The jaunt to level thirty in League of Legends has always been a bit of a grind. As of patch 6.5 however the total experience required to reach level thirty has been reduced by half. While anyone who spends their time leveling an account to thirty might be happy with this change, it is most certainly not all on the positive spectrum. With this I do not mean if you don’t level an account it doesn’t affect you, quite the opposite in fact. Whether you’ve never played on another account once you reached level thirty or you do nothing but level smurfs this experience change affects you all in one way or another.

Talking about the positive and negative implications of something as simple as this is a very complicated process. Each positive that I could discuss leads into a negative which could in turn lead back to a positive so instead of going at it that way I’m going to break it down into demographics of players.

First we’ll talk about the players who are already level thirty and don’t play on sub level thirty accounts at all. This is by far the largest demographic and also probably the least impacted by this change, but they are not completely untouched by this. The changes that they will experience are entirely to do with other players they interact with in their games. Those changes mainly being player champion pools and attitudes. Simply put, now that it takes less time to reach thirty, there will be slightly more people who haven’t spent time unlocking many champions on their account. While a decided lower concern than the second point, still worth noting. The real concern is player attitudes though. It isn’t much of a secret that the League community has a somewhat bad reputation for toxic players. In recent memory however I have not really experienced toxic behaviors from players all that much. That is however, until I leveled up a smurf to thirty for this article.

After leveling a smurf to thirty, I can safely say that the toxic players are most definitely still around but they are on low level accounts. My guess is that they get banned on their level thirty accounts and start over. Another reason the toxicity is so high could be because people don’t care about being toxic while on an account that isn’t even level thirty. While all of that is conjecture it is a fact that players are more toxic at early to mid levels. With this in mind, because of the experience to thirty changes these toxic players will reach level thirty much more quickly so long time League players might see an increase in toxicity due to those players reaching level thirty sooner.

The other group to discuss is the more obvious one, people leveling accounts to thirty. The occupants of this group are new players and smurfs (though smurf can be broken down further). The positives for new players leveling accounts are miniscule at best. The reason for this is because they are inexperienced. While being level thirty sooner sounds perfectly great, not being able to immediately jump into ranked is probably a better idea for players who are less experienced in League. An interesting parallel considering “experience” is the word to describe points you need to level up as well as knowledge you need to play. While you can now reach level thirty sooner that doesn’t mean it’s in your best interest. Not only that but you would also have less influence points to spend on runes and champions once you reach thirty.

As for smurfs, the influence point problem exists as well, but then you need to worry about match making. A curious topic but one that definitely is an issue. With the experience to reach level thirty decreased there is likely to be less players at your MMR (Matchmaking Rating). This will make for very lopsided games, specifically for smurfs because your MMR would go much higher. With people reaching level thirty quicker there would be less players in that level range so you would get bumped up or brought down to levels you probably don’t belong at.

When all’s said and done though, the overall effect is probably positive. Yes, there will be toxic players reaching level thirty faster, but that just means they’ll get banned faster too. New players reaching level thirty before they are ready? As a community we can just choose to help those players out! Smurfs getting placed improperly? They will reach level thirty soon enough anyway. Reduced experience to thirty making the price of buying LoL accounts go down? I’m not going to talk about that… Whatever happens, we are the ones who get to decide how good or bad this change is for us and I look forward to the next change League brings.

Are you into fantasy leagues? Then check out AlphaDraft and put together your allstar lineup!