Anyone who's into DotA probably already knows about League of Legends. I'd hazard a guess that anyone remotely interested in playing it has already signed up for the beta and got accepted into the most recent round of invitations, which are probably pretty sweeping considering the amount of time left until it comes out. That said, I'm in the beta and played some matches for a few hours, and guess what? 
 
It's totally DotA.
 
Which isn't a bad thing really. The Champions are all pretty well designed and very varied in their look and feel. There's no real uniformity between them, they're all just fantasy and steam-punk staples that range from your floating evil wizard guy to your little chipmunk furry with a blunderbuss to a bog standard minotaur that punches stuff.
 
One of the things I was a little worried about in LoL was the summoner mechanic, where your account levels as you play matches and get experience. Leveling your summoner will unlock powerful summoner spells, gain you points that you put toward an overarching summoner 'build' that effects all your champions, and opens up more rune slots in your rune book. I was afraid that this would sort of dumb down the early matches and make it hard for beginners to get a grip on the game with the inevitable twinking that will go on, but so far the core gameplay is good enough to carry it without you thinking too much about your summoner level. The spells you get are fun to unlock and swap around to find new tactics with your favourite Champions, and the rune slots and build stuff are fairly minor early on, so even if you were to play against someone with high tier runes on a low level summoner, you won't notice the difference. I would hazard a guess that later on all this stuff is pivotal to your success, since there are alot of rune slots and points to gain, but the important part is that beginners aren't really shafted in their early games because of people twinking the system.
 
I played all my matches to date with the Champion called Fiddlesticks, an evil animated scarecrow that drains health, can fear targets, and has some pretty nasty AoE attacks. This one hero is fun enough to make me keep playing LoL for over four hours straight, so I can imagine with a cast of many Champions there's probably more than a few that you'll take a shining to. 
 
One jarring thing about the presentation, however, is that the game's lobby, summoner info and chat interfaces are all separate from the actual game engine in a set of browser-like windows. The chatroom stuff and buddy list bits are pretty awesome, but when once you enter a match, pick your Champion, spells and rune setup, the browsers will all close and the actual game will boot, which takes a little while on my PC. The resolution it natives too isn't great either, and I've yet to find a way to change it to something higher. The graphics are functional, but not really top-shelf. Maybe it's just because of the resolution... In any case, it runs at about 70fps on my modest P4, which is probably the most important thing. There hasn't been any lag to speak of despite my ping to the server from Australia, and the UI and game interface are really clean, polished and precise. 
 
Considering League of Legends will be free to play, I don't see how anyone with even a remote interest in DotA would fail to check this out.

Anyone who's into DotA probably already knows about League of Legends. I'd hazard a guess that anyone remotely interested in playing it has already signed up for the beta and got accepted into the most recent round of invitations, which are probably pretty sweeping considering the amount of time left until it comes out. That said, I'm in the beta and played some matches for a few hours, and guess what? 
 
It's totally DotA.
 
Which isn't a bad thing really. The Champions are all pretty well designed and very varied in their look and feel. There's no real uniformity between them, they're all just fantasy and steam-punk staples that range from your floating evil wizard guy to your little chipmunk furry with a blunderbuss to a bog standard minotaur that punches stuff.
 
One of the things I was a little worried about in LoL was the summoner mechanic, where your account levels as you play matches and get experience. Leveling your summoner will unlock powerful summoner spells, gain you points that you put toward an overarching summoner 'build' that effects all your champions, and opens up more rune slots in your rune book. I was afraid that this would sort of dumb down the early matches and make it hard for beginners to get a grip on the game with the inevitable twinking that will go on, but so far the core gameplay is good enough to carry it without you thinking too much about your summoner level. The spells you get are fun to unlock and swap around to find new tactics with your favourite Champions, and the rune slots and build stuff are fairly minor early on, so even if you were to play against someone with high tier runes on a low level summoner, you won't notice the difference. I would hazard a guess that later on all this stuff is pivotal to your success, since there are alot of rune slots and points to gain, but the important part is that beginners aren't really shafted in their early games because of people twinking the system.
 
I played all my matches to date with the Champion called Fiddlesticks, an evil animated scarecrow that drains health, can fear targets, and has some pretty nasty AoE attacks. This one hero is fun enough to make me keep playing LoL for over four hours straight, so I can imagine with a cast of many Champions there's probably more than a few that you'll take a shining to. 
 
One jarring thing about the presentation, however, is that the game's lobby, summoner info and chat interfaces are all separate from the actual game engine in a set of browser-like windows. The chatroom stuff and buddy list bits are pretty awesome, but when once you enter a match, pick your Champion, spells and rune setup, the browsers will all close and the actual game will boot, which takes a little while on my PC. The resolution it natives too isn't great either, and I've yet to find a way to change it to something higher. The graphics are functional, but not really top-shelf. Maybe it's just because of the resolution... In any case, it runs at about 70fps on my modest P4, which is probably the most important thing. There hasn't been any lag to speak of despite my ping to the server from Australia, and the UI and game interface are really clean, polished and precise. 
 
Considering League of Legends will be free to play, I don't see how anyone with even a remote interest in DotA would fail to check this out.