Practicum #1 - Kelsey Warren

So, now that Rocky Horror has opened for it's one weekend run (sorry for the shameless plug, but you really should go see it!) I have finally found myself with time to start my practicum. After much debate and consideration and input from friends I've gone ahead and opted to play League of Legends (LoL) for mine which is to try out an MMO. So! The first thing that I did was go to the LoL site, very simply leagueoflegends.com and picked a username and put in my email and password and picked a security question. Then you click PLAY and a .exe file begins downloading, so while that was happening I took the time to read through the handy New User Guide and watch the Tips and Tricks videos they have posted. Holy confusion, Batman! What have I gotten myself into?! Okay, stop, deep breath. Read. It's actually not too bad. You're a Summoner, you pick a Champion, you fight on the Fields of Justice and earn a victory by defeating the enemy's Nexus, which is like a base.
So, the first thing I did was get LoL installed. They have a splash screen that asks your familiarity with games like LoL that are RTS (Real Time Strategy- Starcraft and Warcraft implement similar gameplay) and I obviously clicked beginner. The game then nicely asked if I'd like to play a tutorial- YES PLEASE! The game then narrates you through the basics of how to play, but I admit, there are so many things to look at it was very overwhelming. Right click here, left click here, what is that thing and why is it attacking me?! So I played through the tutorial, and voila- VICTORY! There was a second tutorial, but I actually closed the game at that point to start looking through the different characters. There are a lot of Champions to choose from and in a real game you'll have 90 seconds to choose, pick their spells, their runes, and form a plan with your teammates. Each Champion has a given level of health, a 'type' I guess you could call it- long range/archer, melee, mage- an attack strength and a difficulty to learn rating. I'm going through the characters to read up on them and their abilities so I have some idea going into this and I'm not just randomly clicking. I didn't go up against anyone else yet, I'm still intimidated and not sure if an RTS MMO like this is right for me, but I'm not giving up and switching yet! I'll let you know how my venture goes!

Pics top to bottom are: The LoL homepage, New User Guide, Installation Splash, Character Splash for Ashe