Legends never die
With Blizzard on the ropes Riot Games makes its play.
What would you say is the appropriate way to celebrate a game’s tenth birthday? If you’re Riot Games, and the game is League of Legends, you would apparently say “announcing everything, and then one more thing”. Blizzard’s reputation has taken a hit lately (see page 8), and Riot’s huge push into new ideas, genres, media, and IPs is surely not a coincidence.
LoL itself gets an update named Rise of the Elements. This is running on the PBE right now, going live with update 9.22 due before the end of November. The biggest news here is arguably the earthquakelevel shakeup for the main map, Summoner’s Rift.
Killing an Elemental Drake will still give your team a buff (though some of these buffs have been tweaked) but now such a kill can transform the map, too, creating new routes and chokepoints according to the element. Available as you read this is new support hero Senna, so go and check her out!
Teamfight Tactics also gets a Rise of the Elements update, which again is live now. It introduces new champions, classes, abilities, items, and more. LoL and TT are getting mobile versions too (the LoL one named Wild Rift) which will arrive in 2020. TT mobile is essentially the same game with PC cross-play, while Wild Rift is an entirely new, and separate, game with 15-20 minute matches.
THE RIOT STUFF
There’s brand new games coming too! CCG Legends of Runeterra for one – head to p20 for our hands-on. Then there’s the LoL fighting game currently known only as Project L – details are sparse, but it’s from the team that worked on the never released Rising Thunder, which aimed to make the genre accessible to a wider audience.
LoL itself gets an update named Rise of the Elements..
Totally unrelated to League of Legends is what’s currently known as Project A, an online FPS that’s mostly shrouded in secrecy. What little has been shown hints at a cross between Rainbow Six and (amusingly) Overwatch. That, combined with a promise that, “We’ve put anti-cheat at the forefront of our development,” means this is one to watch.
Plus (yes, really) there’s an unnamed action-RPG, the selfexplanatory LoL Esports Manager, and an animated series set in the LoL universe (developed in-house) by the name of Arcane on the way. It would’ve been quicker to talk about what Riot isn’t doing.