S3 Jungle Changes?

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     As everybody is well aware, Season 3 of League of Legends is approaching. Riot employees have officially announced many changes they are making to the jungle. They stated that with the way the game was at the time, they did not like how the jungling role was restricted to tank/support characters. Another aspect they felt was to toxic was how aggressive and how much influence the jungler had early game. Because of how easily junglers could clear the camps, they could wait by a lane for an opportunity, give their teammates a kill, and then snowball that lane which almost always resulted in victory. Approaching this, Riot has decided to do multiple things about the jungle. First of all they are changing the way leashes work, and by that, they are removing them entirely. Jungle monsters no longer attack the first person to aggro them, they will attack the nearest person to them. On top of increasing the stats of the jungle monsters, this is going to make the jungle a much scarier place. We won't see boots and potions on every jungler anymore, almost every jungler is going to have to start with a different item set in order to survive in the jungle. This is going to slow down the early game and force it more towards the laners ability. The biggest thing that struck me, was the fact that the gold and experience rewards are going up for the camps. Does this mean we will see champions like Tryndamere, Gangplank, and Master Yi show their faces in the scene again? Allowing characters to integrate back into the game would be a fantastic change for Season 3, as of right now, I'm sure everybody is getting tired of the same old meta. A lot of complaining has been going around the forums about people claiming that the suspected changes will make the game far to passive. Have faith everyone, Riot will definitely set things through, as long as they keep Morello away from the buffs and nerfs. 

The Shadow Isles

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     Recently Riot Games has released a remake of their old Twisted Treeline map with a new and improved design. This map has taken the Twisted Treeline name, yet changed the theme and design entirely. The new map is based off of the lore of the Shadow Isles, which according to Riot Games is a place full of nightmares and mysteries. A handful of characters have their story based off of the shadow isles, but none more so than the Leagues newest character Elise. In the picture above you can see a top down view of the playing field, it has be revamped to remove the toxidity that came with the old map. Matches in the old map often lasted much longer than they were intended to, most games ran roughly 50 or more minutes. What was intended in the old map were games that were around 30-40 minutes long. Due to the design of the old map, the games often became completely boring and were highly unpopular with the community. This new map has a lot more to offer and is a nice change of pace compared to the slower pace of Summoners Rift. Multiple things really stood out to me on this map, despite not playing it before the rework.
     The abundance of bruisers in this map was astounding. Everybody played a strong bruiser, and if you got one particular character *Darius* you were pretty well guaranteed to win the game. People such as Jax, Olaf, Lee Sin, Singed, and Rumble are the types of people you will see in 90% of the matches you play. After doing a couple of round alone to get the feel of the map, I decided to get a team together and tackle the ranked field of this map. We did pretty well considering it was two in the morning and we were all incredibly tired. We lost one more than we won, but the players I was with were not the standard members on my team, but were the substitutes. Although we did not have the synergy our normal team would have had, we held our own and won a fair share of games. Barely under the 50% win rate, we are going to climb our way up and make a mark on the ladder, it won't be a big mark, but our team will be on there, somewhere.

A fable retold

 Two men, George and Roger, were good friends. One day Roger was driving and knocked out George’s taillights. When George later went out to his car he didn’t notice the damage and was pulled over and given a hefty ticket by the police.

After requesting surveillance camera footage from work, he saw that Roger was responsible. In anger he snuck to Roger’s satellite dish and split the wires to his house and stole every Pay Per View show he could get hold of.

When the dish company sent the bill out, Roger about fainted at the price. Checking his dish, he discovered what Roger had done. The two former friends got into a large fight with each other, never forgetting the wrongdoings each other had committed.

Riot Games Technical Issues During S2 Playoffs

     What you see above is an image taken from the League of Legends Season 2 Playoffs. This particular match raised a lot of issues in the community due to the large amount of cheating claims being thrown around. Team Solomid *left* was scheduled to play Azubu Frost *right.* Team Solomid (A.K.A. TSM) had spent many hours watching games that Frost had been in previously to identify a strong strategy against them. Upon realizing that they could take advantage of an incredibly early aggressive play leading to a snowballing victory, they were ready to start the match.
     Not even a minute into the game and the game was paused due to technical difficulties. According to a vlog by TSM players Reginald and Theoddone, the chats and headsets were having issues and were not operating correctly. Despite these issues the team did not want to approach the officials and disrupt and prolong a game they had been awake for over many hours preparing for. Frost however did not accept these issues, their team captain called a referee over and had the game paused while the problems were investigated. During this pause members of Frost were seen turning their heads towards the large monitor behind the teams to see where the players on TSM were. After the pause was ended, pings where thrown down showing that 4 of the 5 people on TSM were heading towards their 2 team members, which would have been guaranteed kills. Frosts jungler invaded TSM jungle and stole one of his buffs due to the knowledge of where the enemy team was.
   There were multiple other claims in different matches stating that the enemy team was looking back at the spectator monitor which displays everything for the audience. Riot officials claim that having tested the setup, they can say that there was no way that screen watching would have been possible without the officials noticing the action.
   What really rose tempers during the playoffs, were the constant technical difficulties that were occurring. Game clients were bugging and in game chats were not operating correctly, this caused many problems in terms of timing objectives in game easily. Headsets were dying or not operating correctly, cutting out communication with the team for multiple instances. The crowd and announcers were still audible to the players, the biggest thing being the announcers still being heard. Announcers talked about the entire game from both sides of the field, and the players could hear this and take advantage of it. There was one instance where a team was attempting to get Baron, and the sound of the crowd alerted the opposite team to the action and they could react accordingly. On top of hardware failures, there was multiple internet crashes during the games, multiple matches had to be restarted. One match in particular was nearly finished, it was a long game nearly over, that had to be restart because the internet crashed. As a team playing for a prize pool of two million dollars, it is a big deal to have to reset a match. Many audience members such as myself were watching the playoffs from home via the live internet stream, and when the crashes happened, the stream went down.
    Riot Games did a good job handling the situation with the audience in attendance by buying out every pizza place in the area and giving away pizza to the audience, along with bracelets, hats, and photos. However, all of the tournament players, and stream watchers are highly upset with the proceedings and lack of caution taken by Riot Games.

The beginning of Darben Dolanford

     I be tellin ye a tale most amazing today. It be a tale of the cruelest of the skallywags. The swashbuckler who sent many a bilge rats to Davy Jones Locker. Lobsters tried mercilessly to lock our man in the brig. His name struck fear into the hearts of every land lubber within 100 leagues of the drink. Darben Dolanford was his name and he was the best swashbuckling lad I have ever met in me life. 

      Dolanford started his career as the same as any other pirate. He was nothing but a mere shipmate. Before that he ran away from home because his father was always loaded to the gunwalls. His father wasn’t a loving man, and was a bit of a violent wanker. Darben and his mother would hang the jib most nights after the father’s outbursts. One night in particular he shoved poor Darben over the poop deck. Coming home from the market, Darben saw his father with a salty wench. His father and this strumpet were getting “acquainted” with each other, and that was what sparked the boy’s scallywag ways. Darben was not afraid to steal from sutlers and other rapscallions alike. He one day finally ran into his carouser of a father and the harlot he had been with and once again the boy felt that fiery spark.
     Infuriated, Dolanford grabbed his father’s cutlass and thrust it through the man he had disowned and the woman who tore his family apart. Darben dropped the blade and walked to the nearby pub and drowned his sorrows in the largest barrel of bumbo available. He was beyond being loaded to the walls at the end of the barrel. A nearby coat was enjoying his time off when Dolanford fell into him, and that was when things got rowdy. The lobster happened to take offense to what the hammered boy had done and a few of the redcoat’s shipmates grabbed him after they heard the uproar from their pal. Darben, in his drunkenness, tried to fight them to the best of his ability, but he just couldn’t take them alone. Shipmates from the pirate vessel, the Doomwake, had seen him murder his father outside, so they leaped from the balcony to aid the stranger. These men fought the lobsters and chased them out of the pub. Whenever the fight ended Darben saw the pirates walking towards him as he blacked out.
     Dolanford was awaken by the rocking of a ship and the smell of citrus. Leaving the bunk he was in, he ventured out the door and onto the deck of the Doomwake. It was then that Darben knew that he was destined to be a pirate. His decision had been made for him, he was staying with these people who had saved him. He was what he was and he was a legend, but his legacy died with him when his ship, the Doomwake, was sank by Redcoats.