If you're familiar with eSports or online video games, you have probably heard of League of Legends. The multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) currently has over 30 million active online players worldwide, and continues to grow tremendously in Asia, the US and Europe.

What made this game an unstoppable beast? Well - there is more than one factor, but Riot Games claims it is all to do with putting experience first, revenue second. This has long been the ideal when going into League of Legends, you can buy champions, skins, name changes, rune pages; but they're never completely necessary.

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Players can buy champions, runes, name changes and rune pages with IP, the in-game currency given whenever you play a match. The only thing that needs RP, the real-life money, is skins. Cosmetics have become a big part of the League of Legends identity, with some skins costing $40 and completely changing the look of a character.

Enter the MOBA

For a start-up player, League of Legends isn't a game you get comfortable playing in a day, or a week or even a month. The complexity behind a five vs five MOBA is incredible, sinking hundreds of hours into the game, you will still be lacklustre compared to the best, who have spent thousands of hours on one single champion.

This sort of extremely hard challenge to make it to max rank is what provides the League of Legends community with their oil. It pushes players to get higher in the Ranked system, in order to get to higher divisions and compete against better players.

The Ranked system is not "eSports", this is just regular players at home, trying to make it higher in the solo-queue ladder. And these guys are competitive, extremely competitive. This is another factor that drives the League of Legends community, staunch competitiveness and trying to understand a role or a character.

It takes more than a few hours handling the champion. Understanding range, attack speed, ability cooldowns, combos, follow ups, initiates and for certain champions, things like warding, counter-warding, ganking, wave control, baiting, counter jungling and much more come into play, when mastering a champion.

eSports Explosion

With all of this competitive drive in the solo-queue, it is no wonder the League of Legends eSport has taken off and become the most watched eSport of all time. Last year, at the Season 3 Worlds Championship, 11 thousand people packed into the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, along with 32 million people watching worldwide, to see South Korea's SKT T1K defeat China's Royal Club in a best of five final.

The infrastructure Riot Games and partners Tencent Holdings and OGN have built around the World for eSports is incredible. The LCS, a weekly eSport show hosting dozens of matches between teams in Europe and North America, maintains a solid viewership of over 300,000 on Twitch.TV alone, with thousands more watching in Asia and on other streaming websites.

In South Korea, the Season of Champions and Masters is broadcast on TV for the audience, along with various Internet streams - it is said to be one of the most engaging countries when it comes to eSports, with the fans expecting their country to be victorious in Season 4 Worlds.

China is no exception either, with Tencent Holdings having a majority stake in League of Legends, they have manufactured it into the most played video game in China. Millions of people watch the regular season LPL in China, and millions more will tune into this year's Season 4 Worlds Championship.

When all of the top teams from each region (NA, EU, China, South Korea, Taiwan) are chosen, they go into a Worlds tournament. This year, two teams from NA, three teams from China and three teams from South Korea made it out of the group stages, and now heading into the final one Chinese team and South Korea's Samsung Galaxy White will meet.

This event, hosted in the World Cup 2002 Stadium in Seoul, is set to pack 40,000 fans, along with potentially over 50 million viewers. Riot has not released any figures for what they expect, but it is without a doubt going to be the biggest event in the history of eSports.

Crafting Enjoyment

League of Legends fans don't just play a video game. They are part of a unique community where patch notes are criticised, champion skins are marvelled at, "outplays" are posted on YouTube and receive hundreds of thousands of views, pro-players have combos named after them and players like MadLife and Faker are known as Gods among men.

Riot Games has built a community that not only loves the game, but wants to make the game better. They want to fix bugs on a PBE server that tests out new champions, they are willing to pay for skins and champions on the day of release and anything Riot does eSports-wise is highly regarded and debated on different forums.

One day, League of Legends might lose a bit of popularity as a new title comes around, but ever since 2009 Riot has been on a huge upswing, and it may just be getting started.

TagsLeague of Legends, Riot Games, eSports, Video games, MOBA, online games