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League of Legends: Dominion ready for summoning
Less than a week after entering a random-timing public beta, League of Legends' Dominion mode is now available. "Nearly a year in the making, League of Legends: Dominion represents the largest and most ambitious update to League of Legends since its launch in October of 2009," Riot stated in its release announcement. "League of Legends: Dominion is the latest example of our ongoing commitment to bringing you the best of the MOBA genre in new and innovative ways." Dominion tweaks the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre of "attack a base" by shifting the action to several capture points. Those who've played Battlefield's Conquest mode or most any other game's "king of the hill" will catch on quickly. %Gallery-129944%
League of Legends: Dominion enters limited beta, playable now
The eagerly anticipated League of Legends: Dominion mode is almost upon summoners, with Riot Games flipping the switch on the game's "limited beta" today. "Over the coming days, we'll be opening testing windows on our platforms during off-peak hours, each of which will be prefaced by a forum announcement to let you know you can and participate," Riot announced a short time ago. "And if you miss one of the testing windows, remember that there will be plenty more opportunities to help test Dominion as we speed toward launch!" The first test window is right now for "approximately two hours." There's no word yet on when Dominion will officially launch for League of Legends' millions of players. %Gallery-129944%
Freemium isn't free: 25 to 34 year olds spend the most on extra content
The "freemium" business model has infected a wide swath of the gaming universe, from casual Facebook games, to shooters, MMOs and all manner of mobile offerings, and for good reason: These games hemorrhage cash money. That free-flowing river of skrill has to come from somewhere, though, and the mobile research group Flurry seems to have found an answer. Drawing from a sample size of approximately 20 million users across 110 thousand Android and iOS apps, Flurry has determined that people aged 25 to 34 are responsible for 49 percent of the money spent on content in freemium titles. Interestingly, users between the ages of 18 to 24 played the most, contributing 32 percent of overall playtime, but they actually spent far less than their wizened elders. No specific dollar amounts were referenced, but we have a feeling they'd be fairly significant.
Riot Games shutting down League of Legends for Mac
Bad news for League of Legends gamers on the Mac -- after years of teasing about a Mac client for the popular free-to-play title (I even saw it running way back when), Riot has decided to pull the plug on plans to make the game Mac compatible. There has been a beta client floating around for quite a while now, and there were even servers to run with it. But those servers are going down, and Riot has made the decision to put the Mac client on hold indefinitely. Because of this, and even if you have the software, you won't be able to connect to the game from the Mac version. Bummer. Riot says it can't "guarantee the quality and frequent updates we deliver today on the PC and are expected by our player community" on OS X, and while there is a long-term plan to make the game available on the Mac, it's not going to be ready any time soon. If you do want to play the game on the Mac, you can load up Boot Camp and install the Windows version. But a native client is a no-no for now. Fortunately, Mac users are going to get reimbursed somewhat: Everyone who has "a majority of your logins come from the Mac client," and is able to log on between September 2 and 6, can click a reward button will get a Champions Pack for free.
League of Legends will shut down its Mac client Tuesday, so play now
Riot Games has officially canceled OSX support for League of Legends, concluding after 13 months of work with TransGaming and Mac beta-testing. The Mac beta client will be shut down "indefinitely" at 12 a.m. on September 6, this Tuesday. LoL Mac-ers, if you didn't have plans for Labor Day on Monday, now you do. Riot hasn't eliminated the possibility of a Mac version in the future, but it won't be any time soon. "We realize our current approach regarding the Mac platform won't guarantee the quality and frequent updates we deliver today on the PC and are expected by our player community. We will continue to investigate the opportunity to provide player access on the Mac Platform in the future that aligns with our service and content update standards. We are committed to building a solution that will work on the Mac in the long run, but it will take some time." Mac beta testers who used the store can keep their accounts open and continue playing on PC, or receive a full refund on their purchases, which would close the account entirely. As consolation, Riot will give all Mac testers a code to unlock the Champions Pack, which can be redeemed if a majority of your logins come from the Mac client and you enter the Store before service is shut down Tuesday.
Watch Major League Gaming's Raleigh Championship Sunday, live on Joystiq!
Smell that? That gentle, wafting scent in the breeze? That unique blend of concession-stand popcorn, USB and pwn? It's a specific, enticing fragrance that can only mean one thing: It's time for Major League Gaming finals, and you can watch it all live on Joystiq! All day today, teams from around the globe will be competing for thousands of dollars in prizes across 4 games: Starcraft 2, Halo: Reach, Black Ops, and making its MLG debut, League of Legends. It's an exciting day for pro-gaming, so strap on your beer hat and big foam finger and head on through for the day's full schedule.
eSports draw record viewership numbers at Gamescom
Last year, 254,000 individuals attended Gamescom. This year that figure grew to 275,000 and amongst those attendees, 223,000 stopped by the ESL (Electronic Sports League) arena to check out competitive gaming live in both StarCraft 2 and League of Legends, as well as several console titles. Perhaps more impressive was the ESL's live feed, which was visited by 500 percent more people than last year. Turtle Entertainment, the organizer of ESL at Gamescom, is clearly happy with the turnout of what was the first stop on the ESL Pro Series Winter season 2011, Germany's national video game league. "The response of the visitors in our hall was overwhelmingly positive," said Turtle Entertainment's managing director Ralf Reichert. "Gamescom has proven once again that eSports has thousands of enthusiastic followers, not only in the world but also in Germany."
Massively's guide to PAX 2011
What can be said about PAX Prime in Seattle, Washington that hasn't been said already? Everyone knows that it is the largest public gaming event in North America. Attendance totaled 67,600 last year, not including press and exhibitors. And this year, even more gamers will descend on the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. The latest and greatest games -- released and unreleased -- will be available for public consumption. Developers will mill around the showroom floor, answering your questions. Not to mention that no one will look at you funny because you play video games! This year, MMORPGs really stand out in the crowd. Seattle native NCsoft has a huge presence at the convention, borrowing a theater just to showcase its games. BioWare comes armed with its heavy-hitter, Star Wars: The Old Republic. And free-to-play titles like Firefall, Lord of the Rings Online, and Wakfu promise to strut their stuff at this year's PAX. Punch past the break as Massively outlines the must-see booths for MMO fans. And don't forget the panels, including a couple of MMO spotlights for PAX Dev, the gathering of fans and developers at Sheraton Seattle Hotel on the 24th and 25th.
League of Legends second season esporting $5M prize pool
The second competitive season of League of Legends begins this fall, with a five million dollar prize pool on the line, reportedly the largest in eSports history. "Players will certainly step up their game in season two – so it's only fair that we step up ours," says Brandon Beck, CEO of Riot Games. The League of Legends season one championship drew in 1.69 million online viewers, with 210,000 unique viewers for the finale. The game itself now has over 15 million registered players, with over 3.6 million monthly active users (over 1.4 million playing daily). Riot Games will also add the new League of Legends mode, Dominion, sometimes after PAX.
The Lawbringer: What WoW can learn from other microtransaction models, part 2
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Two weeks ago, The Lawbringer took a look at the EVE Online currency model, what happens when value is dictated by the players, and the successes and failures that Blizzard can learn from when moving forward the revenue model for WoW or any other secret MMOs in the pipe. This week, part 2 discusses the batch currency model, where players purchase one set of currency and earn another. While WoW is not likely to move to this type of currency in the near future, Diablo 3 has already embraced it with the real-money transaction auction house, which eschews a purchased currency for, well, currency. The prime example in recent gaming history of the successful batch currency model is Riot Game's wonderful League of Legends. I've been a Defense of the Ancients fan since the early days of the mod, and the fact that such a simple concept has evolved to a genre in and of itself is remarkable. Combined with the fact that there are 15 million accounts, millions playing all over the world, and a ridiculously successful microtransaction model for customization and convenience items, League of Legends has got the world captivated. But why is World of Warcraft not something that could benefit from selling its own currency, or, rather, why would Blizzard never let it happen? Let's find out.
League of Legends Dominion mode previewed on video
Perhaps our hefty preview of the upcoming Dominion mode in League of Legends wasn't enough. Honestly, for die-hard League of Legends fans, we doubt anything would be. With that in mind, check out a preview video put together by Riot itself. And yes, there is gameplay. So much gameplay.
League of Legends Dominion preview: The squared circle
League of Legends recently reached a total of 15 million registered players. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that all of those players have played their matches on just two different maps, one made specifically for Defense of the Ancients-style 5v5 play, and one made for 3v3 combat (there are a few other maps in the game, but they're used for training, not full game modes). That's about to change. Last week, Riot Games invited Joystiq over to its headquarters in Santa Monica, California, to see a brand new game mode for the online competitive title. It's coming along with what Senior Producer Travis George calls "the biggest update we've ever made for League of Legends," a new content release subtitled Dominion. Dominion is a brand new gametype and is especially notable because all of the games in the growing DotA (or MOBA) genre have basically used the same premise: two armies of minions fight with equal strength across a series of parallel lanes, and player champions fight minions and each other to gain ground and win the battle. Dominion, however, is a brand new set of rules, combining elements of the DotA genre with scoring, much more akin to EA's Battlefield games or Call of Duty's Domination mode.%Gallery-129944% p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 14.0px; font: 11.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #141414}
League of Legends boasts 15 million registered players
League of Legends has officially surpassed the 15 million player plateau. That means it's time for a smattering of silly stats from the marketing department to help illustrate just how large that number really is. In a new press release published this morning, Riot Games touts everything from its peak concurrency numbers (500,000), to its daily player totals (1.4 million), to the headline-grabbing registered players figure. While those numbers are quite impressive, Riot doesn't stop there. "An average of ten games of LoL start every second of every day," the company says, before adding that "gamers spend 3.7 million hours in-game [...] every day." The title's first season of competitive play is coming to a close, and Riot CEO Brandon Beck has a hearty thank you in store for the title's faithful. "We're committed to continuing to match their dedication with our relentless focus on ongoing enhancements to the player experience with great new features, content, and polish – and we have some very exciting surprises in store just around the corner," he says.
Riot CEO Brandon Beck on forging success with League of Legends
Riot Games has announced player numbers for its extremely popular League of Legends title, and they're pretty phenomenal. With over 15 million registered players, the Defense of the Ancients-style online multiplayer RTS can now brush shoulders with games like Blizzard's World of Warcraft (12 million players), Call of Duty (13 million players on Xbox Live), and The Sims (16 million copies sold), as one of the biggest PC games in history. Granted, as a free-to-play title that relies on microtransactions for revenue, League of Legends has more access to a wider audience than games driven by retail sales or subscriptions. But there's no question at all that this is a huge and exceptionally popular game. Joystiq got to talk with CEO and co-founder of Riot Brandon Beck about today's announcement, and he says that even the company was surprised by how big LoL (as it's called in shorthand) has gotten. "The growth of the League of Legends community far exceeded our expectations," he tells us. "We are proud of the numbers we are hitting on our platform and are confident our fantastic team can continue to grow and evolve our PvP.net technology to handle even greater numbers."
League of Legends surpasses 15M registered players, 1.4M play daily
Riot Games announced today that League of Legends has over 15 million registered players, with 3.6 million monthly active users and over 1.4 million playing daily. The company also revealed its peak concurrency (number of those LoLing at the same time) as over half a million players. This is the first time the company has publicly shared its user numbers since launching in October 2009. The League of Legends Season One Championship drew in over 1.69 million online viewers, with 210,000 checking in for the final match. Riot Games plans to expand LoL in 2011 to Southeast Asia and China, home of its parent company, Tencent. Riot also made headlines recently with the human acquisition of Mass Effect 2 lead gameplay designer Christina Norman, who has taken a lead designer role. Check out more coverage of today's announcement in our interview with Riot Games' CEO and co-founder, Brandon Beck.
Mass Effect gameplay lead Christina Norman now at Riot Games
Christina Norman, lead gameplay designer for Mass Effect 2, announced on Twitter today that she has taken a new Lead Designer position at League of Legends developer Riot Games. Last week, Norman announced that she was leaving BioWare and moving to Los Angeles, but didn't disclose the identity of her new employer until today. Preston Watamaniuk, Mass Effect series lead designer, will take Norman's place at BioWare. "I'm looking forward to working with Riot on innovative new approaches to game design and game development in the rapidly-changing video game market," Norman told Gamasutra. League of Legends and Riot are emblematic of these changes, as a free-to-play, microtransaction-based game developed by a company recently acquired by China's Tencent.
League of Legends splits European servers into two regions
Riot Games made the decision this week to split up its European server into two separate platforms in order to help out with lag and other issues. The company is now running both "EU West" and "EU Nordic and East" servers on the Old Continent, each offering League of Legends matches and services to their various regions. Feedback on the official forums is mostly positive (and the split should provide faster games to those on either of the new servers), though a lot of players seem concerned that there's another division between the two regions. You can read the full press release after the jump -- Riot says each server is designed to support "hundreds of thousands of concurrent players." Just between us, though, if they could send a little extra lag to Evelyn players, there'd be no problems with that.
Fifty days of 'lulz' over: LulzSec disbands
The secretive hacking group known as LulzSec has announced that it is formally disbanding with the completion of its planned 50 days of mayhem. Among its many targets that it has hacked, including government sites, LulzSec struck at The Escapist, Bethesda Game Studios, League of Legends, and EVE Online. LulzSec sent out a final statement, which said the group was a band of six hackers who had planned 50 days of attacks from the beginning. Now that the time is up, the group plans to fade into the shadows. The group hopes that others will continue with these illegal activities: "Behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us." While a suspected member of LulzSec was arrested a few days ago, the organization denied that he was part of the collective.
League of Legends championship draws nearly 1.7 million viewers
With the League of Legends Season One Championship over and done with, Riot Games has announced that the event's live coverage drew more than 1.69 million viewers. The final match between team FNaticMSI and Against All Authority brought in 210,000 unique viewers by itself. We're not experts in eSports viewership, but that certainly sounds impressive. In case you missed the final matchup (spoiler: Against All Authority's nexus doesn't survive), you can watch a recording on the League of Legends championship website, which also features loads of other coverage, including full match recordings and highlights from each day of the tournament.
League of Legends shows off new champions, spectator mode at E3
Riot Games' League of Legends is one of the biggest free-to-play titles around -- it started off as a spiritual successor to the old Defense of the Ancients mod, but has since grown, strictly by word of mouth and organic growth, up into its own industry. Riot hasn't actually announced player numbers for the title yet, but this is a huge game online, consistently landing in the top spots on Xfire and other services' most-played lists. If you've never played (and why not? It's free!), the basic structure of the game has you controlling a champion on a real-time strategy-style battleground, and Riot has been releasing one of these new champions every few weeks for quite a while now. In the game's booth at E3 last week, we got to hear about three of the upcoming new champions, as well as brand new feature to the game designed to get even more players involved: A spectator mode.
