The University of Rhode Island League of Legends Team, the URI Royals, is headed to the National Playoffs in April after being named one of the top three teams in their collegiate division.
Despite not having the help of a coach or support staff, the way many other collegiate teams have, the URI Royals have made their way to the League of Legends’ national stage. This year’s team consists of Captain Aaron Cabral, senior, Jack Jenckes, freshman, Jason Andrade, freshman, Pawel Linels, freshman, and Ronil Soto, junior.
The team was formed last year as an experiment to explore how collegiate competitions work. Signing up with the National Collegiate ESports Association, or NCESPA, the team ended up ranking second place for the season in their first year of competing.
Since last year, the interest in the club has grown, and there are now currently two League of Legends teams here at the University of Rhode Island, although only one team is headed to the Playoffs.
Cabral is confident that the so-far undefeated team, with a current record of 4-0, has a great chance to do well in the playoffs.
“I think that we’ve come a long way,” Cabral said. “The first half of fall was really tough. Our team synergy wasn’t really that great, our communication wasn’t really that great.”
After working to bring five individual players together to play for one common team, Cabral has great faith in their ability to do well in the upcoming competition. But don’t think Cabral is going easy on his team members while they practice in the months leading up to the competition.
“That doesn’t mean that we can just stop practice,” Cabral said. “Like the Patriots found out yesterday, you can’t just give up halfway through.”
League of Legends is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Game, or MOBA, where a team of five people strategically plays both offensively and defensively in order defeat the enemy base. In this game, each player chooses one virtual avatar, called a champion, out of over 130 different characters. Each player uses their characters’ strengths to contribute to the overall success of the team.
Each person on the team has an individual role: Jungle, Attack Damage Carry, Mid, Support, and Solotop. All five of these roles are vital to having a good team.
What separates the gameplay during competitions from friendly matches is that, “During normal games where you might be playing alone, you focus on playing for yourself and making sure you are strong,” said Freshman Undeclared Cam Croft, “But during competitions, we focus on getting specific people strong and [we] coordinate our attacks together instead of just relying on [ourselves].”
When asked about the strategies for doing well in the competitions, Cabral said that scouting was their number one technique. “We always want to scout who we’re facing first,” Cabral said.
In tournaments, each team is allowed to ban three of the other team’s characters or champions. Cabral emphasized the importance of using those bans effectively to maximize their chances of success.
“I spectate a few of their games before the matches,” Cabral said. “We try to look for their weaknesses.”
Matches are all public and available for anyone to watch off of the NCESPA website.
While the rosters for this year’s competition teams are full, the club is always looking for new members. Starting in the fall of 2017, the competition teams will be reformed with new players.
There is also plenty of room for those who don’t want to compete. The club holds “LAN parties,” where everyone brings their own computers and play League of Legends together. Cabral also mentioned a summer league that will most likely start after final exams in May.
The club is great resource for students to get to get together and have fun. “My favorite part about the club is getting to hang out with other people who enjoy the same game as much as me,” said Croft.
Meetings for the League of Legends club are held every other Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the Atrium of the Memorial Union.
All of the URI Royal matches are streamed live on twitch and can be viewed anytime at www.twitch.tv/uri_lol