Every now and then while playing League of Legends, you’ll have the unfortunate circumstance of getting paired up with a player or players, that simply don’t show up to play, in spite of the fact that they took the time to queue up and give the impression that they were going to play the game. Just about every LoL player on the planet has dealt with this unfortunate situation, and despite the fact that on occasion, a gallant undermanned victory does occur, most of the time, the team with the missing player(s) usually end up on the side of defeat.
In the latest volume of the League of Lobby, my friends and I were in a game in which the opposing team was missing a player; notably, the person they probably believed was going to be their tank, whose job would have been to be a walking wall of health, meant to distract, interfere, obstruct, agitate, and be a general pain in the ass. They never showed up, whether it was due to shitty internet service, or my favorite belief, that their mom had kicked in their bedroom door, and forcibly removed the player from the keyboard.
Usually, in these types of games, there’s kind of this unwritten/unspoken etiquette from the fully-staffed team, that you try and end the game as quickly and mercifully as possible; after all, it’s never fun being on the side with the AFK’er. If you’re the full team, you don’t goof off too much, you don’t spam all chat with taunts or any cocky speak, and in the likelihood you win, usually a cursory “sorry for the AFK’er” remark of some sort. The short-staffed team will make as much effort as they feel they can win, but in most cases, being a man/woman down is usually a bad obstacle that ultimately snuffs out most rallies and attempts.
