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This weekend my wife decided she wanted to play LoL. I've always been a little reserved on LoL. Being a hardcore sc2 fan & player, I somehow found myself on the bandwagon that LoL is the darkside and I should keep my distance from it. I'm glad to be proven wrong, LoL is beautiful.

A little background on my SC2 experience. Long story short, I use to be a pro CS player back in 2002 where we made WCG that year. Ever since then I stopped gaming competitively but consistently played casually on many different titles. Fast forward 9 years, I graduated from uni, I'm married, have a stable job, but I was missing something in my life. A hobby. I was always up to date with the eSports scene. Up to date meaning I knew what games were being played, which were popular, which were being played competitively etc.

I didn't touch SC2 when it was released. I was never truly a RTS fan, although I did dabble a little in Dota for a few months back in 2006 (insert RTS =/= MOBA here). What drew me to SC2 was truly GSL & Tastosis. The energy, the hype, the love for eSports. So on April 07, 2011 I decided. I want to go back into competitive gaming. SC2 was my chosen platform to get there.

tl;dr April 07, 2011 placement matches put me in Silver. December 12, 2011 promote to Master. July 25 2012 promoted to GM.

So how did I get here? I started by pretty much watching all of Day9's SC2 dailies, transitioned to Mr. Bitter's 12 weeks with the Pros, and into self analysis of pro replays to improve my own play. Back then I pretty much fully read every strategy thread on TL.net. I started twitter simply to follow the SC2 scene, and also use it as journal to keep track of my progress. On top of all of that, I was playing an average of 15 games a day, everyday. All I'm trying to paint in the last 3 paragraph is, since April 07, 2011, my life's pretty much been all SC2.

So this much SC2 over about 1.5 years, burnouts were inevitable. SC2 started to feel like a 'job' + 'hobby'. I was doing nothing else for fun, SC2 was the fun. Only lately I've started to feel I need a breath of fresh air, just a breather, and this is where LoL comes in. I never really liked playing single player games because I felt it was a waste of time. Waste of time for me meant after I'm done with the game, I'm done. There's no progression, there's no showing the hard work I did to get that imba weapon/spell, that's it. Watch the credits and the 72-100hrs spent in the game washes away.

LoL is definitely not a waste of time. At least not at this day & age of eSports. Every moment put into LoL, you're just that 0.000001cm closer to a chance at competing for 1 million dollars (yes I make it sound ezpz, it's not I know ;p). If I were to truly compare SC2 & LoL to sports, I would say SC2 is basketball, and LoL is golf. I think it's safe to say that a lot of professional athletes that aren't golfers, play golf as their 'off-sport'. Michael Jordan would be a prime example, the Flash of basketball, but it was no secret that he loved to play golf during his off time.

I compare LoL to golf simply because it's truly how it feels being a SC2 player. LoL feels like a very decent 'off-game'. Golf is the less intense sport, the more expensive sport (expensive gear & training). I did a little research and apparently it will cost over $450 to purchase all LoL characters, and over $4,500 to purchase all characters AND skins. Very golf indeed. Am I gonna say skillwise LoL is ezpz compared to SC2? Definitely not. It's just like Michael Jordan could be the legend of NBA, but he's no where close to Tiger Woods in golf.

Does LoL FEEL easier compared to SC2? Yes, from a SC2 point of view. It feels easier because from a 200/200 army, I now only have to control 1 unit, with 6 abilities. I'm literally controlling one infester for 30min per LoL game. LoL also feels easier because it's a team game. There's room for blame when my team loses that points away from myself.

I found my LoL experience over the weekend pleasant. It was a nice change of pace. I did zero research for the game, just hopping in and made decisions on the fly. I found myself bashing the "Play again!" button after each game was done, there was no ladder anxiety. At the end of the day, it even felt helpful to my SC2 skills as at the very least it felt like I was conditioning my micro.

Am I considering to switch to LoL competitively? Not at all. I love SC2, I've spent so much time on SC2, it makes zero sense for me to make a switch over objectively too. Do I enjoy LoL? Absolutely. It's nice to be in a environment where everything seems to slow down. Perhaps everything feels slow because I'm such a noob at the game, but hey, it's a good nooby feeling. It's also a good feeling that every game I play of LoL now and then progression is made. I earn points, I level up, I can unlock heros & skins as time goes on.

The point of this wall of text? League of Legends is a good game. Sure it seems like we're arch enemies in the eSports world, but I'm a firm believer that when any game in eSports gain, we gain in SC2 too. League of Legends has given me something missing in my SC2 world, easy access to my casual friends/family gamers. I'm happy to see that because of LoL, there seems to be a huge increase in competitive gamers, and competitive gaming is becoming more mainstream too.

Again, I'm still 100% with SC2. It's just nice that to have a reliable 'off-game' to soothe burnouts now.

Sorry this post is all over the place, just dumping thoughts~