At PAX Prime 2012, I had the opportunity to chat with Ryan ‘Morello’ Scott about a few things League of Legends. Morello is Riot’s lead champion designer for the popular MOBA game. Topics of interest in this interview were talks about the next champion – Syndra, the US Regions going on at PAX, the League of Legends Champion Series, and a monstrous champion reveal.
The responses in this article are close to verbatim but not exactly perfect. Also, the responses are abridged and not the full interview. The whole interview video is uncut though and is here for your viewing pleasure.
About Syndra…
She is a gravity / force mage. Her unique gameplay can pick up, push, and manipulate minions or an object she creates called dark spheres. Her gameplay revolves around manipulating and throwing these objects.
Are the rumors true about Easter eggs with her throwing blue / red buff at people?
It is true, though I don’t want to ruin to much of the surprise. Try throwing red buff or blue buff at somebody, see what happens, you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised.
The North American Regions are sort of a big deal…
It’s this little thing we whipped up. No, this will unequivocally determine who the best North American teams are and we wanted to come out big for it. eSports is a big deal and we treat it seriously and what better way than to start with this. This is cool, but our world finals roll back over, they are so cool that they start to go back to silly again. It’s going to be a really good season and I can’t wait to see who comes out top. We’ve already seen a lot of awesome games and the world finals will be even more insane.
Any big surprises with season 3?
Some surprises, some gameplay stuff, some other cool features. I’m not going to talk about it too much, I don’t want to hype it up too much due to expectations and all. The eSports scene is changing a lot for Season 3. The salary players in the championship circuit will be more akin to what you see in regular sports today; salary teams, weekly games – so like you can tune in the same time every week and see pros match off in a League match. It’s kind of an easier venue to watch than the 40 hour marathon tournaments all the time. Something you can come home and watch on your couch kind of thing; lots of opportunity for making / treating eSports like how they should be treated.
Any sneak previews for champions after Syndra?
We have heard our community’s request for more monstrous champions and more species verity, and we’ll be delivering on this extreme soon. People will be pleased with what they see.
Were people pleased with how monstrous Rengar was?
I don’t even consider Rengar monstrous compared to what I’m talking about.
