League of Legends news » League of Legends World Tour - Korea
Our next stop on the Tour is one of the most influential communities in online gaming history: South Korea. World renowned for being on the cutting edge of the online gaming scene, Korean players are some of the most passionate, dedicated gamers in the world. Whether they’re competing from home on their lightning fast internet connections or out at the PC bang socializing with other gamers, Korean competitors can be found in high-ranking positions in virtually every competitive gaming ladder the world over.
As you might expect, with all this passion and enthusiasm for online gaming, the Korean market is saturated with games from both foreign and domestic developers. Needless to say, all this competition makes it a formidable proving ground for any game. We were fortunate to find, however, that Korean players welcomed League of Legends with open arms! Game Plus, a gaming magazine in Korea, even went so far as to proclaim that League of Legends was “writing a success story” in Korea. While we’d love to take all the credit, this success story was actually written by thousands of players who rushed to sign up the moment the doors opened to the platform on the 11th of December 2011.
This enthusiasm has helped make League of Legends an instant success in Korea’s vibrant PC café market, where nearly 6% of all total game hours are currently devoted to League of Legends making it the number 4 most played game in these venues! Even off the Fields of Justice, we are pleased to see Koreans making League of Legends a part of their lives, with fan artwork and content becoming more and more prevalent as the community matures.
Korean passion for eSports is virtually legendary, with tournaments and other live competitive events drawing massive crowds of spectators. Korea is in fact home to the only 24/7 television stations dedicated specifically to competitive gaming, and it is not uncommon for great players to achieve stardom on the level of actors or professional athletes. And although competitive League of Legends is still in its infancy, we were flattered to find out that gaming publication Naver PCB Cafe hailed it as “the new trend of eSports in Korea.” Some prominent eSports personalities have even begun to feature their personal games of League of Legends on their live streams.
As a matter of fact, the first live Korean League of Legends tournament was the recent Named Player Invitational – held only a month after the game’s launch in this region – which featured some of the biggest League of Legends teams in the international scene including Counter Logic Gaming and World Elite. This event was not only broadcast across the nation by OnGameNet (the premier eSports cable channel in Korea), but also attracted so many spectators that it was standing room only. We’re willing to bet that you’ll want to keep your eyes open for some up and coming Korean teams on the international stage in the near future!
Although League of Legends has already been received with great enthusiasm by the passionate online gamers of Korea, we’re willing to bet that there’s still a lot to look forward to from these dedicated players. We’re extremely excited to see what they will bring to the global community as more and more summoners join the League in the coming year!
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