PAX 2009: League of Legends hands-on

September 5th, 2009 -- Riot Games' lead creative designer Shawn Carnes was kind enough to sit us down and give-us some hands-on play with League of Legends at PAX 2009.

RTS on Autopilot

League of Legends is basically what you get when you take a multiplayer real-time strategy game, put all the micro-management on autopilot, and then combine it with an offline level progression meta game. As a 'Summoner', your goal in game is to control a single hero and their unique array of special abilities to bolster your AI-controlled troops, smite your enemies,  and destroy their base.

League of Legends is a free-to-play multiplayer game -- so you'll be playing with other human team mates and opponents, each controlling their own hero.

Your AI-controlled troops continuously spawn at a pre-determined rate and in pre-determined numbers. Gold -- which you use to buy equipment upgrades for your hero -- also trickles in continuously at a pre-determined rate.

Out of game, your 'Summoner' levels up the more you play, which will in turn open up additional in-game abilities (spells, basically) that you can use to bolster your summoned champion.

RPG elements

When you start a game, you can choose one of (currently) forty heroes, each with their own special abilities. In addition to their special abilities, each hero has five inventory slots, which you can fill with equipment upgrades (buffs, basically) through the course of the game. 

As your hero gains experience points and rises in level, you can pick one of their special abilities to upgrade, which gives you the ability to further customize your hero to your own play style. Heroes gain levels rapidly  -- a hero can rise from level to level 18 in the course of a thirty minute match -- which, incidentally, is about the average for equally matched teams.

Your hero can be killed, of course, but this merely forces you to wait 15 seconds until it respawns to rejoin the battle. You can even access the "store" and buy upgrades while you're waiting for your hero to respawn.

Fast, furious, focused action

What makes League of Legends so unique is that it offers a highly distilled RTS experience for folks that just want to jump into a game and get straight to the combat. With forty heroes to choose from -- a list that's sure to grow in the future -- and plenty of unique powers and inventory items -- the tactical and RPG elements make for a fun, compelling game.

It's an interesting mix, because it offers a 'core gamer' game experience in 'casual gamer' sized chunks of time. Shawn Carnes said the average game is about 30 minutes.

I joined in a game in progress while Shawn guided me through how to play. Anyone who has ever played any RTS game -- especially Warcraft III -- will feel right at home. I was able to get a pretty good idea of how to play in about 15-20 minutes. (And I apologize to my team, who no doubt suffered while Shawn taught the 'Noob' how to play.)

Fun, free, and fair

League of Legends is slated to release for $29.99, but multiplayer online games are free-to-play. In addition, League of Legends will be supported through micro-transactions. Players will be able to buy early access to new heroes, equipment, or whatever other content Riot Games plans to put out for consumption.

However, Shawn assured us that the micro-transaction system supporting the game will not allow the payers to clobber the free-to-players. 

Essentially, Micro transactions will allow you to purchase early access to new equipment, heroes, powers, or whatever other future content will be offered -- but even non-paying customers will eventually get access to those items, and none of them will allow the payers to smackdown the non-payers.

Overall, it looks to be a successful formula. There was never an empty seat at Riot Games PAX booth.

Learn more at the League of Legends home page