I recently came across the 2 CSB clips of Pat trying League, which reminded me of my own experience trying LoL about 2 years ago.

A discord I frequented held a custom 5v5 match between a bunch of beginners just as a fun thing to do one day and streamed it. I ended up watching, not really understanding what was happening, but it was fun. I was able to kind of pick up on some things like footsies to make an enemy engage early and get tricked into a 2v1.

So I ended up trying it out. I read a lot of guides, spoke to people in that discord, did some research on characters and ended up with a short list of like 2 characters in each of the 5 roles I'd be happy playing. I don't remember all of them, but they aren't important. My favourite, was Miss Fortune.

She felt good to play, I had a decent grasp on her mechanics and had a jack of all trades build for items with her I would fall back on. I did something like 50 bot matches with her, like people suggested.

Bot matches are easy to win. Never lost one, I also never spoke to another team mate in a bot match.

So I did some ARAM, which is 1 lane of 5v5 and you get assigned a random hero. They were a coin toss for winning, again never really spoke to my team. There wasn't ever a need to for bots or ARAM. Bots you couldn't lose, and ARAM was a coin toss.

Eventually I wanted to do an actual game against people. Every single person I spoke to said, "play with 4 friends or play ranked, don't play casual by yourself."

So I took their advice, and did my first ever game of ranked League.

Within 30 seconds, I was being screeched at by someone to buy some item they described using only a nickname. Then I was being spammed with pings in my lane that made no sense.

When I tried asking, "why are you spamming pings?" I got accused of smurfing by the guy. This has all been one guy by the way.

Bottom lane is supposed to be 2 champions. I was supposed to have a 2nd champion with me down there, but this screeching manchild kept saying, "smurf smurf smurf, he's throwing he's throwing he's throwing, don't help him in his lane"

What the fuck?

Queue the worst 25 minutes of my league experience. Screamed at, spammed with pings that made no sense, abandoned to a 2v1, and when I tried to say, "I'm new, what the fuck are you doing?" The guy wanted everyone to report me for bad sportsmanship and smurfing.

The match ended in a loss, I didn't get a single kill, and my desire to touch League was so thoroughly scorched that I refuse to even touch any MOBA's at all. The sheer vitriol this random dude had for me from second 1 of the match was mind blowing.