One of the great things about doing Game On Aus’s Nuts & Bolts show is watching so many different esports leagues. Seeing how professional players handle games is incredible and makes for really fun viewing. I’ve become a big fan of the LCO, Australia’s premier League of Legends (LoL) competition. Witnessing Peace and Pentanet.GG compete on the international stage at the Worlds and MSI was such a buzz. I feel that having watched for a while now I’ve got a decent understanding of some of the basics so why not give it a go myself? Join me in my journey in Diary of a Noob: League of Legends.
On Friday I downloaded LoL to try it out. I was a bit worried. LoL doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to the toxicity of its player base. A lot of that might be in ranked play but I was still worried that I’d have a bad time with other players.
After playing through the very short tutorial, I launched into my first game. The first thing I did was let my teammates know that this was my first game and to please be gentle with this noob. That’s when a couple of other players spoke up and said the same thing. One of them said they loved the Arcane show that had recently been released and was trying out the game.
Luckily there was an experienced player willing to help. With everything I’ve heard about LoL players I’d braced myself for the worst. I hadn’t considered that they might actually be really nice.
My second and third game continued this trend with a mix of new and experienced players more than willing to help me. In those first few games I had three people add me as a friend because they just wanted to help me.
For the most part I played top or bottom lane, sometimes hopping into mid. These were the easiest positions to learn, hold off the opposing minion waves, push onto turrets when you can, kill enemy champions. Once I was thrown into a support role and was totally lost. I’m very glad this noob never landed a jungler role.
As the night went on games became harder to get into and wait times went up although that was not unexpected. I live on the west coast of Australia, a couple of hours behind the rest of the region. It did mean that the type of players that were still online were more hardcore and not as nice as some that I’d played with earlier.
At the level I’m playing at, it’s really hard to peg back if you start to get behind. A couple of times I was getting outleveled in my lane and if someone wasn’t there to help me I could have been in real trouble. Learning which items to buy and how to generate more gold will be something I’ll read up on as I fell down in that area quite severely. I also need to read up on what support and junglers do just in case I ever need to play that role.
Overall, I had a pretty good time being a noob in League Of Legends. My experience was dependant on they time of day that I was playing so I think if I jump on earlier I’ll continue to encounter helpful players and enjoy my time. I’ll be heading back to Summoner’s Rift soon. I’d call this Diary of a Noob: League of Legends a success.
