I've been playing League of Legends since a good friend of mine from college convinced me to give it a try since it was "free" December of 2013. It was right around the release of Thresh.
Now, as an avid fan of the fantasy genre, and son to an avid gamer, I've played almost every core game that Blizzard has released. Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo III (to my disappointment), Warcraft, Warcraft II, Warcraft III, Starcraft, Starcraft II, and WoW. DotA was one of my favorite time sinks while playing after school with my friends (that or the many incarnation of tower defense). So when my friend insisted that it was similar to DotA and was a free game, I gave it a download and a shot.
I was instantly hooked. It combined my two favorite things. Fantasy and Competition. It was an epic setting with epic characters, and I got to test my skills against other real people and show who among my friends was the best!
While I was certainly salivating at getting to join the Ranked Ladder, I had to grind my way through 30 arbitrary levels. I played hundreds of hours of this game with my friend and we had no idea what we were doing or getting ourselves into. It turns out while we might be able to win a majority of our matches while we were leveling our accounts up to the required 30 to play ranked, once we started playing ranked we realized how little we actually knew about the game and just how pathetic we actually were!
I wallowed in Bronze for the entirety of Season 3. By the close of Season 4 I had resigned myself to Silver I. This game is not for those with thin skin, the toxicity and vitriol give a brutal beating to your ego and drive to play the game.
Well season 5 is upon us, and with more than a year of experience under my belt, and a new system to play on, I'm giving the ladder another go with the goal of reaching Platinum before the end of Season 5.
How does one reach Platinum when they can't even get out of Silver? Perseverance and dedication. Everyone has bad games, and everyone gets flamed, its playing through these games and getting on to the next one and the next win. Of course getting better is another important stepping stone for advancing one's goal of reaching platinum and that will come from playing more ranked games and taking the time to review past games and look for corrections in gameplay.
Going for Platinum will be a recurring theme throughout the year, so come back later this week for an update.
