(A pretty old trailer, but also the only one using in-game footage.)
League of Legends, or as its players call it “LoL”, is part of a rather unique and interesting genre of games known as "Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas, whose history can be traced back to the map making community of Blizzard's ever-popular real-time strategy series Starcraft, and whose most well-known member is the Warcraft 3 map Defense of the Ancients. The game consists of two teams of five players and two bases located in opposite corners of a map with three traversable paths, along the sides and middle, which connect them.
Each lane has towers placed along it, large durable structures which inflict heavy damage to nearby enemies, with the ultimate goal being to move up one, or all of the lanes, into the enemy base and destroying it. Every 30 seconds, the two bases spit out a small group of enemies that walk down each lane, meet the opposing enemies, and fight to the death. These enemies are not controlled by the players who instead take on the role of a champion, of which there are nearly 70. When a champion kills an enemy, they earn an amount of gold and experience (considerably more for an enemy champion, than an enemy minion) which is then used to purchase items or level-up your abilities. Players are free to roam around the map as much as the please, but you'll only gain gold from killing enemies and you'll only gain experience from being near enemies when they die (So sitting in the base the whole game likely won't have the best results).
The game's intended experience is a rather simple one: Win. When you win, you get to feel like you're better than whoever lost. People like to win because, well, you win. Winning is at the very core of human nature. From the first time we sharpened a stick to kill a mammoth, we, as creatures, have been trying to “win.” Surviving is winning. Defeating the mammoth is winning. Some games are driven by desire to explore, or learn about the world in which you play, but at the heart of every player who plays LoL is the desire to be part of the winning team.
Elements of surprise are not as numerous as they probably could be, but the very nature of the game and how its laid out gives birth to surprises, even if it wasn't the developers intention for a specific surprise to occur. Most of the map is obscured, as players can only see what they and their allies see. So if you're all alone out in the fog, “surprise” can lurk around every corner. So while the game environment always performs in a predictable manner, having the free-will of opposing players present in that environment will always generate surprise. To me, surprise is pretty closely tied in with curiosity. When the game surprises me, it motivates me to discover the source of the surprise and either replicate or avoid that surprise in the future. In this game's case, I think the two are essentially the same.
Now on to the value. Lots of things in LoL have a lot of value in game, and little value out. The gold you earn from killing minions lets you purchase items. The best items in the game, are exceptionally powerful and getting them before your enemy does can often win the game outright. In addition to that, your score is recorded and displayed at the end of the match, so killing champions, being their for your team mates, or killing the most minions looks impressive and fills players with satisfaction.
http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/8665/retired4good.jpg
(Little bit of shameless bragging here)
Also, the title is supported by a micro-purchase model, where the main game is free-to-play for any and all, but with a limited champion selection. You get influence points (the in-game currency) for playing games (more for winning and less for losing) and you spend these points on additional champions.
The game's fun lies in three main phenomenon; simply winning is usually pretty fun, becoming stronger than your enemies because you have a lot more gold and items is pretty fun, and the third (which applies to most who play, but certainly not all) is team work. Playing with four of your closest friends is often fun enough, winning or losing aside.
The problem-solving aspect of the game quickly becomes clear when keeping a few things in mind: First, you want to earn money and experience as quickly as possible, but if you play as aggressively as you can, you'll often end up on the wrong side of the map, where extra enemies are much closer to you than reinforcements. Secondly, not playing aggressively enough will often result in the destruction of a tower, which grants gold and experience to every member of the enemy team and eliminates a possible safe zone for your own team. This affair becomes extraordinarily complex as players learn more about the system, but the obvious goal is to simply beat the enemy team. The last figures I read had a figure of about one-million active accounts, which results in the games being incredibly dynamic as one-million players playing one of seventy champions in any combination of five against another combination of fives leaves a massive potential for variety and new challenges.
Overall, League of Legends isn't for everyone. If you aren't a competitive person by nature, or if you look for in-game motivation or meaning to the action, then you’ll probably be a little bit disappointed. The core gameplay is pretty catered to a specific audience, and, unfortunately, it doesn’t have much to offer beyond that. However, Riot is aiming to change that somewhat with their promises of additional maps, still more champions that differ mechanically from the others (since most follow a pretty similar format), and even different game modes entirely, but I feel that’s probably pretty far out at this point.
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