I didn't want to stop, but it ended up that way.
Since I came to League back in 2013, I ended playing quite a lot. I liked the game, I liked the lore. I liked the gameplay and visual updates that made the game more balanced and enjoyable to play.
I'll cut to the end. Over time, the community became more and more of a problem. The open hostility and scorn I faced in the beginning are nothing compared to what it became these days in mere passing.
But it was very far beyond a point of "ignore/block them". Problem players started sabotaging not just entire games, but entire DIVISIONS for one increasingly petty reason or another. Missed a minion? Surrender at 15. Enemy got First Blood? Surrender at 15. Someone on your team got First Blood but it wasn't YOU? Surrender at 15. Enemy got the Wind Dragon nobody cares about? Surrender at 15. YOUR team got the Wind Dragon nobody cares about? Surrender at 15. Ally missed a lockstep? Surrender at 15. New champion released? Surrender at 15. New visual update? Surrender at 15.
Each passing year, the community got worse, praising shitty, toxic Twitch streamers and hailing them as heroes and martyrs for suffering and falling at the hands of the "evil corrupt corporation" that is Riot Games; thinking in increasingly one dimensional terms and screaming at the universe when it didn't pan out in a game that punishes such behavior; being increasingly toxic in response to both things up there, getting banned, then jumping on an alternate account or migrating to Overwatch to do the same over there (and that's why Overwatch's community has been a fetid shithole since the very beginning).
It got to the point where I wasn't even playing the game, but staying in an extra lobby full of toxicity and ultra-defeatism, waiting for the next lobby to show up because nobody actually wanted to play the game in the current one. Nobody cared about trying to play the game and working for that win, but having the win effectively handed to them, without effort on their part. If they had to work for it, even a little bit, they'd just give up, complain that it's too much effort, then retire to the fountain to complain about how imbalanced the game is and how everything sucks.
Everyone wants to force themselves to forget that the game is far better balanced today than it ever has been. It still needs work, but it's still many times better than what it used to be. The people who claim otherwise either misremember what it was like, are new here, or are fucking lying. Anyone remember the Promotion spamming? The ludicrous AP ratios on fighters like Sion, Tristana and Master Yi? Master Yi's Alpha Strike spam?
I used to play League all the time. These days, I have to remember that League is a thing, and I just can't bring myself to loading it up again. Not when I'm playing a game that is increasingly stacked against me because of problem players who decided to give up before the minions even have a chance to spawn, or because I have to spend more energy trying to raise the morale of the ENEMY TEAM than I am actually fighting them.
The problem doesn't lie with Riot. Most of the time, they made the right move, or at the very least, I understood why they made the decisions they took. The problem lies with an increasingly toxic community that has been increasingly determined to ruin the experience for everyone else that goes beyond simply spewing a few racist and homophobic slurs in the allchat. Every time you decide to sabotage the game, you drive more people away. I'd like to come back to the game at some point, but every time I get that urge, I remember that I have to play with all of you assholes who only enter the game to ruin it for everybody else. Keep that up, and there will soon be no more League for anyone.
