League of Legends is the Most Played Game in the World

League of Legends
October 12, 2012 - 3:58am

One of the more interesting aspects of games, besides actually playing them, is reading some of the mid blowing statistics that you can drum up with a bit of research. You've probably heard that at its peak, World of Warcraft had a whopping 12 million active players. Xbox Live is even higher with a total of over 40 million monthly subscribers. These stats pale in significance however, when compared with the gargantuan figures Riot games has released for League of Legends. As they put it, LoL is quite simply the most popular game in the world right now.

You'll have to take the developer's word for it, since it was the one that released that infographic (view the full thing here) explaining it all. Taking that into consideration, when League of Legends is weighed up against WoW and Xbox Live, you get some crazy numbers. Over 70 million registered summoner names. An active monthly player base of 32 million. 12 million daily active players (over 50% more than instagram).

Riot even goes up against the entire Halo series with its numbers and blows Master Chief and his Covenent enemies away. In total the Halo games have been played for over 2 billion hours. LoL racks up half of that figure every month.

While this number was a lot lower than a billion, League of Legends has 4.1 million Facebook likes. That's nearly tree times what Psy's Gangam Style has. Now that's and impressive figure!

Still, looking at the rest of the stats, I feel pretty chuffed that I once managed a Pentakill. Apparently those only occur once in every 1,500 games.

Comments

Re: Runes

Runes cannot be purchased with money. They do have a significant impact on the game because, like you said, two of the same character fighting each other with no items and the exact same skill level will do the exact same amount of damage. Unless one of them has invested in runes. Playing League of Legends will award you points after each game entitled Influence Points or IP. Redeeming your real life cash will give you Riot Points or RP. Runes cannot be bought with RP specifically to prevent this kind of unfair advantage. I prefer LoL to other similar games because in my opinion it is much simpler and easier to get the hang of. In addition, the team at Riot Games has really made it clear that they care about their players and do anything they can to help. For example, I bought a skin that made my favorite character look really badass. Little did I know, Riot had chosen to put that same skin on sale at half price two weeks later. I received an email from Riot support apologizing to me for the unfortunate circumstance and refunding half of my purchase so that it was like I had bought the skin at the decreased price. This is definitely not a rare thing, either. Many fan-submitted skin ideas and changes have been implemented into the game as well. I've played DoTA and HoN as well as LoL and just prefer LoL in general. I find the combat easier to follow and understand, the shop to be more easily usable, and the player base to be mostly positive. I will admit that this was not always the case, however. Before the implication of the "honor system" and climbing the ranked ladder myself, game after game would be filled with stupid trash talking and fruitless spite. Don't take my word for it, though. Download the game and play for free to see if you like it.

What are you idiots talking about?

The league of legends community does suck sometimes. There are little whiny kids on there from time to time. I really only like to play when we have a full premade team. Also, I have never paid anything to play league and I am around 1400 elo. It's not impressive by any means. But, if I would have paid anything to play this game it is my opinion that I would be at the same level. TL;DR Fuck these kids saying LoL is bad and pay-to-win.

Wrong facts

It is pretty nice that you managed to get a penta-kill (if it was in a PvP game), but it does not only occur every 1500 game. It occurs about every 150 game and chance of getting it yourself (if you are at averange skill) is more like every 1500 game.

Why is everyone making a big

Why is everyone making a big deal over which game is better? o.O I like games as much as the next guy but they don't have any real-world applications other than providing entertainment. Quit getting worked up over something so small. If you have enough time to argue about this, then you have enough time to figure out solutions to bigger problems.

Why is everyone making a big

Why is everyone making a big deal over which game is better? o.O I like games as much as the next guy but they don't have any real-world applications other than providing entertainment. Quit getting worked up over something so small. If you have enough time to argue about this, then you have enough time to figure out solutions to bigger problems.

I agree.Played Dota for years

I agree.Played Dota for years,lol for a day,dota 2 for a few weeks (2 slow) and currently HoN for about 3 years.All as a social exercise ,never alone.These are simple games made for simple people,sorry but that's the way it is. The VAST majority of peeps,if not all, who have decent " stats" are the clowns at the back waiting for the shnizzle to go down then pick off the near-dead. Enjoy your "ownage".

Community

Gamers have it so rough. Well, only those gamers that get bday and xmas games haha. Seriosuly, the most obnoxious gamers tend to be 12 or younger. Get a job, you lazy f00ks. Oh, and my Captcha is: heart strings. awwwwwww. Pansy console kids.

morons.

someone please tell me how paying for the game makes you have a better advantage over non paying players? Iv been playing the game since it came out. iv only PAID for SKINS since the game game out. So buying skins makes me a better player? someone please answer this, mainly the dumbass scott who commented before.

all in all...

True, popularity alone is not enough to judge the quality of a product or service. However, the average customer age does point towards quality. Justin Biebers average fan age is all we need to lump him together with other trash music stars. Leagues average gamer age is somewhat beyond teenage, you know, people who have grow enough to actually develop their tastes. If you're into competition and teamplay you can't go wrong with league.

lol @ wow bads u mad?

I love all the bad world of warcraft players who come into these comments, the neverglads and raid bads who could'nt cut it and did casual play all day. Just looking for easy wins, they suck at a game and call it bad.. what-can-you-do? eh? :]

Too bad

Sorry, I don't play WoW, and I never have. However, if I was looking for easy wins, I suppose I could always just shell out some money to pay for items in League of Legends so I could feel supremely awesome at my gaming skills. That's what-I-can-do, eh.

you should try it before talking about it

Items can only be bought during a match (which lasts anywhere between 15 minutes and 1 hour) and even so, you have to earn gold by killing enemies and creatures to buy them. Real money doesn't affect gameplay in the slightest. You should be careful of stereotypes, they are rarely correct and abbiding by them shows what kind of person you are ;)

:))

LoL is a terrible game. I tried to get into it, found absolutely nothing appealing about it. Annoying, dickhead players with bad attitudes, and a "pay-to-win" game setup are obviously great for a company looking to make money... but only an idiot would call LoL a "great" game. Don't give me this "LoL takes a TON of skill to win" crap. It's a Pay-to-Win game. They don't take skill... the more money you pay for items, the better your so-called "skill". Plain and simple.

What?

You're fucking dumb, son. It's free to play and you don't have to pay for shit except skins. ALL the items are fucking included in game when you buy at the shop. You pay for it with IP you earn by playing, win or lose. Skins cost actual money, extra rune pages too, but you have everything you need to have fun and get good for FREE. You have obviously never played it. LoL IS about skill, DOTA 2 is about cheesing.

Bullcrap end statement.

LoL takes the least amount of skill to play out of all so-titled by the makes of LoL itself "MOBA" games. DoTA 2 is filled with Steam players that just want to try it out and end up getting smurfed by a veteran. Generally, DoTA2 takes an insane amount of skill in comparison to LoL. LoL is filled with low cooldown non-mana using "champions" with three extra OP skills. Ability power is the biggest joke in the history of any competitive game. So I get 900 more damage because I stacked one item? No orb/attack modifiers? OP. Lifesteal, more lifesteal, a slow, DoT. No problem? Non skill based. The order of skill-based "MOBA" games would go 1. DoTA 2. HoN 3. DOTA 2 4. Other Cheesy Ripoff Titles 5. LoL I started with DoTA and HoN and they're unbelievably skill-based competitive games. The items don't give you an OP ability to take on an entire team because you got one tank item and 5 damage items. There's more active items for teamplay whereas active items in LoL let you knock off 50% of someone's health with enough ability power. Then there's also the day/night factor which limits vision, there isn't a bush that lets you just hide all day and leech experience. I could list so many more reasons why LoL is not skill-based or competitive. A player from HoN named Chu played LoL and made it to the top in weeks. That says something. You're just an LoL fanboy who couldn't play actual competition. Note: I do play LoL with friends, and all you do is pick OP champions like Teemo to win.

info:

i played ALL of moba games you mentioned in your comment and im gonna explain to you the difference between them and you can tell me am i right. first of all, dota2=hon(remember, "=" sign works both ways) why? hon just copied everything from original dota. dota 2 did the same + tf-style item shop. so we will directly compare dota and lol. lol has smaller map= game is faster, more ganks, more 5v5 fights. if you have 1 hour you are sure you will finish a game of lol. you cant be sure the same for dota. denying: i can see both pros and cons of this mechanic. depends of players preferances. skillshots: lol has more of those, so one could argue that you need more skill to play lol. runes/masteries: one more way of costumazing your gameplay and making every hero to suit your needs. summoner spells: the way i see it, pretty decent way of stopping one team from facerolling if they gain early lead. runes in dota: interesting concept but i prefer the buffs in lol(jungle) so it comes down to players preferance. and i can tell that you suck at lol if you get pwned by teemo. in high tier games(here i mean most ranked matches and tournaments) teemo isnt even played because he cant fit in almost any teamcomp.

Not your son, old man.

1st off, you're full of shit, and you know it. You can buy more than just "skins" and "extra pages" in LoL and you know it. People like you that pay-to-win always rush to defend their games because you can't stand the fact that you couldn't win on your own.

hmm

What you can ONLY buy with real money in lol: skins, xp and ip boosts - Those provide zero advantage in gameplay, xp boosts are utterly useless since it doesnt take long to reach the level cap anyway, ip boosts only speed up the process of buying more champs and runes, but that doesn't give you an advantage at all as everyone at the level cap has at least one full rune page to use and will eventually buy more via IP. Pay-to-win games are completely different (look at EA), you're just a kid hating on a game and trying to bundle it together with some of the worst titles ever released to make it sound bad. Chill out son...

lol you got trolled, of

lol you got trolled, of course LOL is a terrible pay to win game. It is the cawadoody of ARTS. Just because a lot of people play it doesnt mean its good. It means that there are alot of kids who play video games. Wait until the f2p switch gets flicked for dota 2. The only reason people still play LOL is because its free. There is only a small amount of hardcore supporters. Wanna hear a dota joke? lol

No.

League of Legends has a surprising amount of depth that supposed "elitists"(I betcha you're as shit at DotA as you are League of Legends)that play DotA 2 don't account for. League is far more balanced when it comes to spellcasting champions and the amount of crowd control the game has. There's also a surprising amount of knowledge needed to play well. Anyone can do decent, there's 6,000,000 AVERAGE players. Let me tell you, the gap between an average player and pro in League is just the same as the gap between the average DotA player and a DotA pro. DotA is not accessible for everyone. It does not have the smoothness or ease of use of League of Legends. League of Legends will be fine when DotA 2 is officially released, I'm not sure how well DotA 2 is going to be doing, however. Maybe it'll take over HoN's spot, still, a far cry from League of Legends. Also, there are hundreds of thousands of hardcore players in League of Legends. What is "good" is entirely subjective. It's based on person to person opinions, your opinion is not the scope of all opinions, your opinion is not more valid than other opinions. What your post tells me is that YOU are a kid and therefor lack the qualifications to call other people kids or mock video games that "kids" play.

Seriously? Inferior?

Dude. Far Cry? HAHAHA. Yeah I'd go with you when you say Ease of use in LoL. But gamers sometimes try to find something Harder. If you started with Dota and gotten used to skills and ganks jukes and stuff, You're gonna miss those in LoL. Just saying please stop the freaking madness of inferior and superior stuff. They're both MOBA. The Creators of LoL didn't try to make something so close to Dota because they would know that theirs would be inferior. I mean The Creators of LoL came from Dota. So they didn't try to compete with the skill ceillings. So they made something easier and smooth.

Firstly: LoL is NOT balanced.

Firstly: LoL is NOT balanced. Heroes that don't need mana to cast spells? Hectically unfair. I plowed through all the enemies with Katerina(I think that's her name) just because I had no mana cap. Dota 2 is still in its Beta phase, so it needs to work out all its kinks so it will be a bit unbalanced, plus some of the glitches are really funny XD.(Watch Dota 2 fails of the week with SUNSfan and Reeves, I promise you, you won't be disappointed) Secondly: To be a great Dota player, you need to know how to play with every hero and how to counter every hero. You need to know what is the perfect items for that hero. If you have played the first DotA, you need to find all your items and recipes. That taught you to pay attention to where everything is. Unfortunately, with LoL and Dota 2, they've made it one shop. BUT my point is, that takes knowledge. You need to remember everything, and how to counter everything, so you DON'T DIE. Thirdly: The LoL players are dicks. I played 4 games and I got reported for feeding(well, they guy said he;s gonna report me...), even though I had the least amount of deaths each time, and one of the few that had positive K/D ratios. I'm not gonna say that Dota players aren't dicks either. But currently, the only dick-ness I've really come across is level 40 players joining lower level games and stealing every kill because they know where all the game glitches are. Lastly: LoL has its perks, but it's made MOBA players lazy. "Recall" is a prime example of this. Where's the good ol' scroll of teleportation that you needed to buy so you could surprise your enemy and then when he thinks he's got the upper hand, you're on the other side of the map again, destroying their bottom tower? Where's your sense of a real challenge?? :D

Why?

K, who ever is saying that LOL is a bad game have surely not played it often enough, there is a lot more skill involved then any of the other MOBA's. I have played DOTA and DOTA2 beta for some time now, and the skills is alot easier AOE spells have a massive area to cast where @ LOL you have to aim alot harder because the area of affect is a lot smaller, and there is a lot of Champ the is hard to play, most of DOTA skills is cilck activate or click to cast or aim with a very big circle. And i do like Dota as an old fan, but LOL has some toons that needs alot of skill.

Dota was a raw mod, Dota 2 is

Dota was a raw mod, Dota 2 is just a clone, it improves upon nothing. LoL on the other hand keeps trying hard and some people don't find change abhorrent, if it improves the gameplay its very welcome. Hence LoL is the most played game ever.

Actually LoL just keeps

Actually LoL just keeps releasing broken heroes to further its power creep, the reason its so popular in Korea is because it doesn't rely on teamwork as much as Dota (where it is absolutely required for victory) Ever notice why Starcraft doesn't have team leagues? Same thing.

Cupcakes

I seriously cannot read any more of your kind of stupidity. I cannot WAIT for the day when people like you grow up and get your heads out of your fucking asses. Your opinions are not the end all be all of opinions.

LoL is horrible

League of Legends is simply trash, no skill game, which is why so many people play it, the skill ceiling is so low that any kid with downs could pick it up and be decent in a couple months. Starcraft for life son.

really

Comparing a moba with an RTS will get you a lot of credibility chump. Plus the skill ceiling is somewhat high, however unlike an RTS, moba games demand teamplay, you know, relying on your teammates to get your back, combo an enemy together at the right moment, ambush enemies, etc... Teamplay is one of the most important skills you'll learn in life and some of us actually enjoy it.

No.

Because.... People have different opinions from you? Grow. Up. Get. A. Brain. Or shut up. You're only embarrassing yourself.

sorry

League is the type of freemium game where cash doesn't give you the slightest advantage over non paying players. Your argument is invalid...

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