Fearless and Axes here to talk about the jungle changes coming in the upcoming 2015 Preseason. Our big goal this time around is to bring strategic diversity back to jungle. Currently a small pool of optimal junglers has been skewing team compositions toward a small set of strategic plans, so our focus for 2015 is to let players take the junglers they love and the junglers they want to fit into their team’s strategies. I realize jungle diversity improvements have been a focus a few times in the past (has it been every season?), but this time around we’re taking bigger steps and we’re excited to share our ideas with you.

With an emphasis on strategic diversity set as the major theme in the pre-season 2015 changes, Riot specifically wants to broaden the tactics that players can use in the jungle. Players can look forward to a variety of new strategies available to them and their teammates. Additionally, a brand new river creep (pictured above), will open up a dangerous new path for junglers that are willing to gamble a bit more with their risk vs reward.

As I mentioned in the foreword, the 2015 Preseason changes are taking a crack at some problems in the jungle that have built up over many seasons. In the past, our approach to the jungle has been through smaller sets of changes, aimed at fixing only the issues that arose in the previous year. Our fixes did largely address past problems, but they also didn’t have the mechanisms to deal with some of the power balances that appeared later on.

As players mature in their understanding of the game landscape, the strength of a jungler ends up getting boiled down and optimized into a small handful of champs who do roughly the same thing: who can clear the fastest while also having strong dueling / ganking capabilities? This season, for example, we saw a lot of Kha’Zix, Evelynn, Rengar, Elise and, everyone’s favorite, Lee Sin. A side effect with having ‘optimal’ junglers who crowd out other choices is that teams tend to orient their team selection and strategies around their limited choices. For example, if there aren’t any powerful junglers that work in a siege comp, it becomes that much more of a gamble to commit to one.

The 2015 changes are aimed at building a jungle that has components to empower and react to many different actions that junglers take. This allows us much finer control to react to the live state of the game with small changes to the jungle, rather than only having to tune champions and items. In past seasons, collateral damage with each jungle change was very high, where a buff to a few champions creates huge imbalances (anyone remember Feral Flare?). The new jungle aims to give us many angles to attack problems as they arise, to give us more precision than we’ve ever had before. More scalpels, less sledgehammers.

To learn more about the upcoming changes players can expect in pre-season 2015, head over the the Riot Developer Blog

Welcome to another developer blog entry! Today we’re talking about something different: our approach to teaching new League of Legends players. If you’ve ever tried to teach friends or family how to play, you might know what a challenge (or pain in the ass) it can be, and many of you have given us great feedback about improvements you’d like to see. Today, we’ll dive into the principles we use to think about how to improve onboarding for new players, and give you a glimpse into an upcoming mode that aims to add a hand-hold onto the MOBA learning cliff.

The guys at Riot are always researching something it seems. As it turns out, they’ve been paying attention behind the scenes to figure out exactly how hard learning LoL is.

Previously, we’ve erred on the side of a steep challenge. In fact, a non-trivial number of our new players end up losing Battle Training, which is intended to be a tutorial. We’ve observed some of those same players go on to become Gold-tier ranked players, so this isn’t a problem with the players – it’s a problem with how we teach them.

With Intro Bots, we’re aiming for a more approachable difficulty that gives all new players a manageable first experience. At the same time, we’ve designed many features to be dynamic based on a player’s performance so the mode isn’t a pushover – players quickly performing appropriate actions and behaving like an advanced player will see fewer helpful features and lightly amped-up difficulty. Novice players should be able to enjoy several games of Intro Bots and steadily learn the basics, while more advanced ones will quickly grasp the essentials and move on to greater challenges in other modes.

Players looking to check out the Intro Bots before they go live will be able to do so on the PBE very soon. You can read the entire article at http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/node/18580

In a statement to the community, Riot announced the immediate closure of their official public chat rooms.

The official public chat rooms have grown rife with RP sellers, scammers and Elo-boost spam. The default four rooms we established can be used by a tiny fraction of our players at a time. Given the number of League players, most conversation spills into private, community-created rooms.

Unfortunately, private chat rooms and even the awesome community hubs like Dominate Dominion and Summoner School lack moderation tools beyond the ignore button. While the experience in private chat rooms is better than the public versions, we still want to provide tools to address unwelcome drop-ins and toxic behavior.

Long term we’re exploring and working on major and minor improvements to chat and chat rooms aimed at enhancing usability and adding new functionality.

As an immediate action we’re going to disable the public chat rooms until they’re useful and accessible. In their current shape they just don’t work and can actively create negative experiences for many players (especially new players).

We’ll keep all private chat rooms and messaging available to everyone, and bring the official public chat rooms back as soon as we can.

Players that are hell bent on using chat rooms may still do so in the form of private chat rooms on the site. All is not lost when it comes to the public rooms though. According to Riot, they want to re-evaluate them and possibly re-introduce them with improvements later on down the road.

You can read the entire statement on the official League of Legends community page

The team clearly has put a lot of thought into the redesign with a focus on shades and colors helping to convey different types of information to the player. While the map is still a while away from going live, players will get an opportunity to test out the new map thoroughly on the PBE in the coming months.

If you’d like to learn more about League of Legends, head over to http://leagueoflegends.com/

The 4.1 patch brings along a multitude of changes to champions, items, and the vision code.  The biggest change coming in this patch is revisions to the New Player Experience, though they haven’t been enabled as of just yet.

We’ve introduced a stable roster of free champions for new players to play. Our goal is to improve the way players learn to play League of Legends when they’re first starting out. These champions were picked because of how easy they can be learned and how enjoyable most new players find them.

• These changes will be turned on at a later date

• Players new to League of Legends will now have a static roster of free champions to play during their first few levels; after which, they will use the normal Free to Play rotation

You can read up on all of the changes in the latest League of Legends patch by visiting the official League of Legends site

Showdown is live! Queue up for 1v1 and 2v2 duels on Howling Abyss. With three ways to claim victory, it’s up to you to decide how you’ll defeat your opponents. You can score first blood (or two kills in 2v2 mode), wave clear your way to 100 CS, or demolish the enemy turret before they take down yours.

Showdown’s available from December 19 through January 2, so head to the Howling Abyss to show off your dueling skills and duo-ing prowess now!

This years event is even more exciting than normal. On top of the yearly Christmas themed skins up for sale we also get a brand new  1v1 and 2v2 Howling Abyss game mode.

You’ve shot off five Final Sparks and achieved immortality through constant Chrono Shifts, but now it’s time for a Showdown.

For the next Featured Gameplay Mode, you’ll be able to duel it out with friends and foes alike on an icy battlefield that promises contests of epic proportions.

With three paths to an honorable victory, will you go full ham and draw first blood, wave clear your way to 100 CS or channel your inner Ziggs and demolish the turret before your opponent?

If you queue up with a buddy for the beatdowns, you’ll notice that you need two kills to earn the dubya, or the two of you can combine to hit that century CS mark.

Sharpen your swords and ready your hextech revolvers. The Showdown approaches this Snowdown

$10 – 1,380 RP
$25 – 3,500 RP  1380 x 2.5 = 3450 (bonus = 50 rp)
$50 – 7,200 RP  3500 x 2 = 7000 (bonus = 200 rp vs 2 $25 cards or 300 rp vs 5 $10 cards)

Here’s an updated list of where you can find prepaid cards:

US

• Gamestop ($10, $25 and $50)
• Walmart ($10 and $25)
• Target ($10 and $25)
• BestBuy ($10 and 25)
• 7-Eleven ($10 and 25)
• Toys “R” Us ($10 and $25)
• AAFES ($10 and $25)
• Fry’s Electronics ($10 and $25)
• Play N Trade ($10 and $25)
• Walgreens ($25)
• CVS ($25)
• Speedway ($25)

Canada

• EB Games ($10, $25 and $50)
• BestBuy ($10 and $25)
• Future Shop ($10 and $25)
• Walmart ($10 and $25)
• Toys “R” Us ($10 and $25)
• 7-Eleven ($10 and $25)
• Mac’s ($10 and $25)
• Couche-Tard ($10 and $25)
• Target ($10 and $25)
• Shoppers Drug Mart ($10 and $25)

• Atlantic Fonecard ($10 and $25)