League of Legends has been around for 15 years now, which is a lot longer than most live service games have been. It practically invented and perfected the modern free-to-play model, creating a game that can make money without being an imbalanced, pay-to-win experience.
In that time, LoL has changed a lot, mainly for the better. So, to celebrate its longevity, we’ve come up with our top 15 best moments in League of Legends (one for each year it’s been around).
In this list we’ve included the biggest wins in esports, smaller more personal moments that ignited the spark that made us fall in love with MOBA, and classic character introductions. Although it’s worth noting that because it’s basically impossible to compare the demise of Gangplank to something like Faker’s fifth Worlds win, we’ve listed all these moments chronologically.
Lucian’s login screen (2013)
Login screens were, at one point, the main way Riot got players hyped up for new champions. These were a fairly basic animation based on their splash art paired with a unique champion theme to get you excited for the new character. For those of us who have played League of Legends for a looong time, these were a highlight in the early to mid 2010s.
But the one I remember most is Lucian’s. Booting up League of Legends on my abysmal laptop that could barely run the game had never felt so exciting until I felt Lucian’s theme pushing the horrendous speakers on my laptop to their limit.
Thresh was already one of the most popular characters in the game at this point, and creating a sort of anti-hero with a damn good reason to take him down was an incredible move from Riot at the time. Basically, every edgelord teenager who played the game at the time (myself included) was absolutely locked in when Lucian dropped.
xPeke steals the win (2013)
The iconic backdoor is one of League’s defining routes to victory and over the years, it has happened surprisingly frequently. Still, none will ever be as iconic as the first backdoor in competitive League history when legendary Fnatic mid-laner xPeke blew the community’s collective minds on Kassadin.
At IEM Katowice 2013, Fnatic found themselves locked into an absolute war against SK Gaming. With 55 minutes on the clock, they pushed their way into the SK base and destroyed the Nexus turrets before two of their team died and all seemed lost. However as SK sought to push back, xPeke’s Kassadin managed to return to the base to try and finish the job.
Taking advantage of Kassadin’s pre-rework Riftwalk ult, he dodged and weaved as two members of SK tried, in vain, to stop him from destroying their Nexus. To this day, it remains one of the most inspired plays in history and one that a generation of players have tried to replicate.
Faker’s Zed vs Zed outplay (2013)
2013 arguably delivered the two greatest individual gameplay moments in League history and Faker’s Zed outplay may still be the best of them all. The setting is the HOT6iX Champions Summer tournament and SKT T1 is heading into a Game 5 against an impressive KT Rolster Bullets side who have every chance of emerging with the overall win.
At this tournament, Game 5 was a Blind Pick in an attempt to eliminate Blue side advantage. This meant that both sides could end up with the same champion, and that’s exactly what happened, as both Faker and his opposite number in the Mid Lane, Ryu, decided to run with Zed. The moment comes about as Faker aggressively pushes the first base turret alone from the Red side.
Sensing an opportunity, Ryu (who is at full health at this point) runs down to try and pick him off. Instead of running away as most mere mortals would, Faker takes a hit from both the turret and Ryu before fighting back in a way that only his level of skill permits. He avoids the Death Mark Ultimate using Distortion, before Flashing and Shadow Slashing to take out a stricken Ryu.
As well as generating the most iconic piece of commentary in the game’s history, it’s also one of the purest demonstrations of mechanical skill, as Faker showed exactly why he’d go on to become the GOAT.
The Rift gets a new look (2014)
Pre-2014, League of Legends was firmly rooted in its inspiration – the Defense of the Ancients custom map from the glory days of Warcraft III. As a result, it felt very dated, despite some impressive gameplay mechanics and a compelling roster of champions. And while Popularity was growing, there was an unspoken feeling that it had much more potential than was being realized.
The game was ready to burst, and the developer had to do something drastic to thrust it into the modern era. The 2014 redesign was that step and one of the most important moments in the game’s history. On the face of it, the game looked significantly better, with improved visual fidelity across the board.
While this is nice to have from an aesthetic perspective, the real leap forward came in the additional clarity that it offered players, allowing them to improve exponentially simply by having more information at hand. More than that, the change brought in tangible gameplay differences like flashable walls and changes to ward placements, which altered League to such an extent that it’s genuinely difficult to remember what it was like before.
Doom Bots! Of Doom! (2015)
League of Legends has had its fair share of limited-time modes, whether it be recurring modes like Arena and URF or one-time deals like the Swarm roguelike or Dark Star mode.
However, none changed the game quite like Doom Bots. Both the 2015 and 2016 releases were absolute game changers for the LoL community and encouraged people to cooperate in a way other modes just haven’t. The sheer difficulty of this mode (thanks to the Doom Bots’ frankly broken abilities) made them almost impossible to play against, encouraging players to work together to overcome an unstoppable force.
The death of Gangplank (2015)
Gangplank is almost inarguably the best champion rework Riot has ever done. They literally killed off the character. They just took him out of the game and made him entirely unavailable. Then, after “killing” him, Riot brought him back with a major rework.
The old form of his character was incredibly outdated. The new version, though? Well, to this day, Gangplank is one of the most skill-expressive champions in LoL, with his barrel mechanic being one of the game’s trickiest minigames to work around. The way Gangplank was handled feels like the way champions should be reworked, and it’s a shame this is the only time Riot tried this out.
Jhin (2016)
Jhin is, to this day, the absolute best champion ever designed. His cinematic expresses his artistic way of killing and paints the world as he sees it. You know he’s, from a moral standpoint, a bad dude. But damn, if he doesn’t have a sense of style and flair.
This, combined with his absolute obsession with the number 4 and the way that concept is built upon, makes Jhin such a complete, memorable champion. 4 shots until he needs to reload. 4 shots on his ultimate. Almost all of his base damage stats are in multiples of 4. He was even released in February during a leap year.
The stars truly aligned for this champion to exist in the way he does, and he shows the full extent of the LoL team’s creativity when it comes to designing characters that you get attached to.
KT Rolster vs Invictus Gaming Nexus race (2018)
At its core, League of Legends is a race to destroy the enemy base and the Nexus within it. Over the years in the professional scene, there have been some close competitions where both teams are down to the last remnants of their defenses. That said, none have managed to come close to the sheer drama on offer when KT Rolster went up against Invictus Gaming in the 2018 World Championship Quarter-Finals.
KT went into the game 2-0 down, needing to secure the win to keep the series alive. After pushing hard into the Invictus base, KT’s Smeb teleported back to their own base to delay legendary Top Laner TheShy, who himself was attempting to backdoor while KT was distracted.
Though Smeb was in no position to kill him, the delaying tactics did enough to bring it to a straight shootout over the Nexus, with KT claiming the win with only a single hit of health remaining on their base. Without Smeb’s intervention, the series would have been lost, and we’ll likely never see anything like it again, particularly on the game’s grandest stage.
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Tyler1 getting unbanned (2018)
Tyler1 is one of the biggest League of Legends streamers out there, but he had a forced almost two-year break from the game after violating almost every facet of LoL’s TOS live on stream. Running it down mid, wishing the worst upon his teammates, screaming at the top of his lungs when things didn’t go right.
Needless to say, Riot wasn’t pleased with him and banned Tyler1 from the game. After spending over 600 days banned from streaming or playing the game, Tyler1 was unbanned, and he’s a changed man. Since then he’s done meet-and-greets at Riot events and has significantly cleaned up his act in the solo queue without losing the entertainment value. There’s something special about seeing someone turn their life around and evolve with the game that made them famous.
G2 winning MSI (2019)
For those unfamiliar with League of Legends pro play, teams from the West (mainly Europe and North America) are historically terrible performers internationally. Korea and China sweep almost every year, with a team from NA or EU making it even as far as the semifinals being a celebrated event.
But in 2019, G2 (a European team) did the impossible and actually won an international at MSI 2019.
After toppling SKT T1 in an incredible 5-game set, they went the distance and absolutely demolished Team Liquid in the Grand Finals. And, while TL’s performance left a lot to be desired, seeing Europe vs North America in an international final is something many thought would never happen in League of Legends.
G2 put Perkz, one of Europe’s best mid-laners, into the ADC role just to sign Caps to replace him. Caps has now been cemented as the mid-laner who defined modern G2 and is now one of the greatest players of all time. This European superstar roster will go down in history as one of the greatest ever made.
Just don’t talk about how Worlds 2019 ended.
The 9-man sleep (2020)
For so long, TSM was the most popular team in North America and the best hope for bringing glory to the region internationally. At Worlds 2020, they had only shown a sliver of that potential but managed to push Gen.G close for 30 minutes until a teamfight in the Mid Lane looked set to settle things. After a tense and pokey engage, TSM’s Spica hit the perfect Lilting Lullaby on Lillia, putting all five members of Gen.G to sleep in one go.
Though this was an impressive play in the first place, it’s what happened next that permanently scratched it into the annuls of League history. Instead of following up on an incapacitated squad, wiping them, and taking the victory, TSM backed away and did nothing, leading to the tongue-in-cheek moniker that this moment will carry for eternity – The 9-man sleep.
There are some gameplay explanations for why they decided to do this. The enemy team was in Senna’s Curse of the Black Mist E, limiting TSM’s ability to analyze what was going on, but with the way comms work, it was really no excuse for what played out. As the commentators stated at the time, if they weren’t able to take advantage of that opportunity, it was difficult to see how they were ever going to make an impact at Worlds that year. A prediction that, upsettingly for TSM fans, would prove to be very on the nose.
Deft finally wins Worlds (2022)
Deft is one of the greatest in League of Legends history. Beloved by seemingly everyone involved in the competitive scene, his early performances marked him out as special. However a win at MSI 2015 with Edward Gaming and setting plenty of individual records he struggled to make any significant progress at Worlds and many feared the opportunity to claim the game’s grandest prize may be behind him.
Roll onto 2022, and Deft finds himself in the mid-lane for an unfancied DRX roster with a rumored retirement on the cards after the conclusion of Worlds. What happened next was a run for the ages. A hugely consistent set of performances – including a nail-biter in the quarters – took them all the way to the Finals.
Here, destiny saw fit to place the game’s greatest player in his way as former high-school classmate Faker and his T1 side waited in the final for Deft and DRX. Heading into Game 5 and with the scores level, DRX had to break the trend and win a game from the red side to emerge as champions. Deft went 5/0/4 on Caitlyn, dominating his direct rival Gumayusi and playing a huge part as DRX went on to win it all.
Caedrel’s betrayal (2023)
Co-streaming has become the preferred way to watch League of Legends, and it’s at the point where Caedrel will regularly eclipse the main English broadcast in terms of viewership. Going from a caster delivering some of the most hype broadcast moments in the 2022 final to being a main part of 2023’s storyline on his channel, this creator’s growth is a key part of League history now.
And, while he’s had a number of brilliant moments on the way to becoming one of Twitch’s biggest streamers, his greatest moment is when he turned his back on his own region to support Weibo Gaming in 2023. TheShy or bust.
Was this soured a bit by Weibo Gaming getting absolutely destroyed by T1 in the Worlds 2023 finals? Maybe. But Caedrel made himself a key part of the Worlds 2023 storyline by simply taking off his shirt. And I guess it helps he made an entire music video building TheShy’s storyline, too.
Faker claims his 5th Worlds title (2024)
In 2024, things looked bleak for Faker’s T1 during the regular season, with an undoubtedly gifted side (and the defending champions) only able to qualify for Worlds at the last possible opportunity. Heading into the tournament, Faker (and T1) had four titles to their name, and few fancied them to make it five despite the talent on show in each position.
After losing their first game at the Swiss Stage to Top Esports, that looked more likely than ever. From there, however, things quickly gathered momentum, and the side went on a tear, with Faker leading from the front once again.
Progressing through the Swiss Stage with a 3-1 record, they got their revenge on TES in a complete shutout, before a convincing win in the semis. BLG, arguably the best team in the world on paper, awaited them in the final, and things were on a knife edge heading into Game 5.
What happened from there was a tacit demonstration in what makes Faker so different, as he continually opened engages and turned fights on Galio, never really giving BLG a chance as T1 took the win to give Faker his unparalleled fifth title. In a world of unbelievable players, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok is, and maybe always will be, just that little bit more special.
The end of Arcane & the beginning of something new (2025)
With Arcane Season 2 having such a massive impact on the game, it’s hard not to feel as if the animated series has breathed new life into League of Legends. Viktor’s rework, a Noxus-themed season that’s likely to play into the next TV series, and a seemingly renewed interest in the League of Legends universe.
Most of LoL’s biggest events over the past decade have been more focused on skin lines and side stories that aren’t even remotely canon in the game’s actual lore. 2025 feels like the year LoL’s heading back to its roots and regaining confidence that its original story is worth telling.
What’s more, the devs have promised even more makeovers for Summoner’s Rift, something that’ll surely keep the game fresh as the seasons change and new settings get explored. Despite having been out for 15 years at this point, there’s a certain air of excitement around League of Legends right now. People who haven’t played for years are hopping back in.
If reading this has whet your appetite to leap into League why not get into it through PC Game Pass. Doing so will give you a bunch of unique benefits including immediate access to every champion, day one access to every new champion, and a 20% XP boost.
If you want to know how we’re celebrating the rest of PC Gaming week be sure to check out the full schedule here.
