League of Legends Localized and Launched in Thailand, Already 100,000 Registrations and Rising

Most recently named the ‘most played PC game in the world’ by Forbes, the popular and award-winning free-to-play Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) League of Legends has now officially become available in Thailand. Garena, a Singapore-based game publisher, partnered up with the local game company Playinter in early March 2012 to create a fully localized Thai game client, a dedicated Thai server, and local around-the-clock (plus English-speaking) customer support.

Playinter has also spent the last few months actively promoting the launch of the Thai version with a heavy online marketing campaign and through a growing Facebook community of players. Riot Games also heavily supported the localized launch of its game in Thailand, creating a special ‘Muay Thai’ skin for the popular in-game champion Lee Sin.

Battle of the MOBAs

Cholnara Niwatwong, project manager at Playinter, admits that it wasn’t easy to introduce League of Legends in Thailand, especially with also hosting its competitor Heroes of Newerth in the country. Cholnara tells us:

HoN is very famous and is stepping up to becoming the number one game in Thailand. Both being MOBA games, it’s quite the challenge to drive two competing games under one company policy.

Nevertheless, League of Legends’ popularity is on the rise.

That’s because of two important elements. The first is because we have a lot of Thai fans that were already playing on the North American server. Secondly, the design and characters in the game are much more detailed and colorful than other MOBA games, appealing to every gender and age at first sight.

Bringing your game home

Previously most League of Legends players in Thailand (including yours truly) have had to suffer through slow connection speeds and server drops, the language barrier of having to read and speak English to handle the game, and the requirement to use a credit card to make in-game payments while attempting to play League of Legends on its North American server. The recent open beta stage of the Thai version before launch therefore also already allowed players to transfer their existing North American accounts to the Thai server for free. An extensive Thai guide to transfer your account was also made available. Cholnara says: