Why LoL Still Dominates After 15 Years

Some games simply refuse to die. Or, as the song goes, Legends Never Die. For League of Legends, this has certainly been the case so far.

While many games, even hugely successful ones, have their moment in the spotlight and then fade out, LoL has grown tremendously over the years, reaching a player base of 130 million.

Sure, the number might be a bit inflated smurf accounts but it’s still huge. We can probably safely assume that close to 100 million people play this MOBA, more than 15 years after its release.

Here are several reasons why LoL is special:

Great Game Design

League of Legends has a very appealing design that mixes beautiful visuals with enchanting music and highly enjoyable gameplay. 

Every single game is unique and will leave you wanting more. Winning is fun, losing is motivating. It can be painful too sometimes, especially if you’ve worked hard for 30 minutes only to lose because of one silly mistake made by a careless teammate. But for the most part, it’s bearable.

High Complexity

The game offers players numerous ways in which can they be creative. With 170 champions available and hundreds of items to choose from, LoL’s replayability is practically infinite.

Once you have chosen a role, you can specialize in it and the process takes thousands of hours. Even individual champions require 500 – 1000 games to fully master. Because of this, you simply cannot get bored playing LoL. If anything, you will feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of options given to you by Riot Games.

LoL Is Fun With Friends

Many players stick with LoL because they have a lot of fun competing alongside friends. This game can be very enjoyable when communicating with others via Discord or TeamSpeak and deciding in advance what champion combinations will be used.

The process of collaborating with others in a way that leads to success is very addictive and can successfully replace day-to-day interactions if needed, at least at the emotional level.

LoL Changes Frequently

League of Legends doesn’t stay the same. There are new seasons, new champions, new items, and new metas being introduced quite frequently by its developer.

When a game never becomes stale, it’s hard to get bored of it. After each major change, players feel inspired to try new strategies and discover new builds that might give them an advantage.

Getting Good Feels Good

LoL allows players to get good at something. For some people and especially the youth, this might be the first time in their lives that they encounter the path to mastery and get to see what happens when you persevere for thousands of hours.

At first, everyone is bad at the game. But as you accumulate hundreds and then thousands of games, you gradually improve. 

After a certain point, it’s hard to give up everything you’ve learned just to try something new. Your own time investment and mastery, which increases the likelihood that you will win next time and have a great experience, makes you want to come back.

Although you can’t see your LoL MMR, you can approximate it using a lol mmr calculator. But more importantly, you can see your rank and your Elo, and can experience your mastery whenever you play a game and make the right decisions.