For those of us who love to break out the LoL from time to time, exciting news! Riot Games, the developers of League of Legends, has announced a new gamemode to be released soon in the future!
For those who haven’t played League of Legends, the game is a descendant of the much-beloved Defense of the Ancients mod. DotA basically created a genré that has become known as “tower defense” wherein you select one of a number of heroes to control and then wage war against the opposing force, winning by destroying the other teams towers and finally their headquarters. Valve, of all people, is even creating a sequel to the mod, imaginatively titled DOTA 2.
League of Legends has become a popular modern alternative to the now-dated mod and is arguably the most famous of the genré, beating out competitors such as Heroes of Newerth and Demigod. LoL (as it is affectionately and mockingly known) is a free-to-play alternative that has some great production values and provides a great amount of fun for the casual and hardcore gamer alike.
Dominion, the name of the new mode, is a typical capture-and-hold game, a bit reminiscent of the stellar (and under-appreciated) Demigod. As opposed to classic LoL, where you attack the other team’s towers and eventually destroy the enemy headquarters to win, Dominion forces you to work as a team to capture as many of the five control points as possible. Sharing a similar execution as real-time strategy games released by Relic Entertainment (Company of Heroes and Dawn of War), for each second you hold more control points than your opponent, their 500-point total slowly lowers. Whichever team reaches zero points first loses.
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| Galen, a standard starting hero in League of Legends, standing guard at a capture point. |
Dominion promises to offer faster gameplay, starting each character at a higher level than classic LoL and with more gold for equipment. This translates to faster PvP action as opposed to the grinding and leveling up prevalent in classic. Due to the point system, the developers believe Dominion will also feel less punishing when a character dies: as opposed to classic, where an individual’s success is usually determined by your kill/death ratio, Dominion will promote more team-based play and allow for more “heroic” actions. As one dev put it, “There are no hopeless moments in Dominion, only heroic ones. Dying while holding off three opponents while your team caps two points is heroic, where as in classic League of Legends death is almost always a negative.”
League of Legends: Dominion will be available to play at the upcoming Gamescom as well as PAX so, if you are attending either event, keep an eye out and let us know what you think! Dominion will be released “when it’s ready” but Riot Games says to keep an eye for it soon after PAX and, though League of Legends is a free-to-play game with a plethora of microtransactions, there have been no reports as to whether Dominion will cost any money or if it, too, will be free.
As soon as we have any more information about League of Legends: Dominion, we’ll let you know. I don’t know how many of you play League of Legends yourselves but I’m definitely excited to break out Warwick for some cap-and-hold action!
