During the initial development League of Legends was supposed to be 6v6. Here’s what Riot has to say about it.
League of Legends is a MOBA or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Game made by Riot Games. Moreover, it was released in 2009. And currently, it is one of the biggest and most successful games in the world.
Even though this game is one of the most influential games in modern times, it has its humble beginnings. This game was inspired by the Defence of the Ancients mod of Warcraft 3. Later on, the mod itself garnered huge attention to the point where many fans and modders made their own version. Ultimately, it led to the creation of Dota All-stars, which was the most refined version of the original Defence of the Ancients.
Later, Riot saw the potential in this up-and-coming genre, so they made a far intuitive and standalone game titled League of Legends: Clash of Fates. The game got retitled later to just League of Legends.
In 2009, Riot released the beta for League of Legends. And the game looks completely different than the current League of Legends. From outdated UI to map texture, nothing is the same.
With a recent discussion on the League of Legends subreddit, RiotMeddler opens up that League of Legends was originally supposed to be 6v6.
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League of Legends Was Supposed To Be 6v6
When people on Reddit started joking about how Overwatch 2 went 5v5, and League would be 6v6, RiotMeddler opened up with a piece of trivia. For context, League of Legends isn’t going 6v6, and the original post was meant to be a joke.
Anyways, Meddler said that during internal beta around 2008 and 2009, League of Legends was designed and balanced around 6v6. Due to it, you can spot the old Nexus having six statues (symbolizing six players).
But when Riot first started the game’s closed beta, it had already changed to 5v5. The reason for that was team fight clarity and lethality. Even now, watching the game as a spectator is sometimes hard. Now with 2 extra players, it would have been far more difficult.
But because the game was originally 6v6, many of the old codes were still leftover in the files. Due to it, Riot was able to reuse it as a temporary game mode called Hexakill. In this mode, instead of 5v5, it was 6v6.
In the current state of the game, we could have expected that the extra player would play a support role. Especially in the current ADC-centric meta, that player would funnel the kills to ADC while also helping the jungler to invade. It would be far more interesting if Riot brought back Hexakill game mode. And judging from the times, it might not be out on the table.
