League of Legends, like most MOBAs, is known for its steep learning curve and sometimes unforgiving playerbase. To enjoy the game, you have to overcome both. No easy feat.
When I first started play LoL, I had never played a MOBA before. I didn't even know what MOBA stood for. I understood the basic premise – five players team up to kill minions, demolish towers, kill inhibitors, and finally destroy the enemy base and win the game while fighting against another team of five trying to do the same. At the insistence of my college roommate I installed the game on my computer, and there it sat for a few weeks, untouched. I finally decided I would give the game a try. I navigated the menus and managed to figure out how to be placed in a match.
I was overwhelmed. There were 10 different champions to choose from, each with five different abilities. I didn't know what any of them did. My teammates threw around abbreviations like “adc” and words like “jungle,” words with absolutely no meaning to me at the time. So I did what any logical person would do given the situation – I picked the guy that looked cool.
That guy happened to be Olaf, a viking-esque champion who can throw axes. I was overwhelmed at the champion select screen, but I was even more lost when I actually entered the match. An item shop with a seemingly unlimited number of item combinations seemed to mock my attempts at understanding.
Once I bought a few items, I didn't know what to do or where to go. Every enemy champion I encountered would kill me, and I didn't understand why I wasn't powerful enough to fight back. I lost game after game after game. My teammates didn't help me feel better about it either. The profanity and insults thrown at me in the game's chatlog made talk overheard on Xbox Live sound sophisticated. Rather than help, most other players made me feel worse about my performance and criticized my actions.
For a long time, that is what League of Legends was to me. I stopped playing for a time, deciding it wasn't worth the time and effort. But something kept pulling me back. There is a stubborn part of me that hates giving up. So I booted LoL up again. I kept playing. I kept losing. But more importantly, I kept learning.
Hundreds of matches later, staring at the victory screen at the end of a match, I had a realization. I knew how to play. I knew what all the items did, and which items to buy for corresponding champions. I knew all the champion roles (support, ad carry, ap carry, top, jungle). I knew what “mia” (missing in action) and “leash” meant. I knew almost all the champion abilities from playing against them numerous times and I had even collected a small roster of champions I could actually play well. In that moment League of Legends made sense, and when it made sense, it became fun. Soon enough I began telling all my friends about this addictive game they absolutely had to play. I got to watch them go from scared and confused beginners to skilled players, just as I did.
It's been four years since that moment, and I've been playing ever since.