Brawl is Everything I Needed from League of Legends

I've been playing League of Legends for nearly 13 years. That's a fact I'm having to remind myself every once in a while, but it's an unmistakable one nonetheless: in Season 2, I was there when Darius' original splash art decorated the log-in screen.

Like any other League of Legends player, I've had the textbook cyclical relationship with Riot Games' MOBA, playing for a weeks or months, stopping for a few, then coming back... while it hasn't been exactly the 13 years due to this, a large chunk of my life — and entire gaming identity — is the Summoner's Rift and ARAM.

I paid my dues in Ranked everywhere from top to support, and over time, I lost that drive to climb; the competitive edge couldn't keep me going from 40-minute match to 40-minute match in hopes of climbing to a rank that would reset in a few months. But the coup de grâce to my dwindling enjoyment for chasing that ever-elusive LP was getting married.

Early on in my life, I was what you would consider a social gamer, as I followed my friend group (and the girl I had a massive crush on at the time) through game after game to just experience the next big thing. These ventures began on GrandChase's original Steam launch to Minecraftand culminated in League of Legends, where I was so enamoured by it that I took another close friend of mine at the time — my now-wife, Violet Plata — and got her into it one way or another.

Over the years, this became the thing we did together: we had enjoyed a dalliance with World of Warcraft that spanned World of Warcraft: Wrath of Lich King to its ultimate demise on World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, and since then, we'd find something or other to play. Left 4 Dead 2was a personal favourite, but none quite captured the essence that League of Legends did... though, there were two problems: she didn't like Summoner's Rift, and even when she did, we were both support mains who were not willing to deal with the turbulent ADC role.

So we met in the middle with ARAM, and season after season came — I opted never to play Summoner's Rift Ranked and accepted my final recompense of the blood, sweat, and tears in the form of Victorious Orianna in Season 8. At the time, I'd already gotten married (in 2017, so about a year before I entirely quit Ranked), and I preferred the casual opportunity to play with my wife in the same lane for the entire 20 minutes than one of us having to endure the torture of the marksman role. It was a plus that ARAM’s severely shorter matches fit better into any schedule, and it made it more bearable whenever something went wrong and the enemy team snowballed.

ARAM has been my home for the last seven seasons — more than half of my entire playtime has been in the Howling Abyss, battling it out against poke comps and finding fun in the chaos. Times weren't always wonderful, as those who opt for the all-random game mode accept the mantle of Riot Games' second-class citizens, but over time, it felt like the casual sphere was becoming more and more accepted: challenges were introduced (which I took as a dare to get an S on every champion), masteries were unlocked, and ARAM seemed to be getting some love.

But then, after six years of throwing matches into the never-ending ARAM machine, it started to lose its magic. The high-pumping adrenaline is still there, and I refocused my goals to try to get Mastery 10 on every champion, but it still didn't give me that same gratification feeling I was looking for.

Season 1 Act 1: Welcome to Noxus solidified that second-class citizen feeling that plagued ARAM players for so long, and after the nerf to the battle passes, the fact that it felt nearly impossible to complete it in the Howling Abyss, and that Summoner's Rift got all the cool stuff, I quit. Not voluntarily, and not like the other times: unlike before, where I made a conscious decision to stop playing because I wasn't having fun, I just dropped off, forsaking the Prestige Masque of the Black Rose Katarina skin and not really looking back.

I thought this would be the end of League of Legends' 13-year run, and honestly? I was okay with that. I uninstalled it after the second Act arrived — the first time ever it isn’t downloaded on my PC for “safe-keeping” — and I didn't look twice, though I kept up with it due to my videogame journalism (who else will keep everyone up-to-date with League of Legends stuff?), and then, they announced Brawl.

Now, for the uninitiated, Brawl is essentiallySMITE's Arena mode, which is a far more casual-friendly approach to the entire genre. Having spent nearly 1,000 hours kicking deity butt, it felt like a match made in Heaven, and something my wife and I spoke about all the time: but what if...

Of course, it was wishful thinking more than anything else, and it seemed like such an impossibility. Yet, for Season 2 Act 1: Spirit Blossom Beyond, as if Riot Games themselves had heard that I'd quit League of Legends, Brawl was revealed, and it was the first time my wife and I ever jumped into the Public Beta Environment to try something.

For a casual player who has had zero interest in Summoner's Rift and Ranked for nearly seven years, now, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Playing the champions I wanted — my favourites — without having to wait dozens, sometimes over a hundred, matches between the ones I liked the most. And long were the days that I managed to play my favourite, only to have to deal with an unfortunate match-up, or from my very excitement, throwing the match by trying to "take them all in".

I'm not delusional, and the likelihood of Brawl becoming a permanent game mode is still in the trial period, without any discussions even surrounding the topic. Arena has a fervent community who adores it dearly, passionately, and it still sees fewer matches as patches go on because of burnout, fatigue, or plain boredom from stomping champions.

But just the mere existence of Brawl means that I get to enjoy the champions I love without stressing about last-hitting, rotations, objective control, ganking, warding... It means I get to play League of Legends for fun, and not as some work, lest my ineptitude prove a hindrance to the rest of the team who is trying to enjoy their time as well. And after having played over 20 matches of Ambessa Medarda back to back (and many more to come until I get her to Mastery 10), I can say for certain: Brawl is everything I needed from League of Legends, and I'll treasure it for as long as I have it.

And when the time comes for it to rotate out of the lineup, I'll bid farewells and go back to my Steam games.