Riot Games has announced that the League of Legends store is scheduled to open tomorrow, Nov. 20. Players will be able to use the Influence Points they earn through playing the game to purchase Champions and Runes, which give you stat bonuses. You will also be able to use real money to buy Riot Points, which can be used to buy new skins and unlock Champions. More information on the store can be found after the jump.

Speaking of purchasing items, Riot Games has also revealed new pricing options and bundles for League of Legends. You can play it for free and use your 10 rotating Champions to earn Influence Points, buy the Collector's Pack to get 20 Champions from the start, or purchase the Champion's Bundle to get all 40 initial Champions right off the bat. There's a comparison chart for all of these options after the jump.

Riot Games posted the patch notes for version 1.0.0.52 today, and they include a number of changes to the PVP.net client. A help system has been added to give players basic information about the client, and the client has been optimized for performance. Loading and login times may take a little longer, but loading in the rest if the client should be up to five times faster in some areas.

The rest of the patch contains a number of bug fixes and modifications in League of Legends, such as changes to damage, cooldowns, ranges and mana costs. You can read the full patch notes after the jump.

Riot Games just announced the champion rotation lineup that will be implemented once the store opens in League of Legends. The team plans to have a rotating set of 10 free champions available to players at all times. Each week will have a different amount of types available; for example, the first week will have two tanks, three melee DPS, one ranged DPS, and so on.

The first week will begin once the store is open. Riot Games hasn't announced the launch date of the store yet, but plans to reveal it "soon." You can check out the champion rotation schedule and a short Q&A in this post on the official League of Legends forums.

The League of Legends pre-season begins today, which means the game is now officially available for everyone to play. League of Legends will be operated in seasons, which is why Riot Games feels it makes sense to have a pre-season period so players can learn the game and build relationships. The team announced last month that the first season will begin in the first half of 2010.

The celebrate the launch, Riot Games is temporarily unlocking all Champions. According to the announcement, "players will be able to choose their favorite Champions and accumulate experience and Influence Points. In several weeks we will finish the celebration by opening the store and allowing you to spend the points that you’ve earned to permanently unlock your favorite Champions and Runes!"

A brief FAQ for players who pre-ordered or purchased the game can be found after the jump. For more information on League of Legends, check out our recent preview of the game and our interview with Riot Games President Marc Merrill at the Penny Arcade Expo.

Riot Games has revealed its newest map for League of Legends, which will officially be added to the closed beta tomorrow, Oct. 20. Twisted Treeline is best suited for 3v3 action with its layout of two lanes and two forests. You can view screenshots of the map in our gallery and read the full profile for the map after the jump.

The pre-season for League of Legends will begin on Oct. 27, which is when the game will become available in retail stores and fully open online. The game will be operated in seasons, which is why the team feels it makes sense to have a pre-season period so players can learn the game and build relationships. The first season will begin in the first half of 2010.

Riot Games announced today that the pre-season for League of Legends will begin on Oct. 27, which is when the game will become available in retail stores and fully open online. The game will be operated in seasons, which is why the team feels it makes sense to have a pre-season period so players can learn the game and build relationships. The first season will begin in the first half of 2010 and will "include clans, teams, tournaments, ranked play and ladders, draft mode, as well as additional content such as new Champions and maps."

League of Legends is currently in closed beta, although a short open beta will be held before the pre-season begins. If you'd like to participate in the closed beta, we're still giving away keys! Just head over to this page to claim your key. More information on the pre-season can be found in the FAQ after the jump.

ZAM Network is proud to announce that our second large scale League of Legends Beta Giveaway is now open to all our users. Click here to check out our beta giveaway page and get your key.

If you're unfamiliar with the game, League of Legends is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game similar to the popular Warcraft III mod, Defense of the Ancients (DotA). It's also a game that we've been watching closely because of its fun, session based, competitive gameplay that keeps players engaged via rich community features and persistent MMORPG elements.

Before our big Riot Games vs. Team ZAM match at PAX this year (which we regrettably lost), we ambushed Marc Merrill, President of Riot to get some insight about what the team has planned up until launch and beyond. If you haven't been able to try League of Legends yet, stay tuned -- we're going to be giving away over 20,000 beta keys sometime this week.

ZAM: League of Legends is doing great here; you have a lot of people playing the game and all of them are having fun. What kind of feedback have you guys had so far?

Marc Merrill: We've had some great feedback. Not only from guys who have been in the beta, that have been playing for a long time, coming by, wanting to meet the developers. Other players that have played DotA, but not necessarily have heard of League of Legends have had a great reaction as well. And then a lot of people that have never experienced the MOBA genre have shown up and had a great time as well. There are a couple guys playing right now, in fact, who are having a really great time. It's really exciting for us; it's been in positivity all around.

ZAM: I've been in the beta for a while, so a lot of the stuff that you guys have in right now, we already know about. We want to know about the new stuff, I want to know about the stuff that's going to go in that hasn't necessarily happened. Most notably, new maps, new champions or other juicy nuggets of information you can tell us about.

Riot Games, the developer behind League of Legends, announced this week it has received $8 million in funding from Tencent, Benchmark Capital and FirstMark Capital. The investment was led by Tencent, a Chinese online services company that serves more than 400 million users. Riot Games and Tencent previously announced a distribution partnernship to bring League of Legends to China.

According to the LA Times, this funding brings Riot Games' total financing to nearly $20 million. League of Legends is set to launch in North America on Oct. 3. You can read the full announcement after the jump.

Every now and then there are games that come along in the industry that, by simply existing, manage to completely stretch, shake and re-define their genre. In this regard, there are games, like Metal Gear, that start as the launch point of an entirely new genre (stealth action shooters) or there are games, like Counter-Strike or World of Warcraft, that pack together many pre-existing ideas, but also manage to elevate and polish these concepts into something altogether remarkable.

Of course, there are many developers who try to create some of these afore-mentioned diamonds; churning away to make games that imitate and evolve a pre-existing concept that has experienced success, all the while adding their own ideas, to give a unique twist to their creations. In very rare cases, these 'spiritual successors' achieve something, but more often than not, these games fail to meet the standards set by their predecessors. Perhaps it was this fear of failure that has kept many developers from capitalizing upon the incredible success of the Warcraft III mod, Defence of the Ancients (DotA). But now, six years after DotA's initial creation, Riot Games' League of Legends has decided that the time is ripe for this underdeveloped genre to finally flex its wings and fly.

And boy does this game soar.