League of Legends - A New Chapter?

In my previous post I mentioned that I was getting an "itch" to play a computer game once again, and it looks like I got exactly what I wished for. I wanted something deep but not as immersive (or addicting) as WoW. For the past 6 years or so, we have played a tremendous amount of Defense of the Ancients, or DotA for short.

DotA is a custom map designed inside the game of Warcraft III. While definitely an incredible team/LAN party game, it had a number of shortcomings:

-The game was rather unintuitive to new players. Certain items/strategies were very difficult to grasp without hundreds of hours of gameplay.
-A huge disparity between high-skilled and novice players. In short, newbs didn't stand a chance versus an experienced player. As a result, their experiences were largely negative.
-Likewise, teams with a significantly weak player were horribly disadvantaged, so much so that games were often decided before they even began.
-As a whole, DotA was largely defensive and somewhat passive...and frustrating for those with a penchant for aggresiveness (such as myself).
-Speaking of frustration, the game could become unbalanced very quickly as a result of one overpowered (or farmed) hero.
-The high prevalence of ganking, harassing, and griefing was a huge turn-off.

So enter League of Legends. The game itself is a direct offshoot of DotA, with many new and improved elements. One of the primary objectives is to add new dimensions of strategy, as well as make good on the large amount of shortcomings of DotA, and ultimately the Warcraft III engine. (While on the topic, a totally separate game called Heroes of Newerth is also being developed with almost the same objectives). Will LoL have the ability to overcome the deficiencies of DotA and become the new LAN game of choice? Hopefully, we can find out this weekend at my next gathering. But first, a quick synopsis from my first-hand experiences (after approx. 8 hours of gameplay):

-It's DotA, with some minor changes and improvements. This is NOT "DotA on steroids." Basically, gameplay is largely identical and most of the strategies are transferable. For previous DotA players, this should a huge plus.
-At this time, there are only about 40 heroes, and most are locked (unless you win a certain amount of games, or pay a certain fee). Which means your options are limited...but...as a beginner there is plenty of variety to keep things fresh.
-The game is free. You can pay for extras (more heroes to unlock, skins, etc.) but it's something that everyone will have the ability to install and play without any hassle. No "CD Key in use by AbLege" issues anymore!
-Graphics are good but will still run fine on any decent 3-year-old laptop. Which means, any respectable "LAN party-ready" laptop should be able to run it.
-LoL is still in Beta which means there are still some rough edges and bugs here and there. I haven't encountered any bugs myself yet. Some of the items/spells are crude, and more tooltips could be added.
-Automated matchmaking means less hassle creating/finding games, and ultimately the ability to be matched up versus similarly-ranked players.

More on gameplay:
-There's 18 levels instead of 25. Each skill has 5 levels and each ult has 3. That means no more stat bonuses. In fact, there's no more "stats" (str, agl, int)
-No day/night cycles
-Creep waves have 3 melee, 3 ranged, 1 siege (every third wave)
-No denying
-You can portal back to base at anytime for free, with no cooldown. It's an 8-second channel ability, so you can't exactly use it in the middle of battle.
-Items are neatly organized and a recommended build is created for each hero.
-Mana and health regen is faster, cooldowns are faster, mana costs are lower. Which means, lots of spamming.
-The game is a lot more aggressive. Neutral farming still exists, but likely not the optimal path to farming gold/exp/items.
-A single (farmed) hero will unlikely be able to take down an entire team of lesser opponents. Thus, teamwork holds more importance.
-The number of available stuns are lower in number, heals are greater.
-Hero abilities scale with items that grant "ability damage".
-"Barracks" respawn 4 minutes after being destroyed. Allows for more comebacks.
-Hotkeys are much more intuitive. The 4 main hero abilities are ALWAYS hotkeyed to Q-W-E-R. Easy to learn and to remember!

Can't wait for Saturday!