League of Legends
League of Legends
FunPlus Phoenix knocked out of 2020 LPL playoffs by Victory Five
William Davis
Current World Champion FunPlus Phoenix has been eliminated from the 2020 LPL Summer playoffs in the first round. In its first playoffs appearance, Victory Five achieved the seemingly impossible and knocked FunPlus Phoenix immediately out of playoffs. The best-of-five series finished after four games that looked one-sided for the most part. V5 picked up games one and two without much difficulty. At match point, it was time for top laner …
League of Legends
TSM vs Golden Guardians: 2020 LCS playoffs betting analysis
William Davis
Team SoloMid and Golden Guardians will kick off the 2020 LCS Summer Split playoffs with a match on Thursday. TSM finished the regular season in fourth place, followed by Golden Guardians in fifth. TSM and Golden Guardians played two times in the regular season, and on both occasions, TSM walked away with the victory. In these matches, TSM showed that it has a perfect read on Golden Guardians’ style. The …
League of Legends
Secretlab reveals slick new League of Legends chairs
William Davis
One of the most popular gaming chair brands has just revealed a new series in collaboration with Riot Games, with new chairs inspired by selected League of Legends champions. The new set of chairs features designs inspired by Akali, Yasuo, and Ahri, making it possible for League of Legends fans to get a unique chair with some of their favorite champions represented thematically. In addition to the three champion-themed chairs, …
League of Legends
Sneaky says he wants to join an LCS team next year
William Davis
Popular streamer and former League of Legends pro player Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi said in a recent interview that he is looking to join a team for the 2021 LCS season. The former Cloud9 player will be looking to join an LCS team if the right offer is made prior to the 2021 season. Sneaky took an official break from professional play in January before the 2020 season got underway. Sneaky …
League of Legends
URF vs. Nexus Blitz: Which game mode is better?
William Davis
League of Legends has a variety of temporary game modes that rotate in and out through the year. Some modes go along with a specific event, such as Odyssey: Extraction. This game mode came out in 2018 with the release of the Odyssey skin line. Other modes, such as URF, consistently return. Riot Games released Nexus Blitz in 2018 and brought it back with patch 10.15 and the Spirit Blossom …
League of Legends
Is CoreJJ or Bjergsen more deserving of LCS Summer Split MVP?
William Davis
The 2020 LCS Summer Split is going into its playoffs stage, but which player has been the most valuable throughout the split thus far? The summer split has been hectic with a lot of surprises and many great plays being made, but two players have been extraordinarily important to their respective teams. Those two players are star mid laner Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg from Team SoloMid and former world champion Jo …
League of Legends
How Schalke 04 made a miracle run to the LEC summer playoffs
William Davis
It didn’t look good for FC Schalke 04 after the first five weeks of the 2020 LEC Summer Split, but the team has miraculously turned things around and qualified for the upcoming playoffs. The question being asked now is simple: How did they do it? The state of Schalke was already bad coming into the summer split after a poor performance in the spring. Schalke started the split as expected …
League of Legends
Fans are angry with Faker benching, T1 issues new statement
Steven Rondina
Some fans of T1 have been blasting the organization its handling of star mid laner Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok. Others have taken things a step further. T1 CEO Joe Marsh issued a public statement discussing harassment and even threats of violence that the team has faced in recent weeks. To address this, Marsh called for calm while also threatening to send lawyers after those individuals who go too far with their …
Yone win rates are terrible at release, so what’s the problem?
William Davis
League of Legends
The release of new champion Yone was one of the most anticipated in a long time, but his solo queue win rates are looking very dire early on. Yone was released to a lot of hype around the League of Legends community, and few could wait to play the highly mechanical assassin. Yone has a kit that invites a lot of skirmishing, very similar to his half-brother Yasuo. But while …
Team Liquid cements first-place finish in 2020 LCS Summer Split
Steven Rondina
League of Legends
In one of the most impressive turnarounds of the year’s League of Legends competitive season, Team Liquid has mathematically secured a first-place finish in the 2020 LCS Summer Split. Liquid bested Immortals on Saturday, advancing the team’s record to 14-3 in the summer split. With just one game left in the season, second-place teams Cloud9 and Team SoloMid are unable to catch up at 12-5. This assures Liquid first place …
How Treatz surpassed Biofrost and made TSM a better team
William Davis
League of Legends
The recent addition of Erik “Treatz” Wessén to the LCS roster has paid off in a big way for Team SoloMid. There was a mixed response from TSM fans when the team decided to sub in Treatz for the popular Vincent “Biofrost” Wang going into week 6 of the 2020 LCS Summer Split, but the team has looked completely different since. While Biofrost was an important member of TSM when …
Manchester City star Sergio Agüero just started playing LoL
William Davis
League of Legends
Premier League star and striker for Manchester City Sergio Agüero recently entered the world of League of Legends. Many big sports names have started to stream themselves playing video games and showing an interest in esports, and Sergio Agüero is the next in line. Argüero has been streaming on Twitch for quite a while, playing games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Grand Theft Auto 5, and The Last of Us …
Cloud9 signs IWillDominate after TL departure despite LPP ban
William Davis
League of Legends
Cloud9 has announced the signing of former professional player Christian “IWillDominate” Rivera as their newest streamer and content creator, despite his recent ban from the League Partnership Program. IWillDominate will be joining Cloud9 as a content creator, joining popular figures such as fellow retired pro Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi and former coach and analyst Christopher “MonteCristo” Mykles, who are also making content for the organization. We are excited to announce our …
Riot Games wants ADC item builds more diverse this preseason
William Davis
League of Legends
Riot Games recently presented their preseason 2021 item overhaul in which marksmen will be given more build diversity. The 2020 season is going into its late stages and Riot is slowly starting to tease its plans for the upcoming preseason. The first major preseason report is about items, that will get a big overhaul. Very big new blog about this preseason’s item overhaul:-Healing reduction and grievous wounds-CDR is changing into …
Riot is completely changing items for LoL preseason 2021
William Davis
League of Legends
Riot Games has just announced its plans for the big preseason 2021 item overhaul, in which items for all roles will be adjusted. Items in League of Legends have seen updates most every year, but this preseason seems to include the biggest item update in the history of the game. Riot is looking to target most roles in the game with this update, including reworks to specific in-game stats and …
Donald Trump almost banned League of Legends purchases in the US
Steven Rondina
League of Legends
The video game industry received a major scare from the United States government. American president Donald Trump has been beating a drum in recent weeks in regards to banning popular social media platform TikTok from the United States due to national security concerns. On Thursday, he took action by signing an executive order in an attempt to force TikTok parent company ByteDance into selling the app. Caught in the crossfire …
Fans accuse T1 of disrespecting Faker after Clozer substitution
William Davis
League of Legends
T1 recently replaced Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok with the talented rookie Lee “Clozer” Ju-hyeon in the Korean team’s starting roster, and it’s not something that the esports organization’s fans are very happy about. T1 is known for developing new and talented players that later achieve great success on other teams, but it’s rare to see the greatest LoL player of all time getting subbed out in the middle of a split. …
PowerOfEvil explains why FlyQuest won’t scrim Cloud9 during LCS
William Davis
League of Legends
Recent rumors have offered that LCS teams FlyQuest and Team SoloMid have recently refused to scrim Cloud9, and now we might finally have an explanation as to why. The scrim rumors began after Cloud9 bot laner Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen mentioned in an interview that both FlyQuest and TSM would no longer scrim with him and the rest of Cloud9. The comment ignited conspiracy discussion on social media, with many fans …
League of Legends themed Red Bull cans, tournament arriving
Olivia Richman
League of Legends
Riot Games and Red Bull have partnered up to bring League of Legends fans limited-edition themed cans and a new amateur tournament series. The amateur tournament series, Red Bull Solo Q, is a chance for amateur League of Legends players throughout the United States and Canada to get some new recognition. It will feature 1v1 tournaments across North America that let players “flex those 1v1 sills in a toplane battle …
CLG reportedly benches Pobelter during 2020 LCS Summer Split
William Davis
News
Counter Logic Gaming mid laner Eugene “Pobelter” Park will be benched from the LCS roster in week 9 of the 2020 LCS Summer Split, according to streamer and former professional player Christian “IWillDominate” Rivera. You know I got my ear to the ground with this shit, so let me inform you that for some god forsaken reason Pobelter is benched for this week of LCS — Christian Rivera (@IWDominateLoL) August …
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.
