Magma Chamber Incoming for Season 4!

With the cancellation of the Magma Chamber over a year ago, summoners thought we'd never see it return, forever archived into the Coming Soon TM libraries. But what's this?! Check out the announcement below!

All-star showdown on Magma Chamber

When your all-stars take the stage in Shanghai, China, you’ll see them face off mano-a-mano (and two-on-two, in the case of bot laners) for the right to claim they’re the best top, mid, bot or jungle players in the world. You’ll also get a look at the upcoming Magma Chamber map, which is specially designed for individual and pair competition.

Why preview Magma Chamber at All-Star Week?

Watching the best players in the world duel it out for honor and glory is pretty damn exciting. If you were following the all-star race, you probably caught the epic showdown between Wickd and Soaz. Matchups like that are really fun to watch, so we wanted to make sure we had a proper battlefield for individual grudge matches. Since it’s only natural to wonder who the best player in each role is, we thought All-Star Week was the perfect venue to give you a sneak peek at the map, and let the pros settle the score while we were at it.

How does a head-to-head match work?

One vs. one competition actually has a pretty long history in the League of Legends community. The first one on one tournament actually took place in beta, and we’ve seen many more battles of this nature since. We tried to stick close to the existing one vs. one conventions.

During All-Star week, players will win a match on Magma Chamber in any the following ways:

• Kill 100 minions
• Destroy the enemy turret
• Score first blood in 1v1, or score 2 team kills in 2v2

When can we play?

While you can watch the all-stars treat their favorite champions to a magma tan today, remember this is a sneak peek and the public release is still on the horizon. We’re targeting before the launch of Season 4 while we tackle the following:

• Tech challenges: A one vs. one map is unlike any game mode we’ve ever launched, and releasing it to millions is a lot different than letting the all-stars play on tournament realm. Before launch we need to load-test the servers and make sure we have the right supporting hardware in place.
• More testing and optimizing: So far, Magma Chamber’s only optimized for tournament hardware, so there’s a lot of polish and bug sweeping left to finish. Before we can launch, the map needs to run smoothly on our full range of hardware, from the humblest min-spec to the most impressive gaming rig.
• Game balance: Getting a map ready for live requires a lot of iteration on the design side. Right now we know it’s fun to watch the best players in the world throw down one vs. one, but we need more testing (including a full tour on the PBE) to make sure it’s balanced and fun to play!

We know Season 4 seems like it’s a long way off, but we’re using that time to get Magma Chamber shipshape and ready for launch. Stay tuned for more as we get closer to the new season.

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New Free Champion Rotation (Season Three: Week 16)

Check out this week's new champion rotation! It's got quite burst champions and assassins this week along with some very underplayed champions. Let's go over them left to right, top to bottom!

First up we got Evelynn, the steal queen. She's supposedly very strong in jungle right now, but I haven't seen it in action. Meanwhile, we have the rock solid, ever sturdy Malphite, who'se as tanky as they come with amazing initiation.

The support of the week Soraka brings up the rear with her powerful heals and silencing abilities, although she's a little one-dimensional for an astral being. Meanwhile we have Mordekaiser, the favorite champion of Brazil with his ability to take the soul of an enemy champion to fight alongside him. 

Next up we have the ugliest champion in the game, Urgot that almost nobody plays anymore, but used to be overpowered with his long range missiles.

On the second row we have Rumble, the AP melee yordle that gets nerfed every single time but somehow keeps bouncing back. Our next two champions, Talon and Varus are both AD, with Talon specializing in close range assassinations and Varus specializing in long range sniping.

Syndra is a 1v1 mage that also deals decent AOE damage. Her early to mid game is insane, but her late game lacks something fierce.

Vi's been nerfed a few times as well, but she's still a jungler to be reckoned with.

If you want to pick them up permanently you can get them for the following prices:

• Evelynn - 1350 IP or 585 RP.
• Malphite - 1350 IP or 585 RP.
• Mordekaiser - 3150 IP or 790 RP.
• Rumble - 4800 IP or 880 RP
• Soraka - 450 IP or 260 RP
• Syndra - 6300 IP or 975 RP.
• Talon - 6300 IP or 975 RP.
• Urgot - 3150 IP or 790 IP.
• Varus - 6300 IP or 975 RP
• Vi  - 6300 IP or 975 RP.

Excited about this week's rotation? Comment below!

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Aartrox Bugged on the PBE

I'm sure you've all been looking forward to the release of Aatrox, but they're still working out some kinks in his design...meanwhile, check out this interesting bug on the PBE! Of course...it could be working as intended...If so, steer clear of ranked that week :P

Video by JamesG1093

PHOTO BOOTH

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EUW Server Faces Massive Issues, Riot Addresses

During the course of this weekend as most of you in EUW probably noted, servers simply put it...sucked. Two hours ago Riot FINALLY put out its official announcements on the matter:

Hey all,

We were hoping to give you a rundown of the problems over the weekend today, but the root cause has been very difficult to identify. We have got a team going through every aspect of EUW infrastructure and they’ve been working constantly on the issue.

The main issue is that it strikes seemingly from nowhere in a 5-30 second flash, causes a chain reaction of problems and then resolves itself. However it leaves behind a login queue and other lingering issues which then also take time to resolve themselves giving the impression that this is of a much larger scale. We have a lot of monitoring systems in place to catch this transient state, and just so you guys know we have not stopped searching between the problems.

We’ve currently narrowed this down to one aspect of the infrastructure and are working on that right now. To answer one question that has come up quite a lot, this is not caused by the amount of players, external attack or platform limitations; that would be very easy to nail.

We’ll keep you in the loop as more information comes to light, particularly when we believe we’ve found the heart of the problem. We know it sucks and we’re working flat out to find the source and eliminate it. Source

Sounds like EUW players will likely see some IP boosts coming their way or some free RP...RiotNoc also added that some emergency downtime is coming up.

Summoners,

We are planning to do an emergency network maintenance to address the recent issues, this will require downtime. We will be starting in a few hours but not sure on the exact time. We will message out prior to beginning the maintenance. Source

Had some trouble over the weekend? Comment below!

Technical difficulties...

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Next "Ultimate" Skin Possibly For June

A month after promising the next "Ultimate" level skin in a month, RiotHippalus has an update to the Coming Soon TM status of the next Ultimate level skin and lifetime RP awards:

OP is correct - we have not come through with the summoner icon rewards for lifetime RP purchases yet. There have been a few different reasons for the delay, but the good news is that when they do finally come, they should be much cooler than I originally envisioned. 

And while I'm fessing up to missing target dates I've put out there, I should mention that the next ultimate skin will not make it in May. Hopefully June! Source

EDIT: There has been no word on what the new Ultimate skin will look like or for what champion it will be, the below image is the old pulsefire ezreal splash art.

It's lonely at the top...

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