After almost half a year, League of Legends's unique style is doing better than ever.

Riot Games' real luxury item is their awesome skin system, which allows players to purchase skins from their Riot Store for cash only, thus enabling them to play with unique looking versions of their favourite Champions. There was a little bit of a grumbling about the cost of these skins (anywhere from $5 to $12), but since these additions are purely aesthetic, the skin choices are very optional for all players. Of course, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't check them out, and while sometimes these skin changes are simply palette swaps, there are some unique skins out there, like the special Ice Toboggan Corki, or the Hockey Playing Jax, who smacks his opponents with his hockey stick.

Finally, Riot seems to be moving towards "ability items" which allow players to 'use' the item like an ability (and the item has a cooldown), thereby opening the door to more diverse hero builds. There are also a few new summoner spells from Closed Beta, like their new "Ignite" and "Clarity" spells, the former deals damage over time and reduces healing and regeneration by 50%, while the latter restores a chunk of MP to you and everyone around you.

Unfortunately, however, there still remains much that Riot Games has promised to be delivered to its players, particularly since balancing Champions and items gets exponentially more complicated with every new addition. In particular, players have been crying for a public "draft mode," instead of blindly picking their heroes without knowing what their opponents are playing. As well, while there are lots of incredibly fun moments to be had in League of Legends, much of the endgame degenerates into who can get their team to stay together to push. While teamwork is great for LoL, the constant mobbing does inhibit the games' strategic depth, as games with one or two uncooperative players simply become 30 minute wastes of time.

In the end, however, while League of Legends is definitely shaping up to be an incredible RTS-MMO, what has been most impressive about this game has been the dedication that the development team has shown to their community. Fans who have been with Riot since their closed beta tests may recall the many community suggestions that have made their way into LoL. In particular, things like the addition of Poppy, LoL's first full-time female tank, when the community was demanding exactly that, show that Riot Games has both ears on the ground. It's the little things like this, and the constant communication that the team maintains that really tell us that while League of Legends has grown an incredible amount, it still has so much more untapped potential.