The day I tried to play LoL

I like playing stuff. That's why I spend most of my time sitting in front of a computer or with a console in my hand. My flatmate pretends it bothers him, but he actually loves being able to say things like "aren't you being a bit too nerdy already?".

The problem is that I'm not really into trying new things. I'm a total fan of the last century, so I have a shitload of Zelda and Super Mario remakes, all Pokémon generations and, of course, all addons for Age of Empires II. 

My boyfriend, who considers that I don't play enough, managed, in Christmas, to make me install one of his favourite games: League of Legends (from now on, LoL).

From the beginning, I never thought I'd like it. There were many characters with a lot of stats and my boyfriend gave me a batshit insane amount of tutorials (I never read them, honey, I'm sorry).


I've never understood games with so many complications. I can't get inside my head the idea that I have to STUDY so I can PLAY.

Despite all this, I decided to give it a chance. I had to choose a character. Turns out that every week there is a certain amount of free characters and, when the week ends, you have to buy them with experience points.
Out of a group of mages and gladiators, I chose the less dangerous looking one (in retrospect, this was a stupid decision, given I'd have to kill everything I saw): a little girl with violet hair and a teddybear. I must confess that I felt some kind of empathy towards her, mainly because I love teddybears too.

After choosing the character (from now on, Annie), I was lectured by my boyfriend about which stats I had to improve and which objects I had to choose. I ignored him completely and, before I knew, we were playing a "training match" with some computer controlled characters called "bots". "Annie Bot" was a character that looked like mine but, for some reason, was a lot more hurtsy.

Of course, my first match was a disaster. I barely knew how to move the girl or what she did. As she walked, she cutely sang "Have you seen my pet Tibbers?", clearly referring to her teddybear. I was greatly surprised when I found that, when I pressed the numbers from 1 to 5, and depending on my level, the adorable baby threw, with her own hands, huge fireballs to the enemies.

But the biggest shock I had was almost half an hour into the match. My boyfriend patiently explained to me that, when I came to a certain level, I'd activate I don't know what power I could use by pressing number 6. 

Okay. Said power consisted on turning little Tibbers into an enormous bear with huge fangs that fell on the enemy team, almost killing most of them. Surprised, I stopped paying attention for some seconds, getting myself slain for the twentieth time in twenty minutes.

The worst part, however, wasn't my character's surprises or the enemy bots: it was my own team. It looks like nobody understands that when you're playing a "training match" there are going to be new players with you and that you will, most probably, lose against the AI.

If you think about it, it's actually sad: I can picture all those lads (most of them, for some reason, were polish) shouting at the screen stuff like "NOOB GO HOME" or "BACK TO YOUR LANE, ANNIE!!". I'd like to tell you all that, if my nickname is Raqy, I wanna be called Raqy, not Annie. Annie is a 7 year old girl that shoots fireball from her hands. I'm eighteen and can't even get the gas kitchen going.

Lastly, I have to confess that after a lot of matches I got strangely attached to Tibbers, who ended up being the only reason why I played. Who wouldn't wanna have a bear to defend them from evil things? 

P.d.: I can't really remember the controls. I apologize for any horrible mistake in this article.