For those of you who don’t know what League of Legends is, consider it a free to play and free to download version of DoTA (WarCraft III’s popular custom game, Defense of The Ancients.) Developed by a California based company from scratch (Riot Games), League of Legends was released on October 27, 2009 and since then has won a number of awards for its fabulous gameplay as well as its progression into developing a competitive game for e-sports and the tournament scene. With continuous work, Riot has managed to bring the game a long way from when it first started out and further more seems to be bringing more updates in the near future.
This week, marks the release of an upcoming ranged champion known as Ezreal: The Prodigal Explorer. Ezreal seems to be the hype and also has developed into a much more refined character with testing done on League of Legends’ Test Realm. The champion first started out on the test realm with the following look (blonde Harry Potter anyone?) and abilities:
With feedback from the test realm community and some tweaks and changes, Riot will be releasing Ezreal this upcoming patch (probably Wednesday or Thursday) and most likely continuing with the trend of making him available to buy in the store this week and part of their free champion rotation next week. The finalized lore released by Riot for the champion can be found below as well as some pictures and fan art of the new champion.
Lore:
Ezreal was born with the gift of magic flowing through his veins. However, Ezreal was also born with a much stronger sense of wanderlust. Though enrolled in Piltover’s most acclaimed school for skilled young techmaturgists, Ezreal quickly became bored with magical studies. By the time the boy genius was eight years old, he had fully mapped out the underground tunnels of Piltover. The quality of his work was so remarkable that the government of Piltover purchased his maps and commissioned his services as the city-state’s Master Pathfinder. This sealed the deal for Ezreal’s true calling – he would eschew the arcane arts in favor of archaeology. Since then, countless adventures of his have been romanticized and published.
One of Ezreal’s more recent adventures brought him face-to-face with his other legacy – his latent magical power. While exploring the pyramids of the Shurima Desert, Ezreal uncovered an amulet of inestimable power. He barely managed to extract it from its sandy abode due to its sheer magnitude (it was made for a being easily twice Ezreal’s size). After fervent investigation, he found that it allowed the wielder to control and shape magical energy – provided there was a source of magic nearby. This permitted Ezreal to tap into his latent magical abilities without having to put any serious effort into it – a “big winâ€Â, as the young prodigy notes. The lingering drawback is that, for some unknown reason, the amulet is highly attuned to summoning magic. This means that without warning, Ezreal may find himself acting as a champion for, as he puts it, “a summoner hell-bent on resolving some irrelevant world-shattering League conflict.†Still, Ezreal feels that being summoned to a Field of Justice on occasion is a small price to pay for his prized artifact.
“There’s little time to study ancient, musty tomes when you’re busy trying to find them.â€Â
-Ezreal
Abilities:Mystic Shot: Ezreal fires a bolt of energy. If it strikes an enemy unit, it reduces all of Ezreal’s cooldowns.
Essence Flux: Ezreal fires a fluctuating wave of energy, damaging enemies and reducing their attack speed. This also heals allies and increases their attack speed.
Arcane Shift: Ezreal teleports to a nearby target location and fires a homing arrow which strikes the nearest enemy unit.
Trueshot Barrage: Ezreal channels to fire a powerful barrage of energy missiles, which do massive damage to each unit they pass through (barrage deals less damage to each successive unit it passes through).
Rising Spell Force (passive): Hitting a target with any of Ezreal’s abilities increases his attack speed for several seconds.
-Community Manager, ByronicHero
There has also been some gameplay footage of Ezreal released which can be seen below:
Not only, is the new champion being released, this past Friday, Riot had a test realm event where they opened up Twisted Treeline for their matchmaking. After almost 5 months from release, finally players get to play a new match (for normal games, which actually count on records) and possibly can que up for solo and with an arranged team. This has been one of the many things the community has been asking for and the testing for it has started. Although there is no set release date for TT matchmaking on live servers, it is surely being worked on. The news should leave all fans and players excited.
What are your thoughts of Riot and League of Legends? Does the new champion seem cool to you? Are you excited for the new map being available for the Normal Game mode? Leave your thoughts and comments below!
