League of Legends: everything you need to know

League of Legends (LoL) is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) team-based strategy game. It is known as one of the most popular eSports games of all time and it has millions of fans from all over the world.

The main goal is to destroy the other team’s base. To start, you begin playing at level 1 and gradually get stronger by gaining experience and new items bought with the gold you earn throughout the game. Eventually, one team will be able to get to the other’s base and make a final push for a victory.

How to play the game

In a standard game, ten players are split into two teams of five powerful champions and battle it out to destroy the other team’s base in a map called Summoner’s Rift. Each base has a series of turrets and waves of minions that constantly spawn. The goal is to destroy the enemy’s Nexus – located on the other side of the map, inside the opposing team’s base.

In order to reach the Nexus, the team needs to destroy the towers located on the map’s three routes: top, middle and bottom. In all three lanes, there are turrets which will attack enemy champions and minions. In the competitive scenario, four of the five players have defined positions according to their route: top, middle, shooter and support, while the hunter keeps busy by generating gold for your team. He travels in the jungle, where the monsters generate more resources for the teams.

Each player controls a single character, also known as a champion. They are divided into 13 regions, and each one has its own league: North America (LCS), Europe (LEC), South Korea (LCK), China (LPL), Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau (LMS), Vietnam (VCS), Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics (CIS), Turkey (TCL), Brazil (CBLoL), Latin America (LLA), Japan (LJL), Southeast Asia (SEA) and Oceania (OPL).

There are national tournaments for each region to win a place in the League of Legends World Championship. Apart from this, there are three other LoL international events promoted by Riot Games: the Mid-Season Invitational (a dispute between the champions of the 1st Split), the Rift Rivals (with the best representatives of the leagues between rival regions) and the All-Star (which brings together the most voted players from each region for duels from the traditional 5 x 5 to 1 x 1).

Game awards

Professional gamers usually win a big amount of money as prizes and are watched and followed by millions of fans all over the world. The prize values have increased in recent years. The 2018 World Championship, for example, had the initial prize of US$ 2.25 million plus US$ 4.2 million that was collected from fans. This additional amount came from a portion of the purchase of World Passes, available during the tournament. The champion received the equivalent of 37.5% of the amount, while the vice champion got 13.5%.

In 2017, a model of prize similar to the one used at The International (the DotA 2 World Championship) was adopted. In addition to the prize given by Riot Games, the LoL developer, the game’s own player base directly contributes to increasing the overall prize pool of the championship through the purchase of World Passes.