Lately, I have been opening up my multiplayer gaming horizons a bit. Two of the games I've been playing are League of Legends and World of Tanks, both of which are free to play. I know, I am late to the party when it comes to these games. Which is winning the battle for my gaming time?
First off, let me say they are both very good games. I was pleasantly surprised to find that out. They are very high quality and a lot of fun to play.
League of Legends
I love the variety that LoL provides. There are something like 70+ Champions to choose from. Most of whom are pretty unique. Dwarf/Gnome in a helicopter of doom? Got it. Rock monster, Check. Pirate and Ninja? Of course. Most of them play pretty differently too, so there is just a ton of options.
League of Legends is also very polished. When you have 2 maps for a few years you tend to work out the kinks. I didn't notice a bug during my time playing the game.
There are a few things that really wore me down. Once is the length of matches. I played 3 vs 3 mostly, and on average a match took 40 minutes. That's nice and all for some matches, but others it just felt like a drag. There is a way out of it though: Surrender. Most of the time, I just can't bring myself to vote yes when a Surrender is called. That leads me to my second problem with LoL.
That would be the players. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy playing with folks I know, but that is a minority of the time. The rest of the time is filled with rather unpleasant people. It's not that I'm terrible, my record was close to 2 wins for every loss. But even in those wins, I just didn't enjoy my teammates. Combined with the long match time, games started to get stressful.
World of Tanks
The fact it has tanks (and soon airplanes and battleships) is a big plus in my book. Tanks are awesome and quite a rarity in today's MMO world. I like fantasy and all, but modern (relatively) military equipment is very cool.
WoT doesn't have the variety LoL has, but it is no slouch either. They have a lot of historical tanks to choose from, but really they do the same basic function. Artillery (SPG) is an exception some of the time since it has 2 modes, and is also one of my favorite activities.
Match times are on the order of 15 minutes or less in World of Tanks. Even if you die, you can exit the match, choose another tank and get into another battle. It has a nice spectator view, which I like to do when I get destroyed. Helps me learn more about the maps by watching my teammates.
With larger teams and shorter matches, I have not really had any problem with the community of World of Tanks. I'm sure it has its offenders though, every game does.
One downside of World of tanks is it can be hard at times, especially when you are new. I've been destroyed without ever seeing my enemy on a number of occasions. Like most PvP games, facing off against an organized team can just be brutal, but at least it is quick.
Conclusion
As you can probably tell, if I had to choose between League of Legends and World of Tanks, I'd go with World of Tanks. Thankfully, I do not have to choose since both games are free. What a world we live in.... :)
Alaloth - Released
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