League of Legends Message Board older than one year ago

League of Legends is the DotA-inspired free-to-play game that has taken the internet by storm. It's also taken away a lot of time from a few of us at IGN, and for that, Riot must be punished. At 5PM PST tomorrow we will be playing against Riot Games in a match to showcase the latest champion to be added to League of Legends, Lee Sin, The Blind Monk. Both the IGN team and the Riot team will feature the champion, but the rest of the team makeup is under no restrictions...

PSN users and League of Legends players have demonstrated the power of really easy participation in charity initiatives. From March 19 through March 31, the PSN charity drive, which allowed users to donate to the Red Cross directly from their PSN wallets (and get a special theme as thanks) raised ¥109.6 million ($1.3 million) worldwide for Japanese earthquake relief.

Riot Games diverted 100 percent of the proceeds from sales of the discounted "Champion Akali" character and a special Nurse skin to charity from March 21 through March 27. As a result of this initiative, Riot raised over $160,000 for the Red Cross. Display those Nurse skins and PSN themes proudly! ("Display your nurse skin proudly" sounds really creepy out of context.)

As many of you are aware, on the afternoon of March 11th, Japan experienced one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded followed by hundreds of aftershocks. The resulting tsunami smashed into the Eastern coast of the island nation, leaving thousands dead, over ten thousand missing, and causing bill...

Companies, organizations and individuals connected to the games industry continue to come forward with offers of support for the ongoing rescue and relief operations in Japan. We'll be collecting the latest opportunities to lend a hand in end-of-day roundups like this one as they're announced.

Head past the break for details on the today's happenings. If you'd prefer to donate to the efforts directly, you can always do so through the American Red Cross (www.redcross.org).

Riot Games has announced that a new mode has been added to League of Legends. The new Co-op vs. AI mode allows players to team up against an opposing group of computer-controlled opponents. The mode features "newly overhauled" AI and two levels of difficulty, and still awards players with XP and IP (points used to make in-game purchases).

Riot's Travis George promises the AI will "put up a fight" and will use "coordinated teamwork and advanced tactics." In case you don't believe him, Riot posted a video recap of a recent match played by its own staff, in which the people who made the game lost handily to their own creation. Find the video after the break.

If you're unfamiliar with Riot Games and its incredibly successful free-to-play game League of Legends, then you're probably not a PC gamer. Their game, a multiplayer online battle arena where two teams try to destroy each other's bases, borrows heavily from the Warcraft III mod DotA (or Defense of ...

Last year's "focus," if you can assign such a thing to the Game Developers' Conference, was probably Zynga and its Facebook games, but for 2011, there was one company that kept getting brought up in the hallways and various panels in San Francisco: Riot Games. Not only did the makers of free-to-play MOBA League of Legends clean up at last year's GDC Online awards, but last week, the Riot booth was constantly surrounded with developers, all wanting to get in on one of the quickest-growing companies around.

Riot CEO Marc Merrill kindly sat down to chat with Joystiq about the game and the company, and we talked about the recent acqusition by Chinese giant Tencent, why Riot is growing so fast, and what's next for the game affectionately dubbed LoL. And yes, LoL players, we asked about Magma Chamber and the Mac client.

IP earned per game has been reduced.

You get 58 IP for losing at 55 (down from 75 for any normal/ranked loss)

You get 30 IP for losing at 30 (again, down from 75)

Winning an hour-long game nets you 95 IP (down from 100 for any normal/ranked victory)

Winning a 25 minute game gets you a trifling 70 IP (again, down from 100)

Winning an eleven minute IP farm practice gets you only 31 IP (down from 75 IP for any practice victory)

New champ costs 6300.

Nothing else matters. Riot is greedy as *crag*.

Get furious with Maokai.

Riot Games has confirmed that a majority of the company was bought by China's Tencent, putting its stamp of approval on rumors of the deal last week. Brandon Beck, Riot's CEO, is quoted as saying that "Tencent's investment will provide our talented team of designers, developers and community staff with additional resources to focus on innovating around League of Legends and launching new projects that push the boundaries in the gaming space."

Financial Times has a nice analysis of the deal -- it sounds like this agreement will help both sides, as Riot will not only get that nice cash infusion of a rumored $350 million, but also invaluable assistance and insight for what it was already hoping would be a nice overseas adoption. And Tencent, of course, gets to lay claim to League of Legends and any other titles that Riot developers, along with the huge microtransaction-based revenues that go along with them, both here and eventually overseas.

Plus, this is a sign of the growing trend of Eastern publishers picking up Western companies to develop content for the large audiences over there. Chinese publisher The9 recently bought another Blizzard spinoff, Red 5 Studios, for $15 million, and Japanese firm DeNA picked up iOS developer ngmoco for $400 million as well. Western audiences are big, but Eastern audiences are bigger and, as a result, there's high demand for well-developed games in that market.

China's biggest Internet company, Tencent, has reportedly acquired a majority stake in Los Angeles-based Riot Games for the sum of $350 million. Tencent has already acquired a number of other Western properties, including Crytek's free-to-play FPS and Take-Two's NBA 2K Online, and also runs the QQ messaging service, boasting over 600 million-plus users. Riot makes League of Legends, the free-to-play DotA-style multiplayer title, and has said it will stay in Los Angeles and continue to "aggressively" hire through 2011.

This deal likely won't affect the day-to-day of League of Legends (or any other titles Riot has under development), but given Tencent's contacts and assets in China, Riot will likely get a lot of help in spreading its games to players overseas. The transaction is still subject to regulatory measures, but is expected to close within 30 days.

In this patch, there weren't really any changes

Except Soraka's heal was nerfed AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAa

BUT WAIT

HOLY SHIT, +80 ARMOR AT RANK 5

THAT IS PRETTY SILLY

Get enlightened with Karma.

#mods A YouTube takedown and a call from a top lawyer for a major games publisher notwithstanding, what happened this week to the programmer leading a fan-made StarCraft role-playing game must be the secret hope of many a modder. More »

#pc Here's a tip, budding customer service representatives of the world: if you're going to abuse your powers in a video game and treat your customers like dirt, don't do it while you're live-streaming the game. More »

Riot Games has fired a customer service representative who live-streamed his misuse of administrative powers during a League of Legends bout. VE3D reports the employee verbally abused a player and inappropriately banned him. Riot Games' community relations director Steve Mescon announced today the employee is no longer with the company and it will be reviewing internal policy and training procedures to "prevent such incidents from happening in the future."

Another incident for the employee-related community relations nightmare file.

#misbehavior The people running the video game League of Legends knew they had a problem. They had the same problem that makes much of the Internet unpleasant. Too many people were being jerks online. They're hatching a novel solution: citizen justice. More »

Those sands weren't going to butcher themselves.