Saturday, March 21, 2015

A League of Legends Story

This happened to me about three months ago. I was playing League of Legends, and I opted to go Mid Lane Twisted Fate AP-AD Hybrid, because that's how I roll sometimes. No, it was not a ranked game, it was just a Normal game between 10 strangers. Or at least, that was what I thought. I remember like it was yesterday the champs chosen. We had a top lane Garen, a bottom lane Ezreal, a support Zilean, and Morgana jungle. At first I was like "huh?" But then I figured "breaking the meta, sweet." Boy, was I in for a surprise!

So the game starts, and Zilean and I give Morgana that jungle leash, like a good mid and support do. Laning phase starts, minions are fighting each other, and I notice Zilean's nowhere near Ezreal, instead he's still in the jungle, and I'm all like "the hell?". I get a kill, but Ezreal gets killed. I call Zilean to go bottom and help Ezreal, but he ignores me. Morgana and Zilean just stay in the jungle, just clearing camps.

Garen's up top, I don't remember who he was up against, but he was holding on just fine. I get ganked, die like a noob. Ezreal dies too, and Morgana and Zilean are just going around the jungle, clearing their camps. They never try to gank any lanes until it's too late, and if I saw them gank bottom lane once, well, you know how it is. At the ten minute mark, I was 2/4, Ezreal was 0/5, Garen had a kill and I think he was 1/1, and Morgana and Zilean were letting the enemy team get dragon.

Anyway, laning phase was a pure disaster, and it was time for the team fight phase. And we got owned. Hard. I stopped getting kills by then, and I just kept dying and dying. It was always just me, Garen and Ezreal against the enemy team, while Morgana and Zilean went off to do their thing. They tried to take down Baron at the 25 minute mark. No, they didn't get it, in fact they died without doing much damage. Perhaps the most perplexing moment of the game was the moment Morgana and Zilean went up to the enemy base, walked right up to their fountain, and got killed. All while Zilean typed in all chat "touchdown!".

As you can probably guess already, we lost. Badly. We were about 4 kills and 27 deaths, more or less, and eleven of those deaths were mine. So yeah, emotions were very high in me, and I reported those two. At the time, I blamed them for our loss.

So what kind of story is this? Is this a story about a pair of trolls who ruined a game for three people? Is this a story about a guy who took a casual game too seriously? It's both, and at the same time, it's neither.

One thing I've learned thanks to League of Legends is that it's OK to lose every now and again. This is a lesson every person on Earth needs to learn, sometimes the hard way. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you win while holding back, sometimes you lose even though you gave it your 110%. No, I did not write a typo.

Sometimes, your team wins even when you were a hindrance. But sometimes, your team loses because of someone else. And the common reaction in League to this sort of event is for the rest of the team to lose their cool and start blaming that one person, to humiliate him or her, to yell. It's OK to feel angry, but what isn't OK is for anyone to focus that anger on someone else. This habit of cursing someone out, to make them feel like shit, it isn't OK.

There are times when someone just has a bad game; it happens to even the best of us. But sometimes, some players just lose the game on purpose, for their own amusement. These are trolls, and they are common. It is inevitable; you WILL run into a troll eventually, and when you do, if they are on your team, your chances of losing increase exponentially. When that happens, keep your cool.

Keep your cool, that's the most important thing about League. You WILL lose in the future; no one wins every time. Losing is good for the soul, it keeps you humble and down to Earth, A champ is measured not how many times he wins, but how he reacts when he loses.

You win some, you lose some. This is a lesson many people just do not learn the easy way; they can only learn it from getting some gravel in the gut and some spit in the eye. Sometimes you lose because you messed up, Sometimes you lose because you were outmatched. And sometimes you lose because someone on your team threw the game. It's OK to lose, don't take it so seriously and so personally when you do. Just try again and give it your all. Learn from every mistake you make. And if you lost because of a troll? Well, let it go.

In life, you take the bad with the good. There are some things you can control, and some things you can't. You'll be happier when you stop worrying about what you can't control. Just because you lose more often than you win doesn't make you a loser. A lesson learned from a video game.

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