Greetings, gentlemen.

I have been enjoying this game for a few days, and I like it enough to feel the urge of sharing my experience as a newcomer with the few of you who may be interested.

First, an introduction - if you want to skip to the interesting part, see my following posts.

It all started out of boredom, while I was looking for a game that I could play on my two years old laptop while I wait to move home and finally have enough space for my gaming desktop. I had only played another MOBA game a few years ago, and this one caught my eye.

When I was a kid, videogames came in a nice box with one or more huge manuals and lots of goodies. I used to read the manual(s) before actually starting to play, which sometimes required a few days.
Today it's not much different: I've spent a few days reading the forums, wikis and watching videos before starting to play LoL.

Eventually, I installed the client. I had to set graphic details pretty low to achieve a decent framerate, but it works fine and I have had no lag so far.
The first few days I played the tutorials and a few games with bots. I felt pretty confident, and ready to jump into the messy fray of multiplayer randomness.

Day two

I entered a queue for a classic 5v5 Summoner's Rift.
One of my first games with/against real people was very quiet, meaning that there was almost no communication within my team.
I picked Morgana, as I like casters and support roles, others picked whatever they wanted and only one of my teammates announced which lane they were taking.
Everybody seemed to know at least a little of what they were doing though. They quickly moved into a lane: two in the bottom one, one took the top, one the middle so I chose to follow the tanky guy in the top lane.
As I said my teammates were a bit laconic, but our opponents were not very well organized and seemed to roam all around the map all together, which allowed us to win quickly.

I felt like my contribution in the first games has been very small, but I have been experimenting with shop items and managing my skills as I leveled up.

I have also tried the 3v3 game, which I did not like very much, and the Dominion which was quite fun (and we won both games), but I still prefer the 5v5 Summoner's Rift.

Day Three

I decided to save my Influence Points (and my 400 Riot Points) until I know the champions and abilities better. Then I will forget about it and buy the one which looks the best - I know myself, I will just do it.

That day I also decided that I wanted more armour, because I kept getting killed by melee characters.
So I purchased the Aegis and every kind of shield/armour I could afford.
Of course, that did not work as expected. Well, actually it worked in the sense that it made me understand that I was playing Morgana in the wrong way. She can be very powerful and helpful, but surely can't behave like a tank.
Four lost games in a row pretty much gave me the idea.

It seems that you can progress (i.e. level up) even if you lose every match, in fact at that point I was level 5, with just a few wins in my pocket.

Players are becoming more talkative. It seems very common that somebody asks if anybody can speak their language. Well I can speak three languages, but I always nicely ask them to keep calm and communicate in English, otherwise only two people out of five would be able to understand - and that is not very polite in my book. If everybody agrees to speak another language, then fine for me as long as I can understand.

Talking about good manners, I have found good sportsmanship thus far, with few exceptions.
Of course we are usually more prone to remember that one game where a jerk ruined the fun, rather then all the fun games where everybody was nice and relaxed.
In particular, there was an odd game where I was going to the top lane together with a guy, while all the others apparently liked the bottom lane very much.
That one guy commented repeatedly about the apparent inferiority of those beings, using some censorable words, with the result that the others went to the top lane all together, which again resulted in more insulting and swearing. I could not help but welcome him to my ignore list and carry on towards a glorious defeat.

Day Four

Ah, I remember that day like it was yesterday.
Actually, it was yesterday.

Level 7, about 2400 IPs, nothing special but things are getting slightly more "serious".
The first match of the day, four out of five of us were discussing strategy during champion select, you know, "I go top, I go bot if a tank comes with me..." .
Then the fifth guy woke up, stating in all capitals: "who caaaares!!!".
I replied "Well, I think you should care ", and a few seconds later he disconnected, ending the match before it started. Good, because that would have been a loss otherwise.

Now I noticed that there is at least one AFK/leaver every other match, if not one per team or more. The amazing fact is that nobody seems to surrender, and I had very tough and fun 5v4 matches.
Also still good sportsmanship on both sides from 90% of the players. Lots of honour points given and received, both from/to teammates and opponents.

Another thing I noticed is that hardly anyone cares about the jungle and its monsters/buffs, except that one guy that really wanted to kill the Baron at low champion level. I guess it was a personal revenge; the Baron must have eaten his family or something.

I think I won the last four consecutive matches, with the last being the most epic as one of our mates was AFK since the beginning, but nobody even commented about it and we just slowly inched our way to the enemy nexus and destroyed it.
We were simply better organized, with one champion on each lane plus one roaming, occasionally leaving one lane unoccupied to defend a turret as needed.

At that point I was regularly using the blue buff courtesy of the Ancient Golem, thanks to the very useful Smite spell. That in combination with Spirit of the Ancient Golem, Black Shield and her Spell Vamp can make Morgana very difficult to kill.
When retreating, I usually shot a Binding Sphere while running, which froze my pursuer in place and allowed me to reach safety.
When attacking, the Binding Sphere proved also very useful. Freeze a melee opponent, possibly on a Tormented Soil, then smack them with the Deathfire Grasp and if they still move finish them off with Soul Shackles.
Great fun!

Happy to see you enjoy the game so far!

About the jungling part, jungling in the lower levels is tough due to the absence of good runes and proper masteries. Once you reach a higher level you'll see more and more junglers.

Keep it up!

Cloppy

Thanks Cloppy.
I thought with all the negativity you can find in the forums, it would have been good to share my so far positive experience.

Day Five

Yesterday I got to level 8, lying at around 3500 IPs.
Morgana has been so far my favourite, but now with the new rotation it's time to try something else.
Caitlyn seems to be kind of unpopular, at least at the lower levels, and that was my choice. She's got a shotgun, what can go wrong? - so I thought.

I did not have time to research on this champion before trying her out, so the first match was a bit brutal. I soon discovered how squishy she is, and how hard it is to play her.
I believe she's meant to be carried, supported, craddled and spoon-fed by teammates pretty much until level 18, which I do not expect to happen often at this level.
Her traps are nice but do not seem to deal much damage, or to immobilize the enemy long enough.
The net is very useful when running away from my frequent pursuers, but requires some practice and keyboard-mouse coordination.
The "Ace in the Hole" seems to deal decent damage, but being so slow I mostly found myself using it to finish off enemies when they tried to run away. Hah, shooting injured people in the back, I almost feel bad!

After the first match, I tried to adjust the build to the circumstances and to my playstyle, focusing on more regen and more HP.
It was a well balanced match anyway, with a nice comeback, which unfortunately ended in a loss.
There was good teamwork and communication, our Olaf kept pushing on the mid lane while the others were defending near the end. We basically had the way open to the last enemy turrets, but they were too strong for us and ultimately they prevailed.

It was getting late, but I could not go to bed with a negative score, so I decided to try again and take the Spirit of the Ancient Golem from the shop this time.
The last match has been absolutely dominated by my team, ending with something like 60 kills vs 5 deaths. Not that I played perfectly, I just used more caution and that little extra HP saved my life many times when I ran away with less than 50 HP.

Most players I find are still quite friendly and many begin with something like "Hello guys, you alright?" in chat before declaring which lane they would like to go.

Haha, you're new. It won't be long before the opening chat is like this:

Player1: TOPTOPTOPTOPTOP
Player2: top
Player3: top
Player4: mid
Player5: adc
Player2: Player2: topPlayer1: TOPTOPTOPTOPTOPPlayer3: topPlayer4: midPlayer5: jungle
Player1: no mate, you have the bug I was first
Player4: he's right Player1 was first
< Player 2 locks in Garen ; Player 3 is afk with Riven picked >
Player1: ffs noob insta lock report
< 10 seconds left on timer ; Player1 picks a Jungle character >

Game starts, Player3 is afk, Player1 refuses to help Player2 top with ganks which results in him being killed over and over again. Player 5 has to solo bot lane because there is no support & they are 4 players.

20 minutes arrives, the mid & bot are premade & won't surrender. Game continues on to 30 minutes despite you knowing you lost the game from the beginning.

^^^^ STORY OF LOL

I have a hard time believing you're a noob, Fox. When I was playing for... I guess about a week, I was much less versed in the lingo of the game (am only just starting to learn that now) and in the mechanics, like you're supposed to last-hit as many minions as possible, you go bot with this champion and top with that one etc. Sometimes it sounds a bit like an older player masquerading as a new one to give the new ones hope about the community and the learning curve of the game. Which I guess is a nice thing to do

But if you really did just start a while ago, good on you. You seem smart, you learn quickly and you are running into the nice side of the community. Lucky guy.

Either way, keep writing these, they are entertaining, well written, and other new people can learn from them!

You made my day so far.
I hope you continue having much fun and of course you continue also writing here.

Thanks for sharing this with us!

@Halaberiel I guess that will become more common at higher levels
As of now, the worst I got was like:
Summoner1: top
Summoner2: bot
Summoner3: bot
Others are quiet.
Game starts.
Everybody goes bot.
Summoner1: Sorry, did I say top?

@Omegi, thanks! I am actually very new and of course I've got so much to learn, but as I said I've spent a few days reading the forums before actually playing. The first thing I looked for was a post with all the terminology, and I've found a very complete one: http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/board...ighlight=lingo