League of Legends has over 100 million monthly active players, ~8x larger than Dota 2

When you make a great game and give it outstanding support for more than 5 years it pays off.

It's one of the best multiplayer games ever. It's surprising in a very good way that a multiplayer game with actual depth is basically the biggest game in the world. Too bad the community is filled with the worst kind of trash people, but that's hardly the game's fault.

I hope the rumored fighting game is real. Scammy Capcom tried forcing a F2P model into their 60$ uncompleted demo but it failed miserably, fortunately. The market for a true F2P fighter is still there, if they release it soon they'll take it forever.

Indeed it is. It helped establish this f2p genre we have now for better or worse. we could all probably write a long list bout all the pros of the game.

just wish it included basic things like sandbox mode (to help train last hitting and experiment with powers).

That's what I meant bout everytime I log on (bout once or twice a month)- I do not see any new meaningful features. But granted, it really is just a luxury item.
 
I am glad I quit the game this year. Toxic community. Toxic patches. Toxic LCS.

People just stay with this game because it's like heroin. Once you are in this game you cannot play anything else. Also this game runs on toasters so of course with it's addicted effect it's the most played game. Doesn't cost anything, runs on anything and has goals and cool skins. And also so many waifus.

It's rare that I see something positive said about LoL in communites. Game was really fun from 2009 to 2014, 2015 was a shit year, 2016 is okaish.
 
That's a shame, considering the extent to which they nickel & dime their players and how Riot shares, relatively, almost none of the wealth with professional players. Also, Dota is the objectively better game by nearly every imaginable metric.
 
Who are these people? What country are they mainly based in? What forums do they use? How on earth do I know almost nothing about a game 100 million people play?

I read Neogaf and Eurogamer every single day and yet I couldn't name a single LoL character. Couldn't recognise a screenshot. That's amazing to me. Is it it's own little bubble or am I just selectively blind?
 
They know that the system isn't prefect. We'll probably get a large scale rework after the new client is released.

That's great to hear, can't wait to see what they cook up, seems they understand the shortcomings of the present system.

I think what sucks about runes, mastery and summoner spells is they're locked with levels so you have to level up to get access to all of them, ideally you are pitted against same level players, but often they're either smurfs or teaming up with their higher level friends and you're at disadvantage.

But once you are lvl 30? the idea of customizing some stat bonus to accommodate my playstyle is pretty good.


Even at lvl 30 I don't like it. It's the old wow talent system all over again. Everyone just pick the best setup and guides, in the end there's no real customization. I prefer the new WoW talent system and HotS's system for customization, where you are presented with 3-4 different choices per tier that are each very different and impactful instead of +2 armor or +0.1% crit.

Who are these people? What country are they mainly based in? What forums do they use? How on earth do I know almost nothing about a game 100 million people play?

I read Neogaf and Eurogamer every single day and yet I couldn't name a single LoL character. Couldn't recognise a screenshot. That's amazing to me. Is it it's own little bubble or am I just selectively blind?

If you only visit gaf and eurogamer I'd say the latter tbh.
 
I am glad I quit the game this year. Toxic community. Toxic patches. Toxic LCS.

People just stay with this game because it's like heroin. Once you are in this game you cannot play anything else. Also this game runs on toasters so of course with it's addicted effect it's the most played game. Doesn't cost anything, runs on anything and has goals and cool skins. And also so many waifus.

It's rare that I see something positive said about LoL in communites. Game was really fun from 2009 to 2014, 2015 was a shit year, 2016 is okaish.

It has by far the most waifus for any game. One day game devs will realize this is an essential ingredient to the game. I literally joined that game due to the waifus and maybe Ekko (cause he's afro american which is super rare in MOBAs sadly)

For example and comparison- Dota 2 only has ONE warrior waifu. Just ONE (Legion Commander)!!! Heroes of the Storm only has two waifus (Sonya & Johanna). Smite has a small handful of female tank waifu (but they have a decent number tho now to think of it with the new Terra hero)

Most MOBA only let waifu be caster and Agility heroes. Rarely do they empower women to be warriors. kinda narrow minded if you ask me. LoL has made great strides in this area
 
I read Neogaf and Eurogamer every single day and yet I couldn't name a single LoL character. Couldn't recognise a screenshot. That's amazing to me. Is it it's own little bubble or am I just selectively blind?

Gaf has it's own Community Thread on the game, pretty active, like many games with community threads, you will miss discussion of it if you never swing by the community subforum.
 
Who are these people? What country are they mainly based in? What forums do they use? How on earth do I know almost nothing about a game 100 million people play?

I read Neogaf and Eurogamer every single day and yet I couldn't name a single LoL character. Couldn't recognise a screenshot. That's amazing to me. Is it it's own little bubble or am I just selectively blind?
Probably 70 million of those are in Asia, I would guess. Don't quote me on that.
 
Gaf has it's own Community Thread on the game, pretty active, like many games with community threads, you will miss discussion of it if you never swing by the community subforum.

Ah. I simply don't use the community forums, so that would explain it. I come here for news and discussions on news, not to make friends or whatnot.

It doesn't create many news headlines, though, huh? I just searched thread titles and it's only had a couple all year. That's amazing for a game with 100m people playing it.
 
That's a shame, considering the extent to which they nickel & dime their players and how Riot shares, relatively, almost none of the wealth with professional players. Also, Dota is the objectively better game by nearly every imaginable metric.

I just consider League of Legends as an incredible, ingenious parody of Dota 2. They make a game which is funny to watch and play because it's not serious (it can't be serious because it's not a real game), and they invite "professionals" and tell them to do funny things like look at the minimap and say stupid things on Reddit. And they do big events just like Dota 2 does, but they purposely fuck it up...it's ingenious. It's really good TV.
 
Teemo makes everything better, not surprise people play LoL. My favorite multiplayer game :D glad it become a behemoth cause it means more Teemo skins for everyone to enjoy.

MthL52P.jpg
 
Ah. I simply don't use the community forums, so that would explain it. I come here for news and discussions on news, not to make friends or whatnot.

It doesn't create many news headlines, though, huh? I just searched thread titles and it's only had a couple all year. That's amazing for a game with 100m people playing it.

Well that just reinforces my original point Riot doesn't add any 'quality of life' content (besides new heroes, skins, and reworked heroes). So there's little reason to post a thread because there's no notable feature to mention

Maybe loot boxes? I guess that was a feature but not something that enriched the game for me. But LoL gaf seems to love the new boxes.

Oh right they are working on the new Nexus gamemode but I've yet to be able to play since its only offered during short windows. gg Riot
 
fair enough. I mean as someone who doesn't follow games like Minecraft, Warcraft, Pokemon etc you still get a sense that they're a big deal. I just don't see this game anywhere but I can definitely accept I'm wrong.

I was really just fascinated that something can get that big without being on console or steam best seller or having a billion tie in products being shoved down your throat. It's impressive.

Why are these perquisites for "getting big"? You cited warcraft so you must be well aware that Blizzard games are huge since Starcraft and don't satisfy your criteria.

Actually, part of the reasons why League (and its predecessor DOTA) became huge is that they do not restrict themselves in your tradition "getting big " rules:

They run on any toaster PCs and is F2P so you do not need any up front cost for consoles or high-end PC.

They do not rely on a third party platform so they can avoid royalties and can do whatever they want with their client and games. (Although I concede that the client was still crap when I stopped playing last year.)

PC gamers are more willing to accept "games with constant updates" rather than "full price yearly franchises with bare minimum updates".

Not to mention DOTA was already huge 10 years ago. League simply took its formula and made it more accessible. It is not a myth why it can "get big".
 
So is this the most popular video game of all time? That seems kind of hard to beat, even for free to play mobile games

All time ? no. Arcade games at their peak were ridiculously crazy. They raked in billions of dollars but its hard to gauge their popularity in third world countries since there weren't proper metrics for them. And even games like Tetris which is on like a million devices , is hard to gauge actual numbers.

Currently it might be based on User activity. Some mobile games might have more users but they surely dont have this level of activity.

It doesn't create many news headlines, though, huh? I just searched thread titles and it's only had a couple all year. That's amazing for a game with 100m people playing it.

IIRC its most popular region in China , so perhaps if you lived there you might see it all the time on gaming news and ads and what not.

Its kind of like how people think Halo is mainstream , but outside of the west it is like a niche product. Especially when compared to F2P stuff like League.
 
Well that just reinforces my original point Riot doesn't add any 'quality of life' content (besides new heroes, skins, and reworked heroes). So there's little reason to post a thread because there's no notable feature to mention

Maybe loot boxes? I guess that was a feature but not something that enriched the game for me. But LoL gaf seems to love the new boxes.

Oh right they are working on the new Nexus gamemode but I've yet to be able to play since its only offered during short windows. gg Riot

More like anything posted would be locked and promptly shunted to community? Does Dota get patchnote threads here? Do hero releases get much time on the front page? GAF is a VERY core centric community, and really does a good effort to shun the hell out of anything out of that model (f2p, mobile, mmo, much of PC gaming...).
 
All time ? no. Arcade games at their peak were ridiculously crazy. They raked in billions of dollars but its hard to gauge their popularity in third world countries since there weren't proper metrics for them. And even games like Tetris which is on like a million devices , is hard to gauge actual numbers.

Currently it might be based on User activity. Some mobile games might have more users but they surely dont have this level of activity.

pokemon go had over 21 million active daily users in US alone. not sure bout now.

More like anything posted would be locked and promptly shunted to community? Does Dota get patchnote threads here? Do hero releases get much time on the front page? GAF is a VERY core centric community, and really does a good effort to shun the hell out of anything out of that model (f2p, mobile, mmo, much of PC gaming...).

I don't recall that being the case since I started (which was after Ekko was added)
 
Who are these people? What country are they mainly based in? What forums do they use? How on earth do I know almost nothing about a game 100 million people play?

I read Neogaf and Eurogamer every single day and yet I couldn't name a single LoL character. Couldn't recognise a screenshot. That's amazing to me. Is it it's own little bubble or am I just selectively blind?
There are a few factors.

1.) The North American popularity is a bit lower than Asia and Europe, so if you live in the US, you would have less exposure (though there's still a ton of players here).

2.) GAF primarily skews toward 28-34+ year old console gamers who are a bit outside the demographoc and age range of people who got started heavily into League. If you see the passion a lot of GAF posters express for fighting games, and the sheer amount of posting they do, that's what MOBAs are like for modern audiences. You will likely see more GAF posters talk about the franchise when Radiant reveals their League fighting game on that note. You can also see the impact of GAF's setup by comparing how much traffic threads about Persona get compared to the traffic Call of Duty threads get.

3.) We do actually have 12 400 page OTs on the game, but they're in the community forum.
 
GAF is honestly a mainly console-gaming forum. I mean, if you looked at the Overwatch OT you'd think the playerbase was actually on PS4.

League is at least vaguely known by, probably has been played by, or still played by the entire 25 and under demographic where I live in NA.
 
More like anything posted would be locked and promptly shunted to community? Does Dota get patchnote threads here? Do hero releases get much time on the front page? GAF is a VERY core centric community, and really does a good effort to shun the hell out of anything out of that model (f2p, mobile, mmo, much of PC gaming...).

LoL usually gets new patches weekly, so it would be tiring to have a new patch notes thread every week, specially since most weekly updates just do minor balancing.

Edit: Furthermore, i think the only time i saw a thread about DotA revealing a new character was because the significance of the new character: DotA 2 had finally finished porting all the old DotA characters and the new one would be the first 100% new to DotA2 character.

LoL have been doing 100% original characters for years, so they don't get such milestones anymore.
 
It has by far the most waifus for any game. One day game devs will realize this is an essential ingredient to the game. I literally joined that game due to the waifus and maybe Ekko (cause he's afro american which is super rare in MOBAs sadly)

For example and comparison- Dota 2 only has ONE warrior waifu. Just ONE (Legion Commander)!!! Heroes of the Storm only has two waifus (Sonya & Johanna). Smite has a small handful of female tank waifu (but they have a decent number tho now to think of it with the new Terra hero)

Most MOBA only let waifu be caster and Agility heroes. Rarely do they empower women to be warriors. kinda narrow minded if you ask me. LoL has made great strides in this area

LMAO
 
pokemon go had over 21 million active daily users in US alone. not sure bout now.



I don't recall that being the case since I started (which was after Ekko was added)

Are you talking about League on GAF? I've been here since 2005, I basically see the barest thread pop up for playoffs, while fighting GAF would fill a 100 pages every tournament with low content posts.

LoL usually gets new patches weekly, so it would be tiring to have a new patch notes thread every week, specially since most weekly updates just do minor balancing.

Something like a meta patch like 6.13, where the game changes enough to warrant content. Hell console patches get posted if it adds like 2fps to the game.
 
It's amazing to me that a game can have 100m players and yet have no mainstream appeal. Not a knock against the game (I'm sure they don't care) but it just seems like an odd phenomenon that something that big can still be so niche.
League has more players than Candy Crush, makes more money than Call of Duty, and gets tens of millions of viewers through E-sports.

What is your definition of niche?
 

You know, there is truth to that, it's sometimes hard to see the DotA 2 champs as something other than "bootleg Warcraft characters".

LoL tries to make less generic, more distinctive characters, even for the ones that actually are bootleg warcraft characters leftover from the original DotA.
 
More like anything posted would be locked and promptly shunted to community? Does Dota get patchnote threads here? Do hero releases get much time on the front page? GAF is a VERY core centric community, and really does a good effort to shun the hell out of anything out of that model (f2p, mobile, mmo, much of PC gaming...).
To be clear, if you want League threads for new heroes or other major new additions in Gaming, by all means.
 
I'm not mad about it. I just notice that basically 'legacy' game thread tend to get locked, so I made an assumption. Thanks for the clarification.

It probably wouldn't be a terrible idea to have threads for character launches and the major patches they make post Worlds.
 
It is also worth noting that the LCS thread is somewhat active on the days that the games are actually being played.
 
all my little nephews play LoL.
i once went to their house and they had this setup upstairs where it was 6 computers in two rows back to back, pretty sick setup. they were having a lot of fun, no anger or anything that you might think of for everyone who thinks that younger people who play these games are full of rage and immaturity.

i watched a little bit over their shoulders and something cool happened and i asked him if he could show me that in a replay after the game, i wanted to see it again

blank faces from all of them like they had never heard of replays in a competitive esports game haha. just messing with them a little bit.

so yea i think if you don't know many high schoolers or college kids those are most of the people playing LoL i'd say. just watch the LCS streams and look for who's in the crowd. do you have regular contact with anyone in that cohort? if not then there's your answer for why you don't know anyone who plays LoL.
 
Last time I played with GAF it descended into arguments and insults lol

TBF this happened to me with both LoL and Dota 2. Although in Dota 2 it was more in-game banter and flaming while the LoL crowd was full on audio chat insults and slurs.

That was a few years ago tho. Probably not even the same people playing currently.
 
People claiming ignorance of anything LoL related must have seen this shit at least?

ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ノヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ノヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ノヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ノヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ノヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ノヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ノ
 
Who are these people? What country are they mainly based in? What forums do they use? How on earth do I know almost nothing about a game 100 million people play?

I read Neogaf and Eurogamer every single day and yet I couldn't name a single LoL character. Couldn't recognise a screenshot. That's amazing to me. Is it it's own little bubble or am I just selectively blind?

This is like a non-sports fan on GAF saying he couldn't name any NBA or NFL players or technical terms or understand any play highlights although he frequents the off-topic discussion every single day.

League, or most popular competitive games, has a community just like traditional sports. It is huge, yet it is self-contained. There are numerous quality discussion or shitposting everyday in its own subreddit or sub community thread in GAF. But once in a while there is a big news (like this) or an important game (like regional finals or international championships), and old and current fans gather around share the hype/discussion. And of course there are people outside the circle who are surprised by this sudden new and huge game.
 
TBF this happened to me with both LoL and Dota 2. Although in Dota 2 it was more in-game banter and flaming while the LoL crowd was full on audio chat insults and slurs.

That was a few years ago tho. Probably not even the same people playing currently.

When people bring up LoL they like to pretend toxicity is a problem exclusive to it and now, you know, rampant in ALL popular competitive multiplayer games.
 
When people bring up LoL they like to pretend toxicity is a problem exclusive to it and now, you know, rampant in ALL popular competitive multiplayer games.
The LoL community is notoriously toxic. Every online game has toxic players to some degree, but LoL is just sort of known for it. I am a big fan of LoL though, and enjoy watching the NALCS, to which I've watched nearly every NALCS game since 2012

I've always loved this guy (original splash art)
garensplash.jpg
 
all my little nephews play LoL.
i once went to their house and they had this setup upstairs where it was 6 computers in two rows back to back, pretty sick setup. they were having a lot of fun, no anger or anything that you might think of for everyone who thinks that younger people who play these games are full of rage and immaturity.

i watched a little bit over their shoulders and something cool happened and i asked him if he could show me that in a replay after the game, i wanted to see it again

blank faces from all of them like they had never heard of replays in a competitive esports game haha. just messing with them a little bit.

so yea i think if you don't know many high schoolers or college kids those are most of the people playing LoL i'd say. just watch the LCS streams and look for who's in the crowd. do you have regular contact with anyone in that cohort? if not then there's your answer for why you don't know anyone who plays LoL.

I am 39. I play every day. I know many people my age who play, played or at least are aware of it. I don't actually think it has a whole lot to do with age.

I honestly can't fathom how people could have avoided it. It has been the number one game for years, the top game on twitch for years and there are regularly front page stories on nearly every major gaming site about the game. Various stages of Worlds have sold out The Staples Center, Madison Square Garden and Sangam Stadium where the World Cup was held in South Korea.
 
I wanted to get into it but every time I play it it just makes me want to go play Dota.

And I'm not even a big a Dota player but LoL just doesn't feel as good for some reason.
 
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