Lauren spends most of her time dead in League of Legends, or equally as dead in Valorant. Don’t ask her about Vampire: The Masquerade.
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If League of Legends and I were in a relationship on Facebook, it’d be labeled ‘it’s complicated.’ It’s been seven years of turmoil: of falling out, then back in again; of frustration and passion; of love and hate. To quote the immortal words of Katy Perry: “we’re hot and we’re cold.” At least she’s been to space; I’ve just been sitting in solo queue.
League of Legends, over the years, has established itself as the premier MOBA, toppling its ancestor Dota 2, and easily fending off attempted challenges. It’s spawned spinoff games like the oft-forgotten Ruined King and Convergence, and been immortalized in the award-winning Netflix show, Arcane. League of Legends is more than just a videogame – it’s a pop culture staple; for some, a way of life.
Perhaps that’s because of its characters: the Jinxes and the Vis, the Sennas and the Luciens. Perhaps it’s because of its low barrier of entry, but high skill ceiling. Perhaps it’s because of that ‘one more game,’ semi-addiction-esque mentality. Perhaps I have Stockholm Syndrome. Whatever it is: League of Legends is here to stay, and it isn’t slowing down.
If you’re new to League, the premise is relatively simple. There are three different ‘lanes,’ each inhabited by five different players. In the top lane you largely find tankier melee characters, the midlane is home to assassins and mages, while ADCs (Attack Damage Carries, think marksmen) and supports (characters that enable other players with shields and heals, or disrupt plays) lurk in the bot lane. In the middle of each, there’s an area of darkness called The Jungle, where the fifth member of the team runs around killing monsters and making drive-by visits to the three lanes.
Each ‘role’ (top, mid, ADC, support, jungle) has its own, malleable pool of champions, each with unique builds and talents. The aim is simple: fight your way through various enemy structures to their base and destroy it – it’s where the ‘battle arena’ in ‘MOBA’ comes from. There’s the core Summoner’s Rift map – where you do all of the above – as well as ARAM (all random all mid) which condenses the map down into one, straight lane, and assigns you random champions. There are rotating limited-time modes and chaotic twists on the base ones, but the core of the action takes place on Summoner’s Rift.
I’ve spent seven years on that Rift, bouncing between top and mid before finally landing on support. I started playing the game after watching the LEC (LoL EMEA Championship) Spring finals, where G2 Esports demolished a shattered Origen in an 18-minute stomp for the ages. My pathway to League was odd; then – esports led me to the game, not the other way around.
A lot has changed in those seven years. 30 champions have been released (although Riot has slowed its cadence down a bit this year). Atakhan has come and gone. We finally got the Shyvana and Udyr reworks. A lot of good has come from all of that: I main Senna, she released in that period; Arcane existed, taking League to a whole new level. In terms of esports, we saw the magnificent but tragic G2 run, then T1’s historical Worlds hat-trick, which I’m sure it’s hoping to turn into a quad-trick (that’s a word) this year. There are a lot of highs.
Yet, I’d be a liar if I said there weren’t some serious lows. The first – and perhaps most prevalent – is slow but sure ramp up in monetization. It all began with Dark Cosmic Erasure Jhin – a Mythic variant (read ‘fancy recolor’) of Dark Cosmic Jhin, that is available via the gacha-esque Sanctum store, but at a 1% pull rate. For a guaranteed drop, it’ll set you back $200. That was followed by myriad other Mythic variants, with the most controversial being the Arcane Fractured Jinx skin, which received a full rework following mass backlash.
Then came the infamous Immortalized Legend Ahri skin – the Hall of Legends’ esports-centric skin line that, if you want the best version of the cosmetic, sets you back around $500. Sure, you can get the base Risen Legend Ahri for $40, but, let’s be honest, who wants that when there’s the big, shiny thing? That rolled straight into the introduction of the Seasonal model with 2025, which, while I appreciate its tie-in with the game’s overarching lore, saw Hextech Chests (free reward loot boxes) scrapped in favor of a middling free battle pass track. Hextech Chests are back; that’s the plus. But the rapid ramp up in monetization, consistently branded as giving “luxury items” to players, left a lot of people out in the cold.
This fed into discontent around balancing, too. While perfection is unattainable and universal player happiness is effectively a pipe dream, dealing with (as of 2026) 173 champions isn’t easy. I remember the tank meta (hey, K’Sante), and the infamous Durability Patch. Top lane still feels like it’s on somewhat of an island, and while ADC feels less horrible than it has in previous seasons, we’re seeing more and more control mages in the botlane, alongside some unconventional, tankier picks.
My partner and I are currently running the likes of Sion / Thresh botlane, or Sona / Seraphine, and we’re picking up more wins than we would with traditional ADCs. It’s not for lack of trying – we’ve tried the disgusting Caitlyn / Thresh combo, as well as the likes of Jinx / Karma. At a fundamental level, however, it feels like anything goes. In some ways, that isn’t a bad thing – having the freedom to run more unconventional builds and comps is part of what makes League of Legends fun. Conversely, however, there are roles for a reason; they keep the game healthy and ensure stability. It just feels like, in some cases, traditional champs are unplayable.
Placing the aforementioned weird comps and builds aside, however, 2026 feels relatively stable in terms of balance. The game is a bit faster, lull states have died off slightly, and I do feel like, unless I’m getting absolutely stomped, there’s more chance of a dramatic 180 turnaround than there has been before. I’ve gone from losing horribly to picking up the pace again: something that feels like it would never have happened in 2025, with the inevitable surrender vote coming in at 15 when things started to go sideways.
I also think that Riot slowing down the pace of champion releases has, overall, been positive. We’re only getting one new character this year – Locke, who launched in June – and we’ve had the much-anticipated Shyvana rework. That’s our lot for 2026, bringing things more in line with Dota 2, which only drops one hero per year. Sure, it’s sad that there isn’t a ton of new content bar the battle passes and League Classic, but I don’t hate that. It feels like Riot is attempting to improve the foundations of the game instead of churning out new content. It worked for Dead by Daylight, and I’d argue it’s been a long time coming for LoL.
That leads into the game’s future, and the inevitable conversation around League Next. What is it? We don’t know; it sounds, in many ways, like a sequel, given the sheer scope and scale of the update. When will it land? Likely 2027 – we’ve just got League Classic, which feels like 2026’s flagship update. That’s why LoL feels like it’s in a transition state: it quite literally is.
Fixing the foundations, then, is critical. Whatever comes next – be it a Dota 2-style New Frontiers update, or a full-blown League of Legends 2 – has to be perfect. It’s no secret that live service titles are slowly but surely growing stale. While League Classic is the perfect nostalgia-tinged blast from the past, I don’t ever see it becoming a permanent, World of Warcraft Classic-esque experience. It’ll always be a sideline to the game, versus a game within itself – and that’s absolutely fine. It’s fun, it’s silly, and it’s an unbalanced, chaotic mess. That’s what League was then: that isn’t what it wants to be now.
I have to praise Riot’s increased transparency, too. I watched as Head of League Studio Andrei ‘Meddler’ van Roon and Executive Producer Paul ‘Pabro’ Bellezza headed out into the chaos of MSI (LoL’s Mid-Season Invitational tournament, which falls in summer ahead of the World Championship in November), chatting with fans and actually engaging. I saw a similar thing at Valorant Masters London, where devs sat down with players to talk about the game. Riot has often felt notoriously opaque – this newfound transparency is a step in the right direction.
The past few years have felt like Riot trying to find itself again, not necessarily to make a full comeback to the ‘good ol’ days,’ but to try and rediscover what made the MOBA so special. It wasn’t the big budget, Arcane-esque projects. Nor was it an influx of expensive skins and battle passes. It was the community and the scrappiness; the unpredictability of casually killing off Gangplank for a while during 2015’s Burning Tides event. That’s what we miss: the risk-taking; the edginess. That’s the spark that League Next needs to rekindle.
LoL’s not going anywhere: its market dominance is surefire, with perhaps Valve’s upcoming Deadlock being the only real challenger. Supervive, Smite, and myriad others have tried and failed to dent it; for all intents and purposes, League of Legends will never die. But in order to recapture that excitement, it has to change.
2026 is an exciting time to play LoL; balance feels good, champion releases are slower, League Classic is great, and League Next is just around the corner. And there’s Worlds – I’d be remiss to ignore the esports here. Despite its faults and despite its flaws, I just keep coming back; and you will, too.