What in the World is League of Legends?

As this blog could be interesting even to people who don't play League of Legends, I thought it would be a good idea to make a post about its general game play that could prove useful towards helping such readers more greatly appreciate the Catholic truth that can be illustrated through it.

League of Legends is a video game in the MOBA genre. MOBA stands for "Multiplayer Online Battle Arena," and the DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) series by Valve is the oldest published example. As a genre they are distinguished by many characteristics, but the most important feature for explanatory purposes is the "Battle Arena" itself. The game takes place on a static map where the players themselves (who control "Champions" [aka 'Heroes' in DOTA and HOTS terminology]) fight to accomplish various goals depending on the title or game mode. Within MOBA's all maps tend to have the same conditions for victory: destroy the enemy's Nexus (Ancient, Core, etc. etc.). 

"League of Legends" proper is played on a 5v5 map called Summoner's Rift. The goal is, of course, to destroy the enemy team's nexus, a structure on both of the furthest ends of the map. It's guarded by Towers/Turrets, and the entrances to the bases are also marked by structures called "Inhibitors," each protected by a turret. The map is visible below, and the nexus is the structure below the steps leading from the Fountain, where the champions spawn:

This is an aerial view of an older Summoner's Rift. The basic layout has remained unchanged, though graphically updated, to this day.

As you can see, there are many ways one could go about attacking the enemy's nexus, but you must at least destroy all the structures that lead to it in the given lanes. There are three lanes, Top, Mid, and Bottom, and they all provide a direct path into the enemy's base. 

The nexus, after 1 minute and 30 seconds into a match, spawns tiny creatures called "minions" (aka "creeps") which fight for each team's champions. Most importantly (for this basic explanation), they will attack any enemy Champion which attacks an allied Champion near them, and they help in pushing down the enemy's towers.

Turrets fire on any enemy unit (minion or champion) that enters their range. In addition to being very powerful, they are also well fortified, and you generally need minions to take the shots for you if you want to destroy them. The turrets also act as artificially intelligent teammates, much like minions do. If you do harm to one of their champions, they will attack you, even if your own friendly minions are nearby.

The most effective way to play involves having one champion go top, one champion go mid, 2 champions, a support and a marksman, go bot, and one champion be the team's "jungler"

The jungle is a darkened portion of the map made invisible by the "fog of war." It's just that, a fog. Every square inch of the map is visible and can be scrolled over by any player at any time (The camera does not have to follow your character in a MOBA), but the fog of war makes the jungle and enemy territory invisible, as the the position of enemies within it. The jungler of either team fights neutrally aligned monsters to earn money and experience (experience leads to "level ups" which increase combat effectiveness), just as the laners receive the same by killing enemy minions. This is their primary job, to take advantage of these resources, but their secondary job is to show up in lanes and "gank" for their teammates. A gank is a surprise attack where one team hopes to overpower and kill enemy champions through numbers or another strategic advantage.

The game basically progresses in this way: the laners fight each other, and earn the gold and experience from their minions, and protect their turrets from aggression. The game is moved toward completion by finding various ways to kill, or force away, enemy champions from being able to defend their turrets, so that one team can begin to push them down, and eventually win the game by destroying the nexus.

That's basically it! Anything else I could say is actually deep enough to have some very important Catholic interpretations for future blog posts, and much that has been written has already hinted a lot of future content. As these more game play relevant posts are written, I'll add the appropriate ones to the postscript of this post. Cheers!