During the 10th anniversary of Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, a mobile port called Wild Rift was announced. There will be no crossplay across devices since the engine is different, but players who have a League of Legends account will be able to link it with the new game for phones.
It is no surprise to the community because mobile gaming has been the cash cow for the gaming industry for the past couple of years, and everyone expected a League of Legends port sooner or later.
One main difference is the duration of a match, in League of Legends matches can go up to an hour if both teams are not willing to go for aggressive plays, while in Wild Rift the goal is to make matches last around 15 to 20 minutes.
To accomplish the reduced game time, Riot Games has adapted the map, lowered the level cap from level 18 in League of Legends to level 15 in Wild Rift. Minions that die near the champion will grant gold, with last hits giving additional gold.
The all-known Summoner’s Rift has undergone some changes as well; while the general layout of the map is the same, no inhibitors or towers are defending the Nexus. Once inhibitors towers are down, super minions will start spawning, and Nexus will fire turret shots. Turret plates have been removed from the towers as well to encourage fast gameplay.
Instead of purchasing wards, players will be able to fight and control a ward zone (the equivalent of crab in League of Legends). The zones can be captured by standing on them.
The controls are quite different as well; the map sits at the top left corner of the screen since the bottom will be reserved for the controls, the left thumb sits on a moving cursor, while the right one clicks on attacks and is used to aim skills. To make the game more adaptable to players on mobile devices, the champions will target the lowest health minion, and the camera will zoom out when using a long-range ability.
The number of champions is different as well, not all League of Legends champions will be transferred to the Wild Rift. Wild Rift will begin with 40 heroes, and more champions will be added over time.
The runes are different as well since the rune system of League of Legends is time-consuming and would be quite complicated on a mobile device. To resolve the runes problem, each rune page will have one keystone and three runes.
The number of items will be reduced as well, with a notable change for teleport, which will become an item instead of a summoner spell.
There will be no crossplay between the games, but some progress from League of Legends will be able to be transferred to the new game.
Riot Games promised to be as transparent as possible and takes notes of the feedback received from players before releasing the game. Stay tuned for more updates regarding the game progress over the next weeks.
