Riot Games, the developer behind the enormously successful MOBA League of Legends, yesterday announced that they have opened an office in Sydney, Australia, to cover the Oceania region.
League of Legends' cursed troll Trundle is getting a makeover, considering his brutish visage this may be a move by Riot to position him as the next face of L'Oréal or it could be just to update him with the times, keep him street, for the kids. If you were worried his trip to Trinny and Susannah might leave Trundle packing less punch when it came to brawling the centre lane then you needn't worry, answering a few questions from forum poster OH NO ITS LU BU, Riot's GrumpyMonkey has explained that the changes are largely cosmetic, though he does hint that his lore too may be altered.
The newest League of Legends champion is available to play now for those of you lucky enough to be members of the Public Beta Environment. Quinn is a ranged carry and her hawk Valor (without the U) brings death from above. Quinns is almost two champions in one, as taking control of her also gives you a chance to take control of Valor.
Click through for a breakdown of Quinn's abilities, plus a video of her trying them out.
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.Our Spotlight units plug content our journalists have made, that our advertisers want to promote. Sometimes the promotion is paid for, but the content they go to is always independent with no client oversight or approval.
Recognising the simplicity in the role of junglers and the low payoff their work recieves, Riot are looking at a way of keeping them useful long into the endgame of League of Legends. Upping mob difficulty and gold drops as well as new support items are just some of the changes being considered for the new season.
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. 
It’s always nice to see Riot mix it up when introducing a new hero, and Kha'Zix, the next addition to the roster of Champions is certainly looking to do that. After ourSyndra review, at first glance this is looking to be a much more straight-forward affair. It’s pegged as the ultimate hunter, a highly evolved Voidreaver that looks more than a little like a classic sci-fi alien who’s also pretty good at the old evolving and hunting. But, from the sounds of things, there’s more to it than that.
Riot’s new eCommerce Directory, Hippalus, has written a lengthy blog post on the League of Legends’ forums detailing exactly how the company is approaching the sale of virtual goods within the game, and exactly what you can get for your money. It’s not a change in how the company does its business in terms of League of Legends, but it’s clarifying something that was worth clearing up.
After all the furore during the MLG Summer Championships, where Dignitas and Curse both played ARAM (All Random, All Mid) during the final of the tournament, giving the players a free for all that was more chaotic than strategic, both teams were disqualified. Curse have issued an apology, and now Dignitas have done the same. 
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”.
The Intel Extreme Masters took place in Cologne during last week’s Gamescom, with eight teams duking it out to see who’ll take home the big prize and also secure themselves a slot in the grand finals of the League of Legends Season 2 Championships, which have a prize pool of over 2 million dollars. Moscow 5 managed the feat, securing their dominance over the League of Legends competitive scene, and also protecting their IEM title, after winning it in Hanover last year.
Progamer team Elohell have been knocked out in the first round of the EU Regional Finals at Gamescom this weekend. The team took part with a substitute after player Hosan received a one-tournament suspension from League of Legends developer Riot for improper conduct before the competition.
I love jungling, me. It places you in a position of anonymity, where your ganks are entirely unexpected, except by the general sense of unease that pervades whenever you’re past the river on your lane. It lets you enjoy feeling like you’re the predator, when so much of League of Legends makes you feel like the prey. Or at least, a pair of sheep knocking horns into one another. 
Today League of Legends takes its biggest step yet towards becoming an organised Esport, with the announcement of developer Riot Games’ own Championship Series - a professional gaming league, supporting teams from Europe, Asia and the US. There’ll be season matches played weekly, streamed and available to watch globally for free.
Over the weekend the MLG Summer League of Legends Arena took place, marking the first time a Korean League of Legends team has played outside of Korea, which makes it more than a little auspicious. Especially so when that team, Azubu Blaze, went up against the likes of Team Solomid, Curse Gaming and Team Black, and came out on top to earn $10,000 and erase all doubt from the minds of anyone who thought that Koreans were only good at commanding a zerg rush. 
It’s easy to think that the League of Legends Esports scene is just teams like Moscow 5 and mTw duking it out on top of a podium while their adoring fans cheer and gasp, like Olympian gladiators locked in deadly combat. But, more and more, Esports organisers like ESL are putting on bigger and bigger tournaments, not in terms of publicity, but in terms of numbers. There’s even a weekly Go4LoL tournament every Sunday that has up to 7,500 players competing globally. 
It’s always a little disappointing when you read that a patch isn’t going to be named after the next new champion, because you just know that that means that further testing is required, and we’re not going to have something shiny and new to play with come patch day. So it is with Diana, the next League of Legends Champion. She’s been relegated to the test server until Riot can finish tuning her. 
In the middle of last week, Riot filed a trademark for something called ‘League of Legends: Supremacy’, and they did it quietly. Without a lot of fuss. Incognito, you might say. You could even infer they sneaked into the trademark office in an overcoat and a fedora, with some thick sunglasses, before looking left and right, then throwing the papers across the room and running out in a panic. You might, but that would be a bit silly, what with ‘Riot Games, Inc.’ all over the trademark forms. But still, it could have happened.
The interesting part is that you have to provide a few reasons for why you want a trademark when you file it. And while Riot might have thought they could get us off the scent with reasons like nautical (Nautilus?), magnetic data carriers (Viktor?), fire-extinguishing apparatus (Firefighter Tristana?) or automatic vending machines (er...Blitzcrank?), there’s still enough meat in there for us to have a good old chew. And here’s the post-chewn mouthful that we’ve come up with.
Because Riot are obsessed with making my life ever so slightly difficult, they went and announced a new champion while I was desperately speeding through the German Autobahns to get back to my PC to post about exciting League of Legends news. And this is quite exciting League of Legends news. We had Zyra, the plant lady Poison Ivy person, last week, and we’ll soon be getting Diana, Scorn of the Moon. 
You sit down in your chair, roll up your sleeves, and prepare for a sit in meal upwards of forty minutes, when you play League of Legends. It’s something to take your time with, enjoy, savour. It’s a slow build to a massive crescendo. It’s French cuisine, carefully packaged and not enough to stuff your face with, but rather force you to take your time over it. 
