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It's the year 2003 we're talking about. The very first MOBA game has arrived - the first
version of DOTA. The game was created by a mysterious mapmaker whose name hasn't been
revealed yet. All we know about him is his nickname was EUL. He used the map editor included
in Warcraft III. Unfortunately, the game didn't offer a wide range of possibilities during
the process of playing - it included only 32 heroes and 32 items to be placed in 6 slots.
Since the Frozen throne expansion pack was released, DOTA has been greatly improving.
Blizzard decided to release an enhanced version of map editor included in the Frozen Throne
box. This map editor was used by Steve "Guinsoo" Feak in the process of creating the most popular
version of DOTA ever released, Defence of the Ancients: Allstars. You will hear about
Guinsoo further in the clip.
DOTA has been celebrating its popularity and gaining more and more fans ever since. It
is quite easy to notice that it appeared during many tournaments around the world, such as
Blizzcon and World Cyber Games 2005. The reason I talk about DOTA should not be surprising.
This game gave birth to League of Legends. If it hadn't been for mysterious EUL and Guinsoo,
we would have never heard about the Riot Games baby. Now, you're probably wondering what's
Riot Games . The studio was founded in September 2006 by
a 26-year-old, Brandon "Ryze" Beck and a 27-year-old Marc "Tryndamer" Merill. The former is currently
a CEO at Riot Games and the latter - a company president. Merill is also responsible for
studio's marketing department. These two gentlemen came out of nowhere in the world of games.
Before Riot Games was established, Beck had worked as a customer advisor at Bain & Company
and Merill had been into marketing at Advanstar company. Riot's representatives claim that
the studio works on some mysterious game based on sessions. They intend to gather a community
around the game. Moreover, they want games to be perceived as services, not just products.
The 10th of July 2008 was a milestone in the independent studio's development. They claimed
a donation in a form of 7 million dollars from two enterprises -- Benchmark Capital
and FirstMark Capital. It wouldn't have been surprising if it hadn't been for the fact
that Brandon and Marc were rather unknown in game market which is rather shaky and unstable.
In spite of that, Marc and Brandon managed to earn the trust of the representatives of
the two and received financial help. It is worth mentioning that merely 2 years
after Riot Games was founded, they assembled a development team that consisted of people
who created games like Ultima Online, Dungeon Siege, Jak & Dexter, Heroes of Might & Magic,
Neverwinter Nights 2 or Sly Cooper. Shortly after the investment Marc Merill said: "Online
gamers are not shy about asking for what they want. Riot is responding with a commitment
to creating premium titles that focus on gameplay and replayability in order to build deep,
ongoing relationship with gamer communities."
Riot Games hired people working on DOTA as well. Steve "Pendragon" Mescon created a webpage
named dota-allstars.com which was devoted to all the gamers who played Warcraft III
mods. Currently, he is a managing director of public relations at Riot Games. The team
also invited Steve "Guinsoo" Feak to cooperate with Riot Games. He works there as a game
designer and is responsible for creating and designing heroes. So far he has come up with
characters like Fiddlesticks, Karthus, Shen, Mordekaiser, Twitch and many more. To his
credit, a special item, named Guinsoo's Rageblade, was incorporated into the game.
Merrill admitted that he and Beck were giving some thoughts to their own version of MOBA
game a year before Riot officially came to be, as seen in the interview with Merrill
on warcry.com. It is worth to touch upon a quote from that interview, as Merrill stated:
"League of Legends came to be because a couple of very active DotA community members believed
that the gameplay was so fun and innovative that it represented the spawning of a new
genre and deserved to be its own professional game with significantly enhanced features
and around-game services. Riot's CEO Brandon Beck and I co-founded Riot and partnered with
some of the key creative minds behind the creation of DotA-Allstars - Steve "Guinsoo"
Feak and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon to accomplish this mission - and League of Legends was born."
October 7th 2008 is a big day for Riot Games as the studio releases their first League
of Legends build. The game is called Clash of Fates. Let's take a glance at the teaser.
It is easy to observe that the latest one strongly departs from it.
I'm sure that most of you don't actually remember the times when alpha version was released.
Only few received invitations to test it. February to April 2009 was a period when Riot
first officially presented LoL outside the walls of the studio. The testers had an extremely
difficult task to do. The task was to find and eliminate all the bugs and glitches in
the game. Many functions were unfinished or utterly omitted. That version allowed players
to take control over 17 characters, namely Alistair, Annie, Ashe, Fiddlestics, Jax, Kayle,
Master Yi, Morgana, Nunu, Ryze, Sion, Sivir, Soraka, Teemo, Tristana, Twisted Fate and
Warwick. After the alpha tests had been finished, it
was high time for beta tests to begin. Despite the fact that LoL worked pretty well back
then, Riot was still waiting for the players to come up with their opinions. Beta tests
were conducted from 10th of april to 26th of October 2009. It was the period when
twenty three new heroes were incorporated into the game.
Lol now enters the phase of open beta tests, which are conducted for the period of one
week only, until the 27th of October 2009. This is the time when League of Legends has
its premiere and this is where my story ends. It will be continued in the subsequent episodes
of this miniseries. Now you know how and in what circumstances
the Legend was born. In 2006, people in Riot studios couldn't possibly dream of what LoL
achieved by the end of year 2013. I will provide you with more details related to this matter
in the next episode.
Now that you have had a chance to watch the very first video clip of Minion TV production,
it is essential to make a proper introduction. I'm sure you noticed my "impeccable" accent.
It is not so good due to the fact that I was born and raised in Poland. This is also a
place of my current whereabouts. My name is Radek "Goods" Karbowski and I'm 23 years old.
I have been playing LoL since 2011, with minor breaks of course. What's more, I have also
run Nashor TV channel since August 2013. I will publish new materials for you on a weekly
basis. If you liked my video, please subscribe this channel and like me on Facebook - facebook.com/tvminion.
Goodbye and have a nice day!