Gaming

With the expansion of the world wide web as well as cross continental communication through different technology such as social media, phones, there is one fun way to get rid of some stress, and that is online game. I have been playing video games my whole life, its been a way have a nice relaxing couple of hours, where you can have complete bliss from the every stress that does sometimes happen to dominate the everyday life we live in. The biggest change in the last 15 years for me in the gaming world has been the rise of online gaming with the rest of the world and the slowing down of single player games.

The games that have really been a huge factor in the rise of online gaming and even competitive gaming are World Of Warcraft (In 2004 WOW became the most played online MMORPG massive multiplayer online role playing game with 12 million subscribers).World of Warcraft has been the most commercially successful game of all time with the game costing about 50$ a piece and a 15$ per month subscription. World Of Warcraft has gone through 5 different expansions the start of which being The Burning Crusade in 2007 and their still currently making them, releasing the last expansion in December of 2014.

World Of Warcraft friend and guildmates getting ready to defeat a boss 0.o

Starcraft 1 & 2, starcraft really paved the way for competitive gaming and was huge in the Asian online gaming scene as the most competitive online game on the planet during the peak of it.  Starcraft 1 made its debut in E3 in 1996 (E3 is a place where they unveil the newest games to come out each year and has been going strong since 1995), after the debut in 1996 it was overhauled and was debuted in 1997 this time with great responses. after some time starcraft South k\Korean scene exploded with competitive starcraft and other online games even getting time on channels such as Ongamenet and MMCGame. 

Starcraft 2 Picture for the game.

Now we get into the most recent game and game styles  that seem to be blowing up the competitive gaming scene right now and in that we have MOBA (Multi-play Online Battle Arenas) the 2 games I'm going to mention that fall under this category and Leauge Of Legends made by riot gaming, and Dota 2. Now before I talk about these games in detail I'm going to talk about where they started. These mobas were originally started by a player in 2003 named Steve Freak under the alias Guinsoo on a custom map in a game called Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos. In that game you could create custom maps to play on and thats where DOTA or Defense of the Ancient got its first start. After gaining rapid popularity on the warcraft 3 custom games a game designer known as “IceFrog” worked on obtaining a license to start dota as its own video game and as a separate entity entirely from the warcraft franchise. Once that happened DOTA became and is still considered to be one of the most competitive games in the world it also still holds the record for the biggest prize pool in ESports history with the last years international the winning team taking home 11.7 mil split between 5 people. 

Dota 2 TI 4 (the international 4) dota’s world championships biggest prize pool in e sports history

The other game of this variation is considered right now to be the most popular in terms of players and that is Called League of Legends. League of Legends or LOL was created by Riot Gaming in 2009 and is currently the most popular played Moba out right now. in 2012 LOL was the most played computer game in NA and Eu in terms of hour played. League of Legends also has a huge competitive scene but theres differs from DOTA in a much different way. In LOL pro players get put in a LCS system or a league (consider soccer where they have different leagues but the best team from the league's get to play in the championship at the end) they also get paid salary which differs huge from the DOTA 2 pro system. For league there are 3 different LCS system’s there’s the NA LCS (North American LCS), EU LCS (European LCS), and the Asian LCS. In the LCS the teams compete year round to try to get into the world championships at the end of the year and compete for 1 million dollars. Where as in DOTA its a open market and team can do as many tourneys as they want and as long as they keep winning they keep earning the winnings from the tournaments.

League poster featuring champs from the game

So thats all I got for now guys if you wanna discuss anything or even tell me stuff I don't know or wanna play sometime just let me know and thanks for the read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!