What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
The league of legends closed beta began on April 11th in 2009 and ended on October 21st,
when all accounts were reset to level 1 and given the King Rammus skin.
But League of legends didn’t start to really kick off in popularity until late 2011, and
as a result, a large portion of you guys probably have little to no idea of just how different
the beta was to the game today.
If you enjoy the video hit that like button, and if you don’t enjoy the video please
click the dislike, and if this video hits, 10,000 ratings I’ll make a video about the
history of the meta.
Anyways, let’s get started.
The League of legends beta was closed for almost the entire duration of it’s existence,
in fact the true open beta only lasted about 6 whole days while the servers were being
tested for launch.
However, the beta being a bit strict isn’t something that it is remembered for, because
what happened was that every single person who got into the closed beta, was given 5
game keys to give to their friends as a way of marketing the game.
And when they gave one of their friends a key, that friend would also get 5 more keys
for players to join.
So although it was technically a closed beta, it was relatively easy to get access to the
game from a friend or by finding someone online who had extra keys.
You gotta hand it to Riot, that is a pretty smart form of marketing a game in beta if
you ask me!
During the beta there was about a patch every single week, and there was no form of meta
that existed.
It was a simpler time, but also, much, much crazier.
As you would launch the league of legends client, you were met with this wonderful old
login screen, and would login to be met with thie old pvp.net client, that really wasn’t
too far off from our client today, just with a different interface.
You still had your profile page, the store, the settings menu, and the same way of queueing
up, but the post match screens were much different, and the UI as a whole was completely different,
and has gone through a ton of changes to reach how it is today, but the same features remain
in tact for the most part.
The champions during beta were much different.
The overall powerlevel of champions across the board during the beta was generally much
higher than it was today, but even though the champions in general were much stronger,
there are quite a few that stick out as truly mind-boggling.
Heimerdinger was able to place up to 6 turrets on the map, which led to some really crazy
shenanigans, apart from just being overpowered, such as using his turrets to block minions
to eventually build up a gigantic wave for one huge, massive push.
Blitzcrank’s ultimate would silence for 5 seconds, and you were able to use flash
to extend the range of his grab to incredibly ridiculous amounts.Evelynn had perma stealth
with no indicator and a targeted stun, and could run around and gank people like crazy,
walking through wards, and right up into lanes with no indication of her coming.And Soraka
could give both herself and her allied champions mana back using her e,and kassadin was able
to steal mana from opponents using his w, and could cast his ultimate while rooted,
with a 1.0 ap ratio on his e, and absurd damage values across the board.
And of course the most memorable, we have twisted fate.
Back in beta, twisted fate’s point and click teleport was actually on his E and had a 40
second cooldown, with a global range, and his ultimate revealing and slowing all enemy
champions on the map.
His gold card was also an area of effect stun, and as I’m sure you can imagine, it was
pretty insane.
The items back then were also much different to today.
Remember that gold was acquired at a much slower rate than it is now, so generally across
the board the items were cheaper, but also a bit stronger too, and there were a few that
are worth mentioning.
The passive of rabadon’s deathcap, and the active of zhonya’s hourglass was contained
into one superman ap item called zhonya’s ring, which was an incredible offensive and
defensive tool for any caster, which of course was crazy powerful.
Innervating locket was an item that during the beta wouldn’t just give massive sustain
to anyone who used it, but gave that sustain and crazy healing to all surrounding units,
both minions and champions on your team, making it an incredible item for team-wide tankiness,
sieging, and just overall dominance.
Sunfire capes also stacked, meaning that you could build as much as 6 sunfire capes and
be able to deal massive damage to someone by just standing next to them, while still
having a lot of health and armor.
And even items like heart of gold gave a crazy amount of defensive stats at the time, both
hp and armor, and aegis of the legion’s aura gave 35 armor, 40 magic resistance, and
12 attack damage to yourself and your entire team, making it an unbelievable defensive
tool.
And as I’m sure you’ve noticed by some of the gameplay in the background already,
Summoner’s rift was quite different to how it was today.
In the beta, summoners rift had about twice as many bushes as it does today.
There’s a reason why the tribush is called what it is, and it’s because it used to
be 3 separate bushes at that location.
As well, there were much more bushes in the river and jungle, and even at baron and dragon.
It was really crazy, and made juking through bushes way too easy, further adding more power
to champions like twisted fate who could give global vision, and we can all appreciate that
rengar didn’t exist during this time.
Monsters in the jungle could critically strike, and baron buff gave 400 global gold, and 90
attack damage and ability power for its duration.
Baron’s attacks also had a shorter range, so there were quite a few champions who could
outrange him completely and solo him without taking a single point of damage, such as karthus
with his q and a level 18 tristana using her passive.
Runes and masteries were added into the game in early alpha as a core part of the leveling
experience, and to give players the feeling of accomplishment, or a small token of their
efforts upon levelling up, but they looked a lot different to how they do today.
In beta the masteries looked like this, not too far off from how the trees were structured
up until season 6, but the individual masteries were much different and since went through
multiple reworks and redesigns.
Notably, there were masteries to improve every single summoner spell in the game, a mastery
that gave you base crit chance, and the end of the offense tree increased all damage you
dealt by 4%, but a lot of the masteries share names with masteries we see today.
Apart from a lot of minor tweaks and numbers changes, individual runes used to drop at
a random chance at the end of every game, and weren’t actually purchaseable from the
shop, so it was quite a grind to build up a perfect rune page, and you would often end
up with a mixed up grab bag of individual runes and had to sort of fit the pieces of
what you had to form an acceptable rune page, and would have to use the rune combiner a
lot to reroll the things you had in the hopes of getting what you wanted.
In addition, during the very early stages of the alpha version of League, summoner spells
were added into the game, as a way of trying to make the gameplay a bit more different
than Defense of the Ancients, and among the differences that we see from summoner spells
that are still in the game today, there were a few summoners that have since been removed,
but were pretty crazy.
First on the list we have fortify.
It was a summoner spell that granted invulnerability to all nearby towers, and increased their
attack speed by 100% for 7 seconds, but it could also be cast while dead if your corpse
was near a turret, and you were granted assists and kills on any target that the turret assisted
on or killed accordingly.
It became a core part of defensive strategy, but also was used as an offensive strategy
with taunts and blitzcrank’s grab to double the damage a tower dealt to a target once
they were pulled in.
As well, there was a summoner spell called rally that would summon a ward that increased
the attack damage of all nearby units.
It had a decent amount of health and could be killed, and could also be used to tank
turrets.
Unlike fortify, this summoner spell was removed, well because it sucked really, and on a 4
minute and 30 second cooldown, isn’t exactly the most useful thing, but it did exist in
the game, although it wasn’t a very popular option, unlike fortify.
But a lot of the summoner spells that are still in the game today had much more powerful
effects, or were generally just stronger.
Flash had about double the range and half the cooldown as it does today, and Cleanse,
which at the time was known as boost, was much more powerful too.
Although it did not remove stuns, it would remove silences, snares, and slows, and instead
what it did is it would provide you a spell shield that lasted for 30 whole seconds, and
oh yeah it was on a 90 second cooldown too.
Later in the beta it was nerfed and then remade into the cleanse that we now know today, but
I’m sure you can imagine how crazy it was back then for a short while.
Looking back at the beta, it’s crazy just how different it really was to the game today,
but it also gives an appreciation for how far the game has come.
Who knows, maybe I’ll be making this kind of video for the game we play today 5 years
down the line!
And that’s just about it.
Here are some of my favorite comments from a previous video, where I asked what your
favorite off meta build was!
For a chance to be featured in a future video, leave a comment about what your favorite thing
from the league of legends beta was!
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!