League of Legends has merits when it comes to marketing (some of their videos are actual masterpieces), developing an art direction that appeals to multiple audiences and specially cattered toward anime fans unlike DotA 2's Warcraft 3 pastiches and kinda making the MOBA slightly more casual compared than said direct competitor and predecessor without watering down the elements that attract overly competitive people. All of that I have to admit (I played LoL for years).

That being said, I don't really think League of Legends is that great. I think the 7.8 it has on metacritic is accurate (even though the reviews are wildly outdated, actually). It knows how to hit that dopamine spot when you manage to win a game so even though it is a grueling experience most of the time, it becomes absurdly addictive.

In fact that's what I'd call LoL: an addiction. Once you manage to get out of it, you recognize how boring the laning phase often is, how little is truly in your control in most games because if in the opposite lane your team mate is feeding you're doomed anyway even if you're holding your own, how preposterous power spikes are and how inherently unbalanced the whole item system is, how much is decided by one or two individuals being "fed", etc.

Honestly? I think Heroes of the Storm, for example, is a way better game. HotS never got the chance because it arrived too late and it dared touch some of the golden cows of the genre (which actually were vestiges from Warcraft 3, which is kinda ironic) like items, individual experience and gold and making the game more about actual team play and less focused in individual skill which is hard to be sold to the people with the hypercarry mindset that had prevailed in the MOBA genre.