If you’re a fan of the massively successful League of Legends game, you may not have secure access to the LoL servers if you are in another country because some places block this site. In these situations, utilizing a VPN is likely the only option you have to crush newbs. But you need to make sure that you pick a fast and reliable VPN service or you’re going to get slaughtered. Because LoL features live multiplayer gameplay, you need to pick the fastest VPN because every millisecond counts. If your VPN stutters even a little, it could mean the difference between unleashing your ult to slaughter your enemies and losing the entire match. And in ranked gameplay, that really isn’t even an option. To level the playing field with the other 67 million players, you need to make the right choice.
But there are a few advantages and disadvantages you want to consider before running your games over a VPN tunnel. First of all, there is a small amount of lag introduced with VPN overhead – especially if you use a slow provider or your networking devices aren’t up to scratch. Also, Riot has made some mistakes in the past and temporarily banned accounts. They did this because the IP addresses used to log into the same account kept changing due to the bank of IPs a VPN provider loans out to its customers. Basically, they thought people were boosting accounts. But they are currently working on fixing this issue.
That said, there are several benefits to using a VPN. Sometimes gaming hucksters will try to DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack there game competition to cheat the system and win more games for better rankings. By doing this the attacker will send so much data at the target player that their network resources will become overwhelmed and perform sub optimally – causing lag and disconnects. By masking your IP address, a VPN will make it impossible for another gamer to DDoS attack your computer.
Also know that in some special scenarios a VPN can even improve your speeds. If your network – be it at a school, corporate network, or by-the-hour Internet café – throttles gaming speeds, a VPN will hide that traffic and help increase the bandwidth you can use for LoL. Another great benefit is that you will be able to connect to servers in other countries. So, if you are on vacation in South America and you’re just itching to play LoL, you will still be able to login to the North American servers. VPNs definitely have their merits when using them for LoL, so the following are the top picks for this game.
Private Internet Access – Full Review
This is one of the top pics due to how many servers they have. Though they only have servers in 13 countries, you won’t have to worry about bottlenecks from capacity issues since they provide so many servers for each individual country. On the off chance that you connect to a slow server, you can easily switch to another one. Also, they are known for providing a fast and reliable service that will allow you to topple towers and crush inhibitors. Also, it’s great for gamers who don’t want to pay too much money for a VPN because this is one of the cheapest on the list.
IronSocket – Full Review
IronSocket VPN is a good choice whether you liked playing ranked games or just for fun. A 1 year subscription only costs $49.95, which comes out to $4.16 per month. Though they don’t offer a free trial, they do provide you with a 7 day money back guarantee to test the connection performance with the LoL servers in your corner of the world. Their service is also known for excellent speeds in both directions. You need to have good upload and download speeds because League of legends needs to constantly communicate data in both directions with their servers.
NordVPN – Full Review
Speed and security and two crucial aspects for any VPN service and NordVPN brings them together to give you the chance to enjoy League of Legends without putting your information at risk. NordVPN uses double VPN and Tor over VPN to keep your data protected, but if your main concern is speed, you will be glad to know that the provider also has ultra-fast servers that will enable you to overcome restrictions and enjoy online entertainment and games from any location. NordVPN doesn’t keep logs and it has over 5000 servers in more than 50 countries.
CyberGhost – Full Review
CyberGhost is another fast and reliable solution for people who want to play League of Legends without worrying about security. This provider doesn’t keep logs that could compromise your privacy and it offers fast performance, as well as advanced technology that will enable you to get the most out of your online connection. CyberGhost offers all the features needed to overcome restrictions and enjoy privacy protection. You can connect to more than 3000 servers in over 50 countries.
ExpressVPN – Full Review
Express VPN is another leader in the VPN industry and their reliable service puts them on the top list of LoL VPNs. However, the cost is a little bit higher than the average cost for similar VPNs, but as they say you get what you pay for. And as far as their server portfolio is concerned, they offer access to over 80 servers in over 50 countries, giving you good middle ground to find fast servers close to the geographic location of the LoL servers.
VyprVPN – Full Review
This service provider also provides access to a tier-1 network and is among the leaders in speed. One of the great features about this service is the 3-day free trial, so you can test it out in a few games of LoL to see how you like the performance. The pricing model is only slightly higher than other providers, but they do offer simultaneous connections. If you like to have friends or teammates over to play LoL with you, you could either share a VPN account or use your networking device to provide VPN access to all of the users connected to your network.
Surfshark – Full Review
Surfshark is quickly becoming very popular in the VPN industry thanks to the fast speeds supported and the fact that you can connect as many devices as you want at the same time. In addition, this provider has been audited independently and it offers protection against malware, tracks and other threats. You can keep your information protected with high encryption and will also be able to overcome online blocks. The fast performance and unblocking capacity that Surfshark offers, make it another good choice for League of Legends.
Why should you play LoL with a VPN?
VPNs encrypt your traffic, causing your connection to slow down, which is why many players have concerns about using a VPN for League of Legends. However, the truth is that using a VPN for LoL can actually offer many advantages and even improve your gaming experience. There are different reasons for this, one of them is that many ISPs throttle certain kind of online traffic. This means that they implement limits and they usually affect activities that require a lot of bandwidth, such as streaming and gaming. If your ISP is involved in this practice, you are more likely to experience delays and slow performance while playing LoL and other games.
The fact that a VPN encrypts your traffic can help you to avoid throttling because encryption prevents your ISP from seeing what you are doing. Thanks to this, your ISP won’t be able to figure out what apps you are using or what websites you are visiting. They won’t be able to see that you are playing League of Legends so they won’t have the possibility of singling out this traffic and slow it down.
Apart from protecting your traffic with encryption and stopping your ISP from slowing down your connection, a VPN is also a practical solution to mask your IP address and bypass restrictions. You can get an IP address from a different location and access content that is available there. For instance if you are outside the United States and want to access content that is only available there, you can connect to a VPN server in the US and enjoy all the services and apps that are offered there. A VPN lets you bypass geographical blocks and censorship systems, including the Great Firewall of China. A VPN gives LoL players the chance to enjoy the game with people in other locations, you get flexibility to play with friends that are not in your region.
On top of that, VPNs are a great tool to boost your security while playing because they protect you from DDoS attacks and hacking. Since your real IP address is masked and you can get a new IP every time you play, you can become very difficult to target. This is one of the main reasons why experienced players have found on a VPN, the perfect ally to enjoy LoL and other MOBA games securely.
Should you consider using a free VPN for LoL?
While looking for a VPN service, you may come across free VPNs that promise to help you to keep your data safe and to overcome restrictions. While they sound like an appealing solution, the reality is that they could put you at risk. In theory, many free VPNs offer all the features needed to bypass the blocks and give you access to LoL servers in any location. They also offer some level of encryption. The fact that they are free make them sound like a great deal, but not all of them work well, and that is not the only issue.
The truth is that managing a VPN network is expensive and even free VPN need to pay for the costs of maintaining their infrastructure. Usually, free VPNs use ads to cover the costs, but some of them go as far as selling your personal data to third parties in order to make money. It gets even worse as some free VPNs were caught taking advantage of the processing power of their users’ devices to launch criminal botnet attacks. Others were mining cryptocurrency without their users’ knowledge. Free VPNs are not as reliable as paid services and you may experience frequent disconnection issues while using them. Plus, they put your data at risk instead of protecting it. Our advice is to opt for a paid service with a good record protecting their customers’ data such as ExpressVPN and NordVPN.
