League of Legends Opens Fantasy Leagues as Summer Pro Games Begin

Mike Hoffman

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Sep 25, 2013
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League of Legends Opens Fantasy Leagues as Summer Pro Games Begin


League of Legends fans can recruit and manage their dream team in the Fantasy LCS beta this Summer.

The professional League of Legends summer games start [a href="http://na.lolesports.com/schedule/"]this week[/a] and now you can create and manage your own team. Riot, creators of League of Legends and hosts of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS), revealed the Fantasy LCS last week. Functioning in a similar fashion to fantasy football (which is popular enough to inspire a [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_league"]TV series[/a]), a group of friends can create a league of 4, 6, or 8 teams they recruit and manage.

The Fantasy LCS ran into problems initially as the servers were overwhelmed with fans eager to start building their dream teams. After a couple days, [a href="http://fantasy.na.lolesports.com/en-US"]the site[/a] seems to be running smoothly. That said, the service is in its beta phase, so you may still run into problems. Also, over the summer games, recruitment is restricted to North American and European teams. Sorry, world champions SK Telecom are off-limits.

It's not surprising that Riot would create an official fantasy league system. Independent groups, such as [a href="http://www.loldraft.net/"]loldraft[/a], have started their own, proving that fans want fantasy teams (loldraft has [a href="http://www.loldraft.net/moving-forward/"]shut down[/a] in response to Riot's official fantasy leagues). It also works as a great cross-promotional opportunity. Everything is handled by Riot: the fantasy leagues, the professional league (LCS), and the game, League of Legends, that fuels this ecosystem.

The League Championship Series Summer Split - the name for the summer "season" - starts tomorrow for European and North American teams. The first game pits Fnatic against SK Gaming, the first and second place champions of the European Spring playoffs, respectively. The North American Summer Split starts Friday, with Spring champions Cloud 9 facing off against Team SoloMid, who placed second in the spring.

Maybe you want to see Xpecial and Wildturtle back together or you think Froggen might get to pull out Anivia this summer. If you want to get in on the Fantasy LCS, get some friends together and head to the [a href="http://fantasy.na.lolesports.com/en-US"]site[/a]. Leagues must complete their draft before the Summer Split officially starts.

Source: [a href="http://fantasy.na.lolesports.com/en-US"]Fantasy LCS[/a]

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maximalist566

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Dota added pennants to support teams - Lol does the same
Dota added fantasy league - Lol does the same.

Are you sure, Riot, that you are the one and only MOBA, as you claim?
 

The Goat Tsar

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My friends who are really into e-sports invited me to their league. I don't care at all about e-sports, so I'll be making all my decisions based off the pro players' facial hair. The more beard, the better.
 

Mike Hoffman

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Sep 25, 2013
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The Goat Tsar said:
My friends who are really into e-sports invited me to their league. I don't care at all about e-sports, so I'll be making all my decisions based off the pro players' facial hair. The more beard, the better.
Yeah, I just recently started watching the pro games, so most of my choices were inspired by only the players in the All-Star games earlier this month. Still, since it's the beta, I don't think I'll feel so bad for losing.
 

Gali

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The idea of Fantasy eSport isn't really new. The fact that developers are implementing it into their games is. Sadly, the developer of my favorite eSport title doesn't really care about new features... Congrats to the MOBA fans.
 

nik3daz

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Is it just me or does the Escapist have a ridiculous pro-LoL bias (over DotA)? These piddly feature additions somehow makes "news" but the fact that the Compendium was released doesn't?
 

Ferisar

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nik3daz said:
Is it just me or does the Escapist have a ridiculous pro-LoL bias (over DotA)? These piddly feature additions somehow makes "news" but the fact that the Compendium was released doesn't?
Player-base size and accessibility comes to mind, although I imagine location and audience is also a consideration (DotA is, as far as I'm aware, bigger across the ocean, which isn't to say that it isn't here, but still) given that the Escapist is based in the U.S.

They're also not really under any obligation to treat these MOBA games as equal in terms of what they report where, it's not really under the job description. To add to that, I'd hardly say that "lack of reporting" about DotA qualifies as bias. They're not making off-handed comparisons here.
maximalist566 said:
Dota added pennants to support teams - Lol does the same
Dota added fantasy league - Lol does the same.

Are you sure, Riot, that you are the one and only MOBA, as you claim?
would love to see where they claimed that, unless we're arguing semantics based around the title of "MOBA" which a lot of begrudging fans of other games didn't want to accept based on association (in which case, it doesn't really apply).

Also, I think you might wanna edit that as "Football adds Fantasy League - Dota does the same." just for consistency, since it's a ludicrous thread of thought :p
 

Mike Hoffman

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nik3daz said:
Is it just me or does the Escapist have a ridiculous pro-LoL bias (over DotA)? These piddly feature additions somehow makes "news" but the fact that the Compendium was released doesn't?
I see where you are coming from. League seems to grab more news at a most of the sites I frequent, so I wouldn't call it a "pro-LOL" bias, but more of an exposure bias. And while we didn't cover the Compendium specifically, I did roll a bit of information about it into [a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/134434-2014-Dota-2-Championship-Has-Biggest-Prize-Pool-in-Esports-History"]this post[/a] regarding The International prize pool. If you have any feedback, feel free to PM me. Thanks for bringing up your concern.
 

nik3daz

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Sigfodr said:
nik3daz said:
Is it just me or does the Escapist have a ridiculous pro-LoL bias (over DotA)? These piddly feature additions somehow makes "news" but the fact that the Compendium was released doesn't?
I see where you are coming from. League seems to grab more news at a most of the sites I frequent, so I wouldn't call it a "pro-LOL" bias, but more of an exposure bias. And while we didn't cover the Compendium specifically, I did roll a bit of information about it into [a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/134434-2014-Dota-2-Championship-Has-Biggest-Prize-Pool-in-Esports-History"]this post[/a] regarding The International prize pool. If you have any feedback, feel free to PM me. Thanks for bringing up your concern.
Ah ok. I can understand that LoL has a larger playership so perhaps news there gets priority around the net. It's just weird seeing events that have equivalents in DotA not making news while LoL ones do (e.g new heroes being released).

Sorry for being a bit blunt and thanks for replying.

One thing I'm curious about: How do the American (or wider western world) playership numbers compare? I'm under the impression LoL has a large portion of its playerbase in China where DotA 2 only launched recently.
 

Mike Hoffman

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Sep 25, 2013
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nik3daz said:
(snip)

Ah ok. I can understand that LoL has a larger playership so perhaps news there gets priority around the net. It's just weird seeing events that have equivalents in DotA not making news while LoL ones do (e.g new heroes being released).

Sorry for being a bit blunt and thanks for replying.

One thing I'm curious about: How do the American (or wider western world) playership numbers compare? I'm under the impression LoL has a large portion of its playerbase in China where DotA 2 only launched recently.
I have no clue. I don't really have the time to search in depth right now, but speaking from experience I will tell you that it can be difficult finding solid numbers. In fact, in a quick search I just did I came up with a few conflicting statements, mostly due to data being collected by third parties (improper sampling) or divulged by invested parties (careful phrasing by Riot or Valve make numbers sound more impressive). Sorry I don't have a better answer for you.
 

softclocks

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maximalist566 said:
Dota added pennants to support teams - Lol does the same
Dota added fantasy league - Lol does the same.

Are you sure, Riot, that you are the one and only MOBA, as you claim?
Pretty much this.

Won't be long before we see a compendium.