Thinking back over the past year, I have by far played League of Legends the most. My first real "commitment" to the game started after the Season 7 World Championship but even then I only played in unranked games. This was because the League of Legends, or LoL as it's affectionately called, has such a vast amount of content that I knew next to nothing. And I also am quick to admit that my reflexes aren't that great - part of this is due to my age (I'm over 50 years old) while most of it is due to the fact that I'm just not great at gaming in general.
Still, when season 9 started I decided to commit to playing ranked and quickly got frustrated with it. Even though I'm not a great player, I knew I was better than the Iron tier but had extreme difficulty getting out of it.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with LoL, its ranking system is based on groupings (Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc.; this is my term) and then tiers within each category (IV to I, with the latter being the highest in any given category). In order to advance from one tier to another and then from one grouping to the next you have to win a series of games. Each win grants you a number of League Points (LP) while each loss deducts LP. The exact amount added or subtracted is calculated based on a number of factors within that specific game. When you are at 100 LP you enter promos (promotion games), where you need to win 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 5 depending on whether you are being promoted within the grouping or if you're moving to a new grouping entirely. At the beginning of each season, each person has to play 10 ranked games to get an initial ranking which is calculated on a variety of factors during those 10 games as well as taking your previous season finish into account.
My younger brother and his friends have been playing LoL for some time and are quite good at it. And, as gamers often do, they were quick to deride my playstyle as being hard stuck Bronze meaning I was not good enough to ever get out of the Bronze group. This was as much a gamer jab as it was a direct insult, and for most of season 9 I simply accepted this as truth.
But toward the end of the season (which run from roughly mid-January until a week after the World Championship in mid-November), I decided to make a concerted push to get to Silver. I am better than Bronze! I am good at my role! And so I did the grind, along with someone I met in game who played ranked with me, and eventually I finished the season at Silver IV. Mission accomplished!
On Tuesday of this week, preseason for season 10 began. At the beginning of each season, Riot Games rolls out several changes to the game and this season was no exception. Now is the time to start familiarizing myself with the changes before the season officially starts. Along the way, I will be documenting what has been happening as I make my push for Gold this season. And since realistic goals were never "my thing," I'm actually going to strive for Platinum, which is the next grouping after Gold.
Will I make either? Who knows. But I'm going to give it my best shot playing my best champions in whatever role I feel inclined to play (top laner, mid laner, attack damage carry [or ADC], support or the master shot-caller, the jungler, who is like a floater that watches the ebb and flow of the game and alerts the teammates about enemy movements, objectives that are vulnerable, and who also jumps in any lane to support their teammate by applying pressure to the enemy team, something called ganking).
Currently, I main jungler, meaning that's the role I play most often. In that role, I'm proficient in a number of champions, but I prefer to play any of the following four: Warwick, who specializes in burst damage; Jax, who normally capitalizes on his attack speed to "split push" at take objectives in areas of the map where the enemy team isn't; Vi, a tank-bruiser who specializes in ganking enemy lanes and disabling champs with a charged attack; and Jarvan IV, who utilizes his gap-closer combination to gank enemies to allow your team to push for objectives.
Come back weekly to see how I've progressed (or not) toward my goal along with commentary about specific games, challenges I see in the group of players at my skill level, challenges I have had, etc.