League of Legends

As was mentioned a post or two ago, I've started playing this game called League of Legends.  It's a team based game and is really very fun when you have people to play with.  My ex, Josh, got me into the game and introduced me to two of his friends...well, four, really, but only two that played regularly, that also played League.
When you first start League, they have you play a tutorial game that really confuses you, but if you have friends that are playing, they then take you into Bot/AI games and teach you whatever it was that you misunderstood from the tutorial.  You're given a set amount of RP (Riot Points) with which to buy skins or champs or other things of that ilk.  When you play games, you get something called IP (Influence Points), with which you can buy champs with...maybe runes, but I've never bought runes, so I wouldn't know.  Once you run out of RP, you're out...unless you buy some with real-life money...which I'm not planning on doing.
Every week you have...ten...(?) free champions that you can play, without having to buy and/or own them.  These champions are what you play in the game and each one of them has five skills.  A passive, which you can't control, and four skills that you control via the Q, W, E and R buttons on your keyboard.  The R is known as the 'ult', or 'ultimate' and you can level it up three times; at level 6, 11, and 16.  When in a match, your champion can level all the way up to 18 and you can level up your skills each time you level up, but only until each skill (other than R) has 5 points in it.
In a normal match, there are three lanes (top, middle/mid and bottom/bot) and a jungle.  In a bot match, you have two top, one mid, and two bot.  In a normal match (or a ranked match) you have one top, one mid, two bot, and a jungler.  The role of the jungler is to kill jungle monsters and gank lanes.  Ganking means that they come out of the jungle and essentially ambush the enemies that are being meanie heads to their teammate.  The top laner is typically a bruiser (which means they do damage) or a tank (which means they can take a lot of damage without dying, the midlaner is usually a mage, who scales off of ap (ability power), the botlaners are a support (a champion who keeps other champions from dying and helps to set up kills, while usually not doing any killing at all), and an adc (attack damage carry), who is supposed to do a lot of damage and get a lot of kills.

Below is a map of Summoner's Rift, which is the map that is most typically played on.

Then there's also the matter of items.  Throughout the match, you will generate gold and you will also earn gold from killing minions, which are little things that aren't champions and don't do much damage, but love to have at each other and do little bits of damage to you.  You earn gold from destroying turrets, which attack you if you go in without a minion wave( which is why you kill the enemy minions), which is generated after...I'm not sure how many seconds each, but the first minion wave spawns at 1:30.  With the gold that you get, you can buy items to increase your armor, health, mana (which, for most champions, lets you use your skills that are on the qwer thingy, though some champs don't have them.  It can be pronounce man-uh, or mah-nah...I've heard both.), ability power, attack damage, yatta yatta yatta...ask your skilled friends what to build on your champs, k?  K.

Most items have smaller items that can be built into them and if you can't buy the entire item when you first back/recall (return to base, by pressing the b button, which takes 8 seconds to load you back there and if you sustain any damage your recall is canceled and you have to stay and fight.  This also rejuvenates your health and mana), you can usually buy the little items that are built into it.

There are other game modes where you can play with three people...or six people...or have only one lane...or have only two lanes...it's a pretty in depth game, actually and I never realized how in depth before I started explaining it all....  I haven't even mentioned summoner spells or counter-jungling, or skins...wait, I mentioned skins, but I didn't explain them or anything.  There's a lot I didn't go into, actually.  There are a lot of champions to play and I own a grand total of...23...I think.

So, yes...this is my obsession, although I prefer to play with my friends.  There's also a game mode that is like the normal game mode that I mentioned, although it's called ranked.  For ranked, you play ten games and that's called your provisionals (I've played four so far) and then once you hit ten games, you can begin playing for something called LP (League Points...I think....) and once you hit 100, you get a rank.  There's bronze, silver, gold, diamond, platinum...I think....  And I think they're in that order, as well.  I am currently unranked.  But, in order to even play ranked games, you have to be summoner level 30 and you level that up by playing more games, be they bots, or pvp (player versus player).

Again, this is my obsession.  It is not the reason why I stay up until midnight every night...tonight it's not midnight yet and also, I blog and talk to people and stuff like that...sometimes I try to clean my room a bit....

To the people who hear about League all the time...I'm so sorry.

~Katie