only two weeks left, Gen.G has locked in a playoff spot with its current 10-4 record. T1 has yet to lock in a …
EDward Gaming vs. LNG Esports: 2021 LPL Summer betting analysis
William Davis
League of Legends
The LPL teams have entered the last week of the 2021 LPL Summer regular split and many teams are still fighting for the best seeding possible going into the playoffs. Two of those teams are EDward Gaming and LNG Esports, who have both secured spots in the playoffs but have yet to lock in their final seeds. This means a very important match between the two skilled squads, with EDG …
These are the first 2021 LCS summer playoff matchups and dates
William Davis
League of Legends
A long LCS season is coming to a close with the 2021 LCS Summer Split playoffs right around the corner. Unlike in other seasons, this year’s LCS teams have played more games than usual and have had their summer standings combined with the results from the spring split. This leaves the top eight throughout the season for the upcoming playoffs, which consists of a very competitive bracket to decide who …
These are the matches and dates for the 2021 LEC summer playoffs
William Davis
League of Legends
Another intense LEC split is behind us, leaving the six best teams left to play for the 2021 LEC Summer Split trophy and the three European region’s spots at the 2021 World Championship. All teams fought hard during the 18 regular-season games and are now being rewarded with a spot in the playoffs, some with a higher seed than others. The LEC is known for being close in the standings, …
FC Schalke 04 finishes its final LEC split in last place
William Davis
League of Legends
Today marked the end of an era for FC Schalke 04, with the franchise playing its very last game before a planned exit from the game. FC Schalke 04 played its last game against none other than Fnatic but ended up losing the match in a hard-fought game. With this result, Schalke finish the split in 10th place with a 3-15 record. This sticks a fork in the organization’s presence …
New LoL champion Akshan will be disabled for Worlds 2021
William Davis
League of Legends
The newest League of Legends champion Akshan won’t be available for play at the upcoming 2021 World Championship in October. After being released last month, Akshan has hit live servers after a long wait, but fans of professional League of Legends will have to wait quite a while to see him played at a top level. According to the head of LoL esports in Europe, Maximilian Peter Schmidt, Akshan will …
Gen.G reported armed trespassers at esports headquarters in Seoul
William Davis
League of Legends
A very dramatic and serious situation saw the light of day recently when Gen.G revealed that the organization has experienced illegal trespassing at its headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. In a recent tweet, the LCK organization reported that there have been “several unsavory attempts recently to trespass and visit” the Gen.G headquarters. These trespassings have reportedly been directly threatening to the team’s safety and later on been reported to the …
Riot bans accounts made to troll Faker in solo queue games
William Davis
League of Legends
T1 mid laner Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok has struggled all season with troll accounts in solo queue, but now Riot has finally responded to the issue. Around nine accounts have reportedly been permanently banned after being used specifically to snipe Faker’s solo queue games and troll him. This has been a problem this whole season for the T1 superstar, which has set him back a ton in climbing the Korean solo …
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.
