League of Legends Open Beta Lands on the Mac

[MacRumors]

The incredibly popular multiplayer game League of Legends has arrived on the Mac. Existing players can download the game directly, while new users will need to create an account.

The free-to-play League of Legends was originally released in 2009 for the PC. Inspired by the Warcraft III map Defense of the Ancients, players compete in 5v5 (or 3v3) battles controlling a single character. Each week there's a rotation of available characters to play as, and the game is monetized by allowing players to pay to permanently unlock these characters as well as cosmetic skins for them.

League of Legends is also one of the most popular eSports games and many events are streamed live with hundreds of thousands of viewers. Prizes for the highest level leagues can run into the millions of dollars and each team has their own personalities and fan followings.

Going native on Mac has been a big goal for us, and we're really excited to offer the same experience across both platforms. And just in case you're still skeptical, we managed to wrangle an endorsement from this business-savvy professional. We're confident you all know that this man games as he pleases!

The Mac client does everything that the PC client does, meaning you'll get all future features, bug fixes and new content on the same schedule as PC players, but on your native OS. The Cross-Platform team will also continue working diligently to smash any Mac bugs that surface during the open beta.

League of Legends had a private Mac beta client that was scrapped a few years ago, and rumblings of the game returning to OS X have been all over the internet for months now. League of Legends' payment model is designed to be very different from the timer-based freemium games like Real Racing 3. Users can play as much as they want without paying, but they are limited to the characters available that week. Alternatively, gamers can pay between $5 and $10 to permanently unlock a playable character or players can earn in-game currency through gameplay.

To mark the release of the Mac beta, League of Legends has released the iBlitzcrank skin for the character Blitzcrank as well as this promotional video that is full of inside jokes for existing fans:

Article Link: League of Legends Open Beta Lands on the Mac

[johua]

This is awesome! I love league on my laptop now I can play it on my Mac! Long live MordeKaiser!

[nazaar]

Nice!
Looking forward to giving it a play

[Sky Blue]

never heard of it

[Chaszmyr]

About freaking time. I kind of gave up wanting to play this a year ago, though.

[ckelley]

Originally Posted by Sky Blue

never heard of it

Well thank you so very much for that insight. As for those of us who have... this is great news. Can't wait to give it a go when I get home.

[gregd33]

This is excellent news!

[definitive]

Heroes of Newerth > LoL

[Xenomorph]

I've never played DotA or this. How does it "play"?

[StintheBeast]

I've been playing league on my mac since December. I got the beta from boompje.net Nothing new here.

[inket]

Originally Posted by Sky Blue

never heard of it

It's only the most played video game. I suppose you don't like games at all and that's why you never heard of it; in that case your comment is useless and would invite you to think before commenting.

[anzio]

Originally Posted by StintheBeast

I've been playing league on my mac since December. I got the beta from boompje.net Nothing new here.

This is native. Yours isn't. This is new.

[andrewnguyener]

Yes finally!

[mdelvecchio]

Originally Posted by Xenomorph

I've never played DotA or this. How does it "play"?

what are the scare quotes for?

[saotomefirst]

And the best part of this: Now that LoL has came to the Mac, HoN and especially DotA are bound to come soon too Can't wait

[Small White Car]

Originally Posted by Sky Blue

never heard of it

Me neither, which is surprising. I don't play a lot of games like this but I sure read about this kind of thing. I know about dozens and dozens of games I've never played, just from the internet.

I'm not sure how this one slipped through the cracks for me.

Originally Posted by inket

It's only the most played video game. I suppose you don't like games at all and that's why you never heard of it; in that case your comment is useless and would invite you to think before commenting.

I found his comment incredibly useful because I was curious why I hadn't heard about this one. Was it my fault? But apparently I'm not the only one. That was interesting news to me, which is the opposite of "useless."

[1member1]

I moved to mac to stop playing it (didn't play that much but sometimes gaming can be a waste of time) and now it comes to the mac :Z

[microcolt]

Regardless, this is awesome news for Mac, more and more services (Steam, origin, etc.) are supporting OS X for gaming... I like making less decisions when it comes to computer games!

[SnowLeopard2008]

LoL (League of Legends) surpassed Starcraft as the most played video game last year I believe. Either way, it's extremely popular. You don't ever need to spend money on this. Every week there is a new roster of free to play champions, so you're never stuck with the same free to play champions. No champion is ever the "best", it's all about the unique skill sets and how well you "know" that champion. There are always new champions being added too. You can buy a champion so that you own it and can play using it whenever you want with no restrictions. But there's two types of currency, real money and in-game currency earned by winning matches. Winning a match (usually lasts 30-45 minutes, sometimes less if a team forfeits or teams are equal which results in a drawn out match) usually nets you a couple hundred (300+) currency points. The cheapest champion is like 1350 currency points or something. The most expensive champion is like 7000-8000. Remember, no champion is ever going to be the "best". It's all about your gameplay style. Even among pro-gamers, there is variation to what champions they do well with. What I'm trying to say is that even if you spend a **** ton of money, you won't be a better player. Period.

The other thing you can buy using either currency earned in-game or using real money are champion skins. Skins are basically like themes on an iPhone. They add zero function but add visual flair. Skins are basically visual effects, clothing worn by champions, the colors of their hair, etc. They don't do anything except look cool. A champions skills, spells, abilities, attacks, etc. anything functional is not affected by using a skin.

This is a game that scales well economically (i.e. spending money) as well as across different types of gamers. Some pro-gamers who used to play Starcraft (and II) have switched to LoL. It's not graphically stunning like Crysis or Skyrim. It's not stupidly gimped like Real Racing 3. It's a game that all people enjoy regardless of gender, age, etc.

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Originally Posted by saotomefirst

And the best part of this: Now that LoL has came to the Mac, HoN and especially DotA are bound to come soon too Can't wait

HoN is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. I don't know about DotA.

[Navdakilla]

My PC gamer friends play this constantly.

I tried it once but didn't really give it a fair shot. I'll download and actually try it this time

[Sky Blue]

Originally Posted by inket

It's only the most played video game. I suppose you don't like games at all and that's why you never heard of it; in that case your comment is useless and would invite you to think before commenting.

The most played video game ever? wow! Sounds amazing.

[dbyway]

YES!!!!!!!!!!! I can finally get rid of my Windows partition!

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Originally Posted by Sky Blue

never heard of it

It's the #1 played game in the entire world... double the amount of players of WoW.

[Kyrra]

Originally Posted by Xenomorph

I've never played DotA or this. How does it "play"?

I'm a Dota2 player with limited LoL experience.

DotA is the origin of these style of games. LoL and HoN came onto the scene in the last few years to modernize the game style and add their own changes and twists to it. Dota2 is really a recreation of the original DotA, but using Valve's Source engine (as the original DotA was a Warcraft 3 mod).

As I saw one person explain it: "most video games have a learning curve, Dota has a learning cliff". They use a Warcraft/Starcraft point-of-few and similar controls/ui, but you are primarily controlling a single unit. The 5v5 matches feel like 5v5 Counter-Strike games, but controlling your single unit in a Starcraft-style manner.

The amount of depth to Dota is astonishing when you really start looking at it. At least for Dota there are around 100 heros to choose from, each being unique. So the combos of heros that each team chooses greatly changes the play of each match. Then within each game you level your heros up and buy items (starting at level 1, maxing at 25, and this is done for each match). Whoever kills the enemies base first wins.

The meta game around hero choices, what heros counter other heros, what items to pick, which hero's to group together when fighting... it's really deep/complicated.

[bungiefan89]

Oh, I hope that's what the next Mac Pro looks like!

[Haiku214]

YES!!!!!! Finally I don't have to load bootcamp to play LOL! Thanks Riot.