Sigh, this thread again.

It's been stated on more than one occasion by a variety of Riot employees that the reason why an "offline" mode is not available is because they would have to make certain server side pieces of code available to the public, which would cause security issues - people would be able to create hacks.

But seriously, bump. This needs Riot's attention.

That's all well and good, but like I said: why could Blizzard do it, but Riot can't? People only create their own servers when they are dissatisfied with the product at hand. If Riot enabled us to have something to do during downtime, this dissatisfaction would decrease.

I am not a programmer, but I suppose that I do not understand the issue of hacks. Does only allowing online play actually prevent anyone from accessing the code? Couldn't a dedicated hacker get to the code one way or another? And furthermore, are a couple of hackers messing up the game really a deterrent to making a large portion of the community happy? Obviously anybody who hacked their way to the top of ranked games would be discovered, so what would be the point?

One problem with this is the costs. Roit would most likely need to make new servers just for the purpose of offline practice mode. Since LoL is a F2P game this might be a problem 'cause of all the other stuff they have to pay for.
But I totally agree with you, I got nothing else to do but to play LoL (Love being teenager on a sunday) and now I can't...

What do you mean "Blizzard could do it and Riot can't?"

It's not that they can't, it's that they choose not to in order to maintain game security. Starcraft, Diablo 2, etc, have offline single-player mode, and they've all suffered from a plethora of hacks and 3rd party applications that allow the user to cheat.

I'm not even sure how to respond to this. The answer is yes, "a couple of hackers" is enough of a deterrent. It's clear that you're not familiar with online gaming. It's not just "a couple of hackers", it's the hundreds of thousands (at the very least) of jackasses that will use whatever exploits come out. When at least one person in every game you play has a massive advantage because they have no fog of war, or can teleport around the map with no cooldown, you'll see three things: 1. A large majority of the population will quit playing, because the playing field is no longer level. 2. The remainder of the population will also begin using exploits in order to level the playing field. 3. Riot will have to drastically increase staff in order to combat these applications.

Less players and increased overhead, along with a lack of professional gaming events due to the lack of player base and dearth of legitimate non-hacked games will lead to the game's downfall.

So, what do you want, man? You want to play offline with some bots occasionally, or do you want the game to sink?

Yes it does prevent. Easy way to explain:
Just because you've a membership in your favourite club, does it means you know everything or control what the manager, the president, directors, etc do? No. You just watch the games.

1.) Starcraft 1 and Diablo 2 are not valid examples, as they had no subscription fees. Hex editing and similar hacking are not an issue with, say, WoW, so why should they be an issue with LoL? I doubt that preventing hacking is such an esoteric trade secret that Riot can't figure it out.

2.) Exactly where are your figures coming from? Hundreds of thousands? LoL Does not have hundreds of thousands of players. Even if it did, I doubt that more than say, 1% of the population would be serious hackers. There are exploits in the game right now, and out of maybe 500 games played I have seen maybe two games wherein exploits were used to any beneficial effect. Do you seriously think that a majority of online gamers are programmers capable of scanning through code to find exploits?

3.) If Riot has to increase staff to deal with in-game issues... well, why not? I stated right at the beginning that this is something I would pay for. With, what, 60k people playing, I seriously douct that riot could not afford to code a single-player mode.

This doesn't really provide an example to explain the situation.

Servers aren't required for offline mode. Plus, like I said, I would pay for it.

This is the best suggestion I have ever read on the forums, I've thought about this myself and I often make practice games with only me and bots to test builds, etc. while the servers are online, if I could do this while the servers were offline, I would be grateful a thousand times to Riot