Patch 3.6 brought with it visual updates to Trundle and Sejuani and also a new hero, Lissandra of the Freljord. She’s a powerful mage who has a number of stun abilities and a passive that turns hits into free spell casts.
It would be well worth learning her ropes.
The first stage of the League of Legends Championship Series has concluded, and this weekend 12 of the LCS’ s 16 teams will compete in the Spring Playoffs for a share of a $100,000 prize pool ($50,000 for first place) and, for eight of these teams, a last-chance to avoid relegation.
The European division playoffs begin Friday the 26th at 2 PM UK / 9 AM Eastern, while the North Americans begin play at 11 PM UK / 6 PM Eastern. As usual, you can watch the streams live at the LCS website.
As Riot Games continue to roll through their roster of heroes giving each a visual update as well as tweaking their abilities to balance them with all the new heroes that have released since their entry into the game, they’ve detailed the changes coming to Sejuani, the Winter’s Wrath.
This includes more clothing and a bigger wolf/tusk/bear thing.
Riot have revealed that there are regularly more than 5 million people playing League of Legends concurrently online. Holy crumble, that’s a lot of players. That’s more than Dota 2, which recently became Steam’s most played game of all time, with a comparatively piddling 300,000 concurrent players.
That’s truly a ridiculous figure and that’s before you take into account how much that number has grown since October last year.
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The fourth week of the League of Legends Championship Series, the “Super Week" was a real test of whether or not League fans could get too much of a good thing. With 20 matches apiece in the North American and European divisions, following all the action in the LCS was a test of endurance and commitment. I was still catching up on matches throughout Monday, seeing what I’d missed while distracted by things like sleep and sustenance.
Riot are definitely setting up some local servers for Australian players as part of their newly-formed Sydney studio. The news came via a thread over on Riot's forums where country manager Oceania answered a few questions about what the new studio would mean for Aussie players, among other things (detailed below) he confirmed that Riot "will release servers [in Australia]."
The tremendously popular MOBA League of Legends is now available to play on the Macintosh, with the open beta taking signups right now. Developers Riot Games say that the Mac's client is "fully native," which quite literally means it blends in with the locals or, in other words, has the same features and service as the PC client. If you're a Mac player, you'll benefit from the same bug fixes, updates and additions as everyone else, and at the same time.
This is a monstrous week for the League of Legends Championship Series: both the North American and European divisions are playing 20 games this week, and the action starts today for North America with 12 hours of League. The first game, CLG versus the surging Vulcun team, starts at 11 AM Pacific (2 PM on the East Coast and 5 PM in the UK). You can watch on Riot's Twitch stream.
We are three weeks into the League of Legends Championship Series’, a six month long League of Legends competition hosted, organized, and produced by Riot Games. While the LCS is still undergoing development as Riot’s production gets more sophisticated and adds new features, the scale of the endeavor and the control Riot exert over it are breathtaking. It’s unparalleled in PC gaming and eSports history: the developer of what is possibly the most widely-played PC game in the world is managing every aspect of the eSports they created. It requires massive investment in every stage of the process: high-end production, great casters, team salaries, and a multi-million dollar prize pool.
The result: and eSport that makes sense. If you’ve ever wanted a perfect entry point into the eSports scene, the League Championship series is it.
MLG have revealed details of their upcoming League of Legends tournaments that will be making up part of their Winter Season Championship. The matches are broken up across two events. First off is the North American Summer Promotion Qualifier taking place in February which sees 16 teams competing for one of the four qualifying positions. Those four then win a place at the Pro Circuit Winter Championship taking place a month later in March.12 months without a support champion and now we get two almost back to back? Don’t even think of complaining. Riot has just given us a soul-stealing lich that wields Just Cause’s grappling gun, and that combination is every bit as fun as it sounds.
Another day closer to Christmas and another Yuletide themed update for a game dear to our hearts. Today's benefactor of festive cheer is League of Legends with its Snowdown Showdown event; it brings new costumes and, more importantly, lets you gift items and costumes to other players.
Spiders aren't nature's most favoured creation. Their webs make a cupboard reveal to our friends how infrequently we cook, their myriad of eyes all look at us with judgement, and they scare half of the gaming press. So it seems an odd choice that Riot have added Elise, the Spider Queen, to League of Legends. May be the announcement video will swing you.Not content with her human body, League of Legends' newly revealed hero Elise can change into a massive spider. Her role is split between mage in human form and assassin in spider form. Below, we've more on how Riot are planning on balancing their new hero.
The heroes in League of Legends must really hate patches by this point. Ne'er a month goes by without one of them being slapped about the face with a nerf. Sure, every now and then a patch might come along and give them a boost, but by now they must have grown wary of this false sense of security. One month may be a boost but the next kicks out your teeth. Just, look at what the latest public beta patch does for poor Rengar:
The War Z has received flack for being very similar to Day Z, some calling it a simple clone. Whether or not that's the case, it looks like they've been copying Riot, makers of League of Legends. The War Z's Terms of Service make explicit references to League of Legends' currency system and there's evidence suggesting Hammerpoint have redacted even more explicit mentions of the game since their copy/paste job was discovered.
Get big enough, and you’ll become a target. Riot Games, makers of League of Legends, have suffered a series of attacks which have overloaded their servers and forced games to ‘die’. Riot has taken measures to prevent this from happening, and while games should now survive the DDOS attacks, lag and disconnects can still occur. 
Historically, League of Legends has tried all sorts of sticks to beat its grumpy community into being nice. The Tribunal system stands as one of the more effective ways to harness the righteous indignation of your community by having them crowdsource punishment in return for in game currency. Even then, they’ve still got a problem. So they're trying a carrot: by rewarding nice players, rather than just punishing the bad.
The top two teams in MLG’s League of Legends Summer Championship, Curse NA and Team Dignitas, have been disqualified for collusion after the event’s final.
Last week when we got our first fleeting glimpse of Rengar, our Phill pointed out that “big dishevelled white lion creeping out in some grass" has jungler written all the way through it like a partially-concealed stick of rock. In Riot’s latest champion spotlight, they’ve defined him as a “melee assassin, fighter, and jungler".
