In the first patch of LoL, Chen Mo planned out twenty-five heroes, divided into five positions, with each position having five heroes of varying difficulty.
In the beginning, LoL didn't have the distinction of top lane, mid lane, jungler, archer, and support. At that time, there were archers playing as mid laners, which made the lineups and strategies of the random lane very messy.
However, during the S2 era, some of the top teams in Europe developed the 'EU style', which was a split of top lane, mid lane, jungler, and bottom lane duo. It was accepted by Fist and became the official lineups for LoL.
Many people would criticize the rigidity of this lineups, but its advantages were obvious. It provided a recommended lineups for LoL. Under the guidance of the recommended lineups, the players would be able to understand the lineups more easily, and choose a more complete lineups.
It had a huge impact on the promotion of LoL, and from the looks of it, it was the most suitable lineups for the game.
Just like how RPG games had the 'Warrior, Mage, Priest, and Iron Triangle', although it was a bit rigid, it provided the players with a framework that was easy to understand and remember.
For example, when a player asked how to play a certain hero, as long as they were told that it was a mid lane hero, they would be able to guess what the hero was for. However, if you were to tell him that this hero could be carried, assisted, or split, and that it could be played in any way, he would probably be dumbfounded.
Therefore, Chen Mo used the official settings in the first patch to popularize these lineups to the players, using them as a label to differentiate the heroes. Traditional classes like Assassins and Tanks were only used as notes to help the players understand the characteristics of the characters.
In the first patch, Chen Mo planned to have twenty-five heroes as follows:
Top Lane: Garen, Magma Beast, Teemo, Barbarian, Weapon Master
Mid Lane: Annie, Kassadin, Deathsong, Card Master, Phoenix
Jungler: Nunu, Amu, Blademaster, Clown, Wine Barrel
Archer: Lucky Sis, Izreal, Ashe, Rat, Vayne
Support: Soraka, Lulu, Tauren, Harp, Android
Many of the heroes had been reworked. Even the hero's mechanics had been overhauled. For example, Wine Barrel was originally a mid-laner hero, but it was later changed to a jungler.
All in all, Chen Mo wasn't planning on making old heroes. The reason was simple, old heroes were more or less at odds with the LOL framework. They were either not fun or too strong, which wasn't good for the balance and promotion of the game.
Overall, most of the remade LOL heroes were more successful than the old versions.
These twenty-five heroes were chosen after some consideration by Chen Mo. The difficulty of picking them up varied from low to high, and their roles were all different.
Some heroes, such as the five jungler heroes, were hard to see in the professional scene due to their mechanics, but they were easy to pick up. Newbies needed heroes like Nunu and Blademaster to familiarize themselves with the mechanics of the jungler, so Chen Mo included them in the development plan for the first patch.
Moreover, even if it was the same hero, Chen Mo tried to choose different heroes, such as junglers. There were junglers like Ah Mu who relied on team fights, and there were also junglers like Blademaster who tended to be solo players.
Of course, there were many more fun and flashy heroes, but those were left for later development.
Chen Mo planned to release a new patch every two months after the release of the first patch. Each patch would release five heroes at once, giving the players two months to digest the new heroes.
… …
Although the framework for League of Legends had been finalized, there were still a lot of questions about the concept draft.
The biggest question was, why did they have to use a new IP?
Up until now, whether it was Chen Mo's team or Thunderbolt Gaming's loyal players, they all had the habit of talking about Warcraft. No matter what type of game it was, they all wanted to have something to do with Warcraft.
Of course, their questions about LoL were very reasonable. Since there were already heroes from Warcraft, why didn't they use them? Why did they have to make a new IP?
Although the slogan 'Demacia' sounded pretty cool, it wasn't as cool as Azeroth.
This was how Chen Mo explained it.
The game was trying to capture the widest amount of players, so the art style had to be cartoony, cute, and bright. This clashed with Warcraft's more realistic and darker art style.
Moreover, LoL would be a new IP. It would be a very exciting world, just like Diablo. Didn't Diablo not use the same world as Warcraft?
Chen Mo's bullsh * t with a straight face successfully dispelled most people's doubts.
After making Warcraft and Diablo, Chen Mo's team had no problem making LoL from a technical and artistic point of view.
Diablo was one of the reasons Chen Mo wanted to train the team. After the success of the third person RPG, League of Legends was the next logical step.
The biggest problem so far was balancing the numbers. But with Chen Mo's second level skills, as well as the memories from the Memory Playback Potion, he was able to pretty much recreate the entire system.
After all, the numbers in LoL were pretty clear. It was just attack, defense, magic damage, and magic resistance, and the calculations weren't too complicated either.
Other than Zhao Yunting leading a small group of people to take care of the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform's daily maintenance, the rest of the team put all their energy into developing a new game called LoL.
… …
COG seemed to be getting more and more popular every day.
The creator of this map, Raman Clive, displayed his workaholic nature. Every other week, he would make some minor changes to the balance of the map. Occasionally, he would make major changes to the terrain and game mechanics, making it a more complete map.
Although these changes weren't immediately released to China, there were still many passionate players moving the map and translating it into Chinese.
In China, many Warcraft players were addicted to this map. It was slowly becoming the most popular map in Warcraft, even more popular than the ladder.
On the forums, more and more players were discussing COG. At first, everyone was disgusted by it, thinking that an RPG map shouldn't take up so much space. However, as COG became more and more popular, everyone got used to it.
Many people left comments or private messages for Chen Mo, asking him to pay more attention to this map, give it some special recommendations, or open up the ladder system for this map.
Some people even hoped that Chen Mo would work with the creator of this map to make it into new content for Warcraft.
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