The original review was taken down by a disgruntled, butthurt East Asian over supposedly being racist, and so I had to reupload it without mentioning even the smallest creative insult that could be interpreted as a racial slur. However, the fact remains that the destruction of this game was DIRECTLY caused by people of South Korean and Chinese origins, whether you like it or not.

All of my points will be retained, as they are essential to proving why this once great game fell from grace. I think by rewriting this piece, I can also expand on some other areas that I couldn’t do before, which is a net positive. Preamble’s done, now with the actual review:

You may think I’m not playing this garbage anymore, but it has a remarkable power that forces you to come back to it so you can hone your macro knowledge and micro skills. However, Ranked has been, and is currently unplayable, thanks to Riot’s poor design as well as the cesspool that is the New League Fanbase, which comprises almost entirely Korean and Chinese players who are too arrogant to suck in their pride, refusing to commune with anyone during this apparently sacred ritual of a game.

The original casual playerbase has since given up on this game, as Riot Games Korea and possibly Tencent tried to find every possible way to destroy every single good element of this once great game. Believe me, Season 7 was incredibly fun, not because I was still learning the game back then, but because there were so many things to do, and so many people to meet, back when the game was incredibly fun and addicting, and nowhere near as toxic as it is today.

Season 7: Masterpiece of a Season, possessing a wide range of Runes and Masteries to use on your champions, who mostly played very differently from each other, when customizability was at an all-time high. I never played the game pre-Season 7, even though I should have, considering how beloved Season 3 is. Remember maining Yasuo back when he wasn’t a liability who’s forced to build Death’s Dance every game.

Season 8: The game was falling off immediately only half a year after I started playing this game, but it was still really fun. 1v9 battles were frequent in both this and the prior season, as I distinctly remember being 0/14 as Ryze, getting hard carried by my friend who played Master Yi, who was REALLY good at the time with the newly added Conqueror rune that was ruined come the later seasons.

Season 9: This was when the game became average. It was still playable. 1v9ing was nerfed significantly, leading to a terrible transition into the next Season…

Season 10: I remember quitting after losing so many games in Ranked, as 1v9ing was gutted, seen as unhealthy by Riot Games Korea just because it’s really fun for people to express their skill against other players, forcing players to rely on superior teamplay, which in Ranked… sucks because the enemy team is always, and I mean ALWAYS, better than your team. This is not good design, whether you like it or not, because it’s entirely contingent on RNG. Blame the player all you want, but if somebody plays the best on their team and is genuinely trying only to be held back by a team or even teamMATE that won’t cooperate or listen, it’s not the carrying player’s fault. It’s the fault of their team that resulted in a surefire loss. To quote Bricky: “The problem with League RIGHT now, is that one person CANNOT. WIN. YOU. A GAME. They cannot carry you, but one person, can – LOSE you the game.” His words still hold true to this day, how depressing.

Season 11: The addition of Mythics cemented the downfall of League of Legends. The purpose of Mythics was, according to Riot Games Korea, to increase the variety of options available for certain classes of champions, but in reality, it did the exact opposite. Riven, one of my favorite champions, was suboptimal, even useless without Goredrinker. Every single Juggernaut with the exception of Reworked Aatrox and at one point, Sett, gets Stridebreaker, because screw variety. This is a massive lie on Riot’s part, because the ever changing-for-the-worst fandom will always try to find the most meta build for every champion in the game, meaning the options available from before, such as stacking Nashor’s Teeth on melee AP champions and Azir, is now gone. The freedom of items has been reduced to the most superficial and lazy quotas available. The enemy team has too much healing? Get grievous wounds, which would be majorly OP come the next Season. Don’t forget insanely cringy “builds” some champions are FORCED to build in order to be the most efficient, and you can’t play them any other way else you’re trolling. One of my former favorite champions, Garen, is now insultingly boring to play, because he just gets Stridebreaker, Mortal Reminder (WHY THIS?! WHY IS IT THE ONLY CRIT ITEM HE SHOULD EVER GET?! WHAT HAPPENED TO FULL CRIT GAREN?), Death’s Dance and Dead Man’s Plate every game, which is cringe of the highest order, because part of what MADE Garen so fun in the past, is the privilege of messing around with whatever items you wanted to build on him. Because Garen is a simple champion, the onus is on YOU to decide how YOU want to play him. Wanna go the beginner route and build full tank with Black Cleaver as your only damage item? It’s still somehow waaaay more fun than the cringe build. Assassin Garen? Impractical, but your W can make you deceptively tanky while you’re doing insane damage, couple that with Judgment’s innate armor shred so even Tanks should somewhat respect your damage. Sheen splitpushing Garen with Trinity Force, full Crit Garen with immense DPS, the possibilities were endless. This forced streamlining of the game was cited by The Act Man on YouTube, who quit on SEASON EIGHT, when this Mythic garbage wasn’t even an issue. It’s like he felt that this would be the direction that the game was heading since that Season, because once Riot dumbs down Runes and Masteries, they may eventually dumb down items, which was a HUGE part of what made the game fun.

Season 12: A dumpster fire with a solid opening, but the fact that almost nothing changed meant that even Riot Games Korea gave up on League of Legends. Why abandon the game in its worst state? Oh, I know why. It’s because it generates the most toxicity, which somehow translates to generating more money.

Seasons 12 and 13 are almost the same as Season 11, except they’re worse because they heavily promote tank metas, which are unhealthy for the game’s fun factor. From Season 10 onward, the new champions were no longer creative, many of which came across as extremely derivative and lazy. Lillia for example, who stole the name of a background character from Fire Emblem 9 because this game is so original, is a popular champion, but despite being loved by those who play her for her stacking movement speed, has but only one original ability, that being her E, a projectile rolling down the map indefinitely until it hits an enemy unit or crashes onto terrain. Her Passive is a better Brand passive that also heals her for some reason. Her Q is a better, faster Darius Q. Her W is an offensive dash with Xerath’s W tacked onto it, and her R works like Twitch’s E, except it sleeps to consume the mark instead of damages based on E stacks. I forgot a lot of the new champions despite still playing this nightmarish game, so I’ll just end this wall of text (commonly memed about regarding new champions’ kits) with a rundown of Nilah (whose name was also stolen from Nailah from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn), the insufferable Indian woman added in for forced representation in the fictional world of Runeterra. Wow, so we’re doing The Rings of Power again. Nilah’s Passive is increasing healing and shielding to herself and her teammates, which is not what you want in a passive because it’s waaaay too strong, and that’s not even the full passive. The other part of her passive is literally the old Mordekaiser (and before you ask, the reworked Morde is bad) passive, where she gets experience for free just for being in a duo lane (also gives it to her ally unLIKE pre-rework Mordekaiser), meaning she’s much weaker in any role besides ADC. Oh yeah, and Riot called her “melee,” even though she literally has greater range compared to most melees, even compared to Reworked Irelia, ulting Riven, and Viego. I guess Riot’s definition of Melee was to have non-projectile auto attacks – by that logic, Thresh and Vel’koz are melee champions because they can break Yasuo’s passive shield through Wind Wall with a basic attack. Her Q is the 10000th Yasuo Q that increases her range on auto attacks, making them deal AoE damage. It has such a short cooldown that she can theoretically stay in this empowered state forever come the lategame. Her W is literally a better version of a 2009 champ’s most iconic ability: Jax’s Counter Strike. Also, it’s not a self-buff like with Jax – so she can protect her entire team from auto attacks for a few seconds. What genius design. Her E is a 2 charge Yasuo dash, and her R is yet another Diana ultimate. The designers aren’t even trying at this point, even though they used to come up with creative ideas all the time.

Now back to forced representation. K’Sante is a giant African gay man. Akshan is supposedly Indian like with Nilah, but he appears more Persian. Samira is Middle Eastern. Zeri is Filipino. Lillia is supposed to be a deer, but she is literally a Scottish centaur-esque abomination whose core personality trait revolves around literally creeping on random people, at least in the Spirit Blossom visual novel (worry not, we’ll get into those towards the end of review). Viego is Castilian Spanish. Riot even admitted to this forced representation, claiming that monster champions, the most creative in terms of their design and often abilities, sucked because, and they didn’t tell you this specifically – EAST ASIAN audiences have a harder time connecting with them. Like, why do most anime star edgy dudes and oversexualized women? Do something different, like the Dragon Ball series, which is popular all over the world partially because it’s way more diverse in its species, not just human races, whilst retaining common anime tropes.

Riot refuses to tell us that the majority of their audience is either representative of Chinese or South Korean origins. One of my favorite champions before the ultimate nerf to AP was Veigar, who’s not even a human. Speaking of which, China has 27 League of Legends servers in one nation, while South Korea came up with the brilliant idea of forcing you to give them your SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER in order to have an account! That’s insane! In South Korea, most computers come with League of Legends PREINSTALLED because that’s how “important” League is to the people of that nation. I’m aware the game is free, but that’s not a good justification considering how much space the game takes on a computer. But that’s probably a moot point, because South Korea specced heavily on fantastic computer graphics, space, and overall performance, not to mention a WHOPPING ZERO MS JUST TO GIVE KOREANS THE BEST EXPERIENCE. Was this game made in California, or was it made in South Korea? Imagine playing this game in South America, a server famous for exceeding 100 ms for the average player. We Americans have to play with 30-100 ms. Now try playing this game in China and South Korea. These regions have next to no latency, and instead of giving everyone the no latency experience enjoyed by Korean and Chinese players, Riot Games Korea, Riot's headquarters, does nothing about it, because screw the rest of the world. Don't you think that is racist? Back in the glory days, many more Americans played this game, and people played mostly to have fun with their friends in Normals and URF. However, the toxic competitiveness of South Korean culture means taking the game SUPER STUPIDLY SERIOUSLY to the point where Koreans have thrown rage induced fits over losing a match or even losing a 1v1 against their opponent. Sadly, during Seasons 9 (2019) and 10 (2020), I distinctly remember being that same awful person who threw my own hissy fits while I was playing Ranked. This game is incredibly toxic, even to people who don’t want to be angry and unlikable, and I’m not making this up. I developed the South Korean mentality, and it wasn’t until I dropped Ranked forever that I noticed how much better of a person I became. Since then, I always tried to find anything left that was still fun to do, but to no avail, because this game was never about having fun!

It was always about that competitive integrity, but the design of metas and constant tryharding completely goes against that when put into NORMAL MODE. In Ranked, it’s fine to tryhard, because that’s the point of the mode, even though it’s in dire need of fairer matchmaking. Back then in Normals, you could either practice a new pocket pick for Ranked, OR just play a really fun troll build that could be surprisingly strong if played well. All that? Gone. Everyone is now a Korean/Chinese tryhard purchasing Level 30 bot accounts manufactured in China, flexing their mains on poor random people just playing Normal games with their friends trying to have fun, with the supposed "smurfs" refusing to communicate to the losing party partially because they don’t understand English themselves (Faker understands English. He just REFUSES to speak English believing it is an objectively inferior language to Korean. If you thought my review was being racist, I really wasn’t. I’m just pointing out the truth), causing these longtime fans to ragequit thanks to the changing environment. League of Legends is no longer about having fun, it’s now a game of mental drain, tryharding against a team of mentally damaged, arrogantly racist stupidfaces who can’t even be bothered to tryhard in Ranked or Ranked Flex, where they belong. I think Clash, which was first added in 2019, was what spurred this change to the once clearly defined roles of the Summoner’s Rift modes, inviting way more East Asians (only the Japanese don’t see anything good about this game, and they’re right) to kick everybody else out. League of Legends is now a fleeting pool of memories, impossible to replicate nowadays thanks to Riot and their target playerbase: awful Korean kids who dream of being the next Faker, sacrificing their competitive integrity by tryharding in a Normal game.

I remember the time when my friends and I were complimented by courteous enemy players, some of whom even became our mutuals outside of the game, which showed this game’s potential to be a really fun PvP MMO (I know, it’s a MOBA). Being courteous was a common thing in the olden days, and the community was much friendlier than it is now. I remember the time when champion bios, skin bios, and Universe stories had good writing and a pleasant, professional atmosphere. Now, they’ve all been replaced by third rate garbage and cringe writing that appeals only to Korean and Chinese players – no longer subtle and professional. Riot used to support us players by making game modes for the casual audience, with classics such as Dominion and Odyssey. Mainstays such as Twisted Treeline are replaced with the GARBAGE that is Teamfight Tactics, which I will review shortly after reposting this. Speaking of cringe writing, in place of new game modes, Riot instead decided to post badly written visual novels on the League of Legends client. The three of them so far all suck. Spirit Blossom is just a filler fest with uninteresting versions of the champions. The Ruination is ambitious, yet it's filled with tone problems and cringe everywhere. I actually played Another Sky on my channel, but my expectations were exceedingly low, and to the surprise of no one, it sucked.

Seeing the game in this current state after remembering how good it USED to be proves that Riot was willing to do anything to go against its original playerbase, claiming to make up for it with other games which are now much better than their main flagship game, the game they market as the most played video game in the world, when in reality, it is the most successful game on the eSports scene, which has been Riot’s priority for the longest time. It’s incessantly boring to watch, yet Riot keeps shoving it down our throats. They still promoted it back then, but it never felt forced. Nowadays? Screw the players who just want to have fun, because we, the unethical punks at Riot Games Korea who hate fun, need to not only remove everything that made the game fun, but also encourage this toxic tryharding mentality to transform our playerbase into potential professional players so that we, Riot, can have more eSports teams to play on professional matches, thus making us WAAAAAAY more money. Tyler1 is fantastic proof of this. A long time ago, he was literally PERMABANNED for his awful, incredibly reportable behavior, but because he was such a popular streamer, Riot gave him the okay to play again and forgave him not because he got better as a person, but beCAUSE of his toxicity itself. Tyler is being rewarded for his awfulness, and he’s become the face of League of Legends, which is really painful to think about considering League has a colossal player base. It’s about time to Riot on Riot Games for how badly they butchered their own flagship.

Now with all that in mind, I’ve made this game sound like the worst thing ever, but I still play it sometimes, and it can feel cathartic to win that odd hard match that pops up sometimes. However, it is the exception, and not the rule, and the enemy players have since stopped communicating with me or the few of my mutuals who still play this garbage. We play off meta champions against really good players, inviting a sense of intense challenge, and more often than not, we still lose 90% of our matches because we play with 60-90 ms while our opponents in the “NA server,” are actually Korean and Chinese players duking it out with 0-10 ms. Because this game is no longer fun past a single match every so often, I’d have to rate it a 1 out of 5.

...... And it gets worse every patch. Good job, South Korea. Your best contribution to the world was insanely delicious Kimchi, and your worst, was destroying a game that would've been better off an indie title, hidden away from your smarmy, awful ‘gaming’ preferences. That's right, League of Legends started out as a Warcraft 3 Mod, developed by an indie company founded by former Blizzard employees. The moment its riveting gameplay reached the hands of South Korean Pro players, the entire game was slowly getting corrupted since 2011 as soon as Riot would be purchased by Tencent and would be completely shattered come Season 10. Case in point, South Korea and China ruined League of Legends, because with them in control, they can make awful decisions to streamline the game in excessively boring ways, and because these countries are so powerful, nobody can stop them or at least take League back. Clearly, it's like handing a Semi truck with a giant trailer to an infant in the middle of a fast, busy highway.

The worst thing Riot Games Korea ever did however, was SHUT DOWN a fan project known as Chronoshift, named after Zilean’s ultimate. The premise of that project was to allow people to play in whatever patch they pleased, which is an AWESOME concept, and because their developers were actually passionate and ardent, they put their sweat, blood, and tears into making a better game than the real League of Legends. It’s a nonprofit game unlike League, but Riot Games Korea immediately sent mobs of tone deaf, pathetic stupidfaces with infinitely less subtlety than Nintendo, a company famous for going after fan projects and DMCAing them, to threaten a public lawsuit against the fans, who never intended any harm against Riot Games and League of Legends. Why are they so afraid of this project? Well, it’s because Riot THEMSELVES know their game is trash. They KNOW that it’s not fun, that it’s meant to psychologically keep you addicted and playing their awful game. Apparently, Chronoshift was shut down because it would take attention away from League of Legends, which is an incredibly pathetic and arrogant thing to do when you are one of the most powerful companies in the world. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I have lost ALL respect for Riot at that point, and I constantly dream about living in a world where Chronoshift was allowed to exist, because it would grant even more options than ever before, making an already infinitely replayable game even more replayable and fun. However, Riot knew people wanted to have fun and did everything they could to destroy what they knew was the better game. I think that it’s Riot Games who should be sued instead of the poor fans who worked so hard on Chronoshift, because instead of owning up to their game’s problems and fixing them, they double down on making the game even worse, and people WILL eventually quit forever if Riot keeps doing that, which has happened quite a lot, and it’s not just a loss for Riot, it’s also a loss for the player, so because there’s no Chronoshift, no one is happy. Nowadays, I don’t even log on every single day because so many matches are incredibly boring, and it’s all Riot’s fault.

Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck, the ones who founded League of Legends to begin with, seem to have stopped caring about the game beyond just swimming in money, because Riot Games Korea knew that was the only way to keep them appeased. You’d think Merril would be angry over Tryndamere being so weak, considering Tryndamere is literally Merril’s nickname, but nope. Marc’s a literal millionaire.

I'm done with my re-review. It'll probably be taken down again, but I'd rather have someone contact me rather than report me, because a South Korean or Chinese person doing the latter is essentially admitting that yes, they are part of the problem. They're endorsing this game's degradation, because variety is definitely illegal outside of champions and team comps. I highly encourage anyone who disagrees with me to voice their complaints or grievances with my review, because it’s better to criticize a review than beg to remove it, and even then, a lot of people agree with my stance, which compels East Asians to go the easy route, and accuse me of being a racist. I do not condone discrimination of a person by gender, race, or any other means. Vars is a YouTuber of South Korean descent who makes, you guessed it, League of Legends videos, but his content is so good that I couldn’t help but subscribe to him, and I respect him not because he’s a Korean, but because he’s a fantastic content creator. His race or ethnicity has nothing to do with the high quality of his content, and he could’ve instead been an American White man with awful content that I wouldn’t even bother subbing to, so people calling me a racist is unwarranted. Good job, I hope you’re happy. Enjoy playing garbage like this and the even worse Teamfight Tactics instead of playing a better game like Ace Attorney Investigations 1, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Paper Mario 2, Tear Ring Saga, and so much more that I don’t have time to mention. Good. Riddance.