By Kieron Gillen on September 8th, 2009 at 4:18 pm.
Sorry – the keys have all been given away now.
Hurrah! It’s another Beta-key giveaway. League of Legends has provided – oooh – many codes for the forthcoming Defence-of-the-Ancients-alike game, which is forthcoming in Europe via GOA. You want one? Well, just click the following link and send a mail. First come first served. And please don’t alter the headline, as it’ll make us harder to sort all the mails out. If you do, we can’t guarantee you’ll get a code. And If you want to be ultra-helpful, write your e-mail in the bodycopy to make it easy for us to cut and paste. You sweeties, you. Your gran would be proud.
(You may be wondering why there’s an odd number – because subscribers get first dibs on Beta codes. Don’t blame us. We don’t make the rules. Actually, we do.)
Anyway – Beta footage beneath the cut…
08/09/2009 at 18:30 Kieron Gillen says:
(And the site’s back, everyone.)
KG
08/09/2009 at 18:32 Llama says:
Sent mail, let’s hope i get in. I’m currently in the HoN beta as well. Interested to see how they compare.
08/09/2009 at 18:33 Tubi says:
Heroes of Newerth is way better :(
08/09/2009 at 18:43 MrBejeebus says:
Asked, forgot to say please :(
08/09/2009 at 18:44 Psychopomp says:
WHY THANK YOU KIND SIRE
08/09/2009 at 18:52 Xocrates says:
I actually got into the beta last friday. And have to say it’s Waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy more noob friendly than HoN. And so far I’m still to have a bad experience regarding the community. It also seems less laggy than HoN.
Interface wise, it’s probably a matter of preference, but the fact that LoL has the hero abilities assigned to the QWER keys as opposed to the somewhat random distribution of HoN makes this a better game in my book.
In other words: HoN – Dota veterans ONLY, Lol – and attempt at actually being accessible and fun while in no way undermining the “1337″ players.
Honestly, if this one is going to be free (VS the 30$ for HoN), I don’t see HoN having much of a chance.
08/09/2009 at 18:55 WantOn says:
I was sort of interested in this. Having watched the trailer, I can safely say “And now I’m not”. The action looks far too fast, the UI is beyond intrusive and the graphics make me want to gouge my eyes out(!)
08/09/2009 at 19:09 Scorpi says:
It’s such a much more user-friendly game than HoN, and though I prefer HoN’s art style, I can’t really get over how most of the champions are clones of DotA’s. LoL’s are all new.
That being said, while I prefer LoL to HoN, I wish each could take the best bits of each other and form some sort of a super game, a better game – can’t they all just get along?
08/09/2009 at 19:12 The_B says:
Really Obvious Faction Leader Copters.
08/09/2009 at 19:21 Aldaris says:
I honestly can’t believe no-one made a ‘LoL, rofl.’ joke or somehting along those lines.
08/09/2009 at 19:21 Meatloaf says:
Yeah, HoN being a reskin of DotA with a couple features made me not care at all about it after a few rounds in the beta.
LoL, however, is brilliant.
08/09/2009 at 19:21 Potajito says:
The game looks fine, but the UI is just too big.
08/09/2009 at 19:25 mandrill says:
Pleeeease can I have a key? I’m really bored :(
08/09/2009 at 19:29 Paradukes says:
@Aldaris: I’ve been on icanhascheezeburger.com since an inadvertent LoL-cats joke this morning…
08/09/2009 at 19:29 amishmonster says:
While you may not like LoL’s art style, it’s actually responsible for how relatively easy it is to tell what’s going on in team battles. In Dota, it’s far to easy for the screen to be so overcome by particle effects that you can’t tell what’s happening and die without really knowing what happened. I’ve never had this happen in LoL.
The QWER hotkey standardization is also a combination of brilliance and common sense. Has HoN really not done the same? There is absolutely no advantage to mimicking Dota on that count.
08/09/2009 at 19:35 vash47 says:
I already sent my email, I hope I get in, thank you RPS!
08/09/2009 at 19:38 Blast Hardcheese says:
RPS: The new Fileplanet?
Awful joke aside, I didn’t even know there was a donation thing until I looked for it.
08/09/2009 at 19:38 derfalconer says:
@Xocrates
Did you actually ever play HoN? One of the better things about it is that the keys ARE streamlined into QWER for abilities regardless of heroes unlike in DotA. No contest that the community is probably less toxic than HoN’s, which is probably my biggest problem with it.
08/09/2009 at 19:42 amishmonster says:
So HoN does have a better hotkey arrangement? Good to know.
08/09/2009 at 19:50 Llama says:
QWER is indeed the standard layout for the hero spells, and using ALT as a modifier you can activate items in your inventory. Most people i see ripping on HoN haven’t really played it. That being said, the community is horribly elitist. The matchmaking isn’t quite up to scratch either. Most games are steamrolls. In my 100 total games so far I’ve had maybe 4 or 5 evenly matched ones.
08/09/2009 at 19:52 Xocrates says:
@derfalconer: The community was so bad I gave up after 2 games, but I was given the impression that it had a random key arrangement. But I could be wrong, especially since I was expecting it to use the number keys (which I believe is what Demigod does).
If I’m mistaken, then I stand corrected and apologize.
08/09/2009 at 20:10 Tei says:
100 REM TODAY IS C64 DAY
200 PRINT “AFTER HON I AM SOMEWHAT DISSAPOINTED AT ”
300 PRINT “DOTA GAMES. HOPE THIS ONE ACTIVE MY ”
400 PRINT “INTEREST AGAIN”
08/09/2009 at 20:38 Warduke says:
As a non-dota player watching that video looks more like complete chaos rather than fun but I’ll have to give it a try. If it is indeed more nube friendly than HoN then it looks like the right place to start.
08/09/2009 at 20:47 Flimgoblin says:
Got into the beta last week and have been struggling to find time for anything else since… think I may be hooked.
Played a bit of the Demigod demo (after I started playing LoL) and it felt like LoL with prettier graphics but slower.
Haven’t ever played DotA so I’m coming at it as a noob to the genre.
08/09/2009 at 21:21 J. Prevost says:
I think the default phrase for “DotA-alike” nowadays is “Hero Defense”. Rolls off the tongue a bit more neatly.
08/09/2009 at 21:26 Pod says:
I’ve spent the last 40 minutes trying to join a game. First you spend 10 minutes waiting for a full lobby, then my game’s progress bar never goes past 1/2 way. It just sort of hiccups there. So sod it.
08/09/2009 at 21:42 mejobloggs says:
J. Prevost…. or just say ‘dota – like’.
Saying ‘alike’ does make it a bit more clumsy, but I’d never heard that anyway
08/09/2009 at 21:43 Johnnymac says:
I have been playing the game for I believe a couple months now (was given a key from someone who pre-ordered the game [before it was announced that it would be free]) and although I am painfully bad at the game, it is fun. It is not however any good if you are painfully bad and with a random team. I play with a group of 5-10 folks on weekends, usually, and still have a whole lot of fun being the worst of the group. It is worth giving a try, even if this is not your standard type of game… (FPS and flight sims, anyone?) just make sure you have someone with whom you would want to play, otherwise, you just get a bunch of folks typing angrily to you.
08/09/2009 at 22:15 Luckylad says:
As a seasoned dota player I find that the toxic community is quite annoying but where it may seem ill advised it has also produced much better players is a small amount of time. Also the genre is not called Hero-Defense (this is a similar WC3 genre), rather the actual terminology is AoS. Way back before dota was even made, there was a game called AoS (I don’t even remember what the letters stood for anymore xD) which was first featured in WC3 before the expansion pack came out. And on another note, a beta key to LoL would be much appreciated =D
08/09/2009 at 22:23 Serondal says:
I think this new wave of DoTA clones are missing the point. WC3 was a huge limit to DoTA and instead going on and making something great now that they no longer have WC3 as a limit to what they can do they’re just making WC3 looking games O.o I wouldn’t mind trying LoL but I’d really like to see someone make an origonal game with good heros based on this idea (DemiGod wasn’t that good IMO and made a direct clone with flashy graphics but no substance)
IT seems to me you could make a really good single player campaign to go along with the online PVP or CO-OP game. IT would be interesting to play single player games where you’re a hero of your choosing, the game’s story line fluxs around your choice of hero and how you win the battles ect.
08/09/2009 at 22:53 ascagnel says:
@The_B:
Really Obvious Faction Leader Copters of Oddly Putrid Telekinetic Electric Rhinoceroses.
08/09/2009 at 23:25 Paradukes says:
So when will the keys be emailed? Or when will we at least know if we managed to get a key?
09/09/2009 at 00:16 Kieron Gillen says:
Everyone who’s mailed so far will have one. Even the ones who didn’t follow the instructions. At least, they probably have. They’ll be the first against the wall come the revolution.
KG
09/09/2009 at 00:18 Serondal says:
woot. I sent 2 e-mails , one of them was a mistake the other one actaully had my true e-mail (not my work e-mail) in it :P hopefully I won’t be against the wall come the revolution, at least don’t throw my children off the wall and have your way with my wife.
09/09/2009 at 00:45 BurningPet says:
You dont have to like Demigod to see that it surely isnt a direct clone of dota. its probably the most inovative one out of those 3 DotA alike games.
09/09/2009 at 03:17 Serondal says:
It’s the ONLY innovative one out of those three. I think it could have done so much more though. (Also it was really awful laggy for a game with such generic graphics. The heroes were cool but the units themselves were lack luster and boring, in my opinion of course ;) )
09/09/2009 at 06:47 agentj says:
just sent an e-mail, i was using a fileplanet key but it just ended, thank you in advance
09/09/2009 at 09:39 Daniel Klein says:
@luckylad:
Way back before dota was even made, there was a game called AoS (I don’t even remember what the letters stood for anymore xD) which was first featured in WC3 before the expansion pack came out.
Aeon of Strife. Brilliant map, played it a lot.
@Potajito:
The game looks fine, but the UI is just too big.
UI can be resized in game to anything you like.
Regarding key bindings, if anyone should not like the QWER keys (I am left handed, for instance, and it’s really uncomfortable reaching those keys with my right hand), go to your LoL folder, GAME\DATA\CFG\defaults (you must have run the game once so it creates that folder), copy input.ini into CFG, and edit to your heart’s content. A lot of the entries in there aren’t used, but you should find the relevant ones very easily. I’ve remapped everything to my numpad, including single button skill learning. Very handy.
On release there will be a UI element for editing key bindings.
(And for what it’s worth, I’m pretty much in love with LoL, if that wasn’t obvious already)
09/09/2009 at 13:28 vash47 says:
Did anyone get their key?
09/09/2009 at 15:28 Marke says:
nope, still waiting, sent my email ~~14 hours ago.
09/09/2009 at 22:33 Serondal says:
still waiting for key here too :( Hehe
10/09/2009 at 14:16 Kieron Gillen says:
All the addresses so far have been mailed to the PR in question. There’s a few left, so it’s not too late if someone wants one…
KG
10/09/2009 at 14:42 akZT says:
I realy want to have a beta key!
10/09/2009 at 18:10 Prankstar says:
Just got a LOL beta email, thx alot !
10/09/2009 at 22:59 Railick says:
Just sent another E-mail since I never got one ;P Probably still won’t get one
11/09/2009 at 12:37 agentj says:
well sent another e-mail since i also received nothing
11/09/2009 at 15:08 Alaric says:
I’m in! Thank you brave British blokes!
11/09/2009 at 15:29 Sentinel says:
how many keys left?
i just need one so bad
12/09/2009 at 01:01 Kayel says:
Please? If it were possible i’d love you even more than i do now!
24/09/2009 at 19:04 GuMas says:
Preety plz? =]
30/09/2009 at 18:09 Professor says:
pls send beta key.. :S
05/10/2009 at 03:24 ninjaloko says:
my brother I need an account porfavor.cara I fasso all of you to a kiss on the obama, I asked binlade pinico …. I ate rain in the desert but not do so
create an account in the league of lengends please get me an account or a key aew …. endow
22/12/2009 at 10:40 mcjunes says:
send me a beta key
mcjuneschaves@yahoo.com
31/01/2010 at 13:31 skillz says:
send me a beta key pls.
exodas14@gmail.com
31/01/2010 at 13:56 Jim Rossignol says:
Skillz didn’t pay attention at school, you see.