League of Legends Community Isn’t As Bad As People Think 

By Reid DeJongh                 4-6-23

League of Legends (LoL) was released in October of 2009 by Riot Games and has been going strong since then. It is the most played game in the world with about 10 to 11 million daily players and over 171 million registered players, according to ActivePlayer.io. But with this large of a community, the game has received a reputation for having rude or horrible players. 

New players and even some veteran players have been met with nasty and sometimes even racist or offensive comments and insults by other players. These insults can come from the enemy team or even the player's own teammates. This has become a meme and joke of sorts within the LoL community and the gaming scene as a whole, but it is also the reason LoL isn’t getting as many new players and veterans are leaving. LoL used to have over 20 million daily players. The decline to 10 to 11 million daily players is a more than 50% decrease in players.

I have my own experiences with LoL and believe that this harsh judgment of LoL and its community is unfair. I have a little over 48 hours of play time in LoL and have had nearly all positive experiences with other players. 

When I first started playing LoL, people were very patient with me even though I kept dying and causing us to lose. Some players even gave me words of encouragement when I continued to die. 

Once I started to learn LoL and was able to play the ranked/competitive game mode, I thought I would be met with insults when I made a mistake. Instead other players gave me tips on how to play the character I was using. This surprised me and I believed it was a one time thing, but I experienced this level of kindness across many different games all with different teammates.

I was met with some form of insults or toxicity from time to time. During one of my first competitive games, I tried out a new character and I wasn’t doing well along with one of my other teammates. One of the players, who was doing well on our team, kept telling us how bad we were at the game everytime we died — but that was one player, during one game.

I could see why someone might think of LoL as a toxic and unfriendly game community if they go off of what they see online. If you really think about it, there are probably more nice players than mean ones in the community.

I think if you have the means to play LoL you should download it and give it a try even for just a couple games. Who knows? You may find your new favorite game.