For many, 2020 was a rough year. But for Riot Games, 2020 was the start of a bunch of major expansions and highlights, culminating in the release of not just one, but THREE new games all in the span of a few months–and they’re set to exceed expectations once again in 2021.
With its lineup in the League of Legends universe, now consisting not just of League of Legends, but also League of Legends: Wild Rift, Legends of Runeterra, and Teamfight Tactics, Riot hosted a stream on Friday, 9th of January at 11pm (GMT +8) to let us players know what they have in store for us for this year.
Buckle your seatbelts, ’cause we have a LOT to cover.
League of Legends
Riot’s longest-standing game is also the one that has the most content lined up for 2021, including, but not limited to, new champions, lore expansion, and more events, as well as adjustments for ranked play. So, let’s start from the beginning:
Viego, the Ruined King
The stream kicked off with an amazing cinematic heralding the arrival of League’s soon-to-be latest champion–Viego, a brand-new jungler. His playstyle seems to function as a skirmisher, with a host of abilities guaranteeing his versatility in any game versus any team compositions.
Ranked Play Adjustments
With the new season comes certain changes to ranked that will make the climb less painful for those who cry out in derision. The biggest change is that the promotional series between divisions has been removed, making it easier to climb through your tier. You’ll still have to do the promotionals when moving between tiers, but this should alleviate the stress when you’re just trying to hit Gold I from IV.
Next, Riot is introducing another system for LP mitigation, where if you happen to lose the game because a team member is AFK, the LP loss is substantially reduced, while the guilty player will have their LP loss increased, making ranked in general a less frustrating affair when a game is lost due to fault of your own.
Upcoming Champions
The next 3 champs after Viego will all tie into the Ruined King’s storyline. While Riot has told us what the next few champs will be, with the 2nd being an artillery mage and the 3rd a marksman, further details are scant, possibly to make us even more interested and to generate hype–and it’s working.
New Lore
As a nice segue, the Ruined King storyline will be one of the largest lore dumps in League’s recent history, with an entire overarching storyline encompassing Viego’s release and continuing for several months throughout Riot’s various games.
Return of Clash
Clash was fun–if you got to play it. We can only hope that this game mode makes it onto Garena servers, as we are dying to form teams to test our mettle against others. As a bonus, there is no ranked requirement to participate in Clash, to compensate for it releasing so early into the season.
Player Progression
In terms of progression in League, there’s a lot, with champion mastery, player levels, honor levels, and the battle pass system, just to name a few. There will be a small revamp of this system in the future, though we don’t know too many details yet.
Upcoming Champion Reworks
If you’re a Mundo main, you’ll be glad to know that his rework is still happening. But in the meantime, Riot has given us the opportunity to vote for the next reworked champion, and you can do so within the League client. You’ll be able to choose between Skarner, Quinn, Nocturne, Shyvana and Udyr.
New Skin Lines
With the Lunar New Year rapidly approaching, Riot has announced a new skin line that replaces the previous Lunar Revel theme called Lunar Beast. The Lunar Beast skin line will be available in both League PC and Wild Rift, with Wild Rift players being able to purchase a mobile-only skin for Miss Fortune.
Riot has also opened up voting for the next set of themed skins, and all 3 choices look immensely good. Players can now place their votes for the noir-themed Crime City Nightmare, a reboot of the old Debonair skin line, or the Pokemon-esque Monster Tamers.
League of Legends: Wild Rift
New Champions
A bunch of new champions will be released onto the mobile Rift within the year, but we’ll start with the newest announcements. Katarina will be joining the Rift later in the spring, with an updated kit that involves… moving while ulting?
Following that, Rammus will also be joining the roster with a reworked passive and ult. With these changes, he should be more than “OK”, we think.
New Game Mode
While everyone enjoys playing on Summoner’s Rift, it’s really the only map available on Wild Rift at the moment. That will soon change, as Riot has announced that an ARAM map is in development, and soon we’ll be able to pummel each other on the Howling Abyss on mobile, which should be a treat for ARAM-only players.
Events
While the Lunar Beast event is still a few weeks away, a new event on Wild Rift will be launching this week, centering around Teemo and his squad’s adventures all over Runeterra. With the event, we also get FIVE new champions to play with on the Rift, all of them yordles, in the form of Tristana, Lulu, Corki, Teemo and Kennen.
You can watch the cinematic trailer here:
While the updates aren’t as substantial as the updates coming to League PC, there’s still quite a lot of content planned, and we can’t wait for them to arrive to enjoy our League of Legends experience wherever we are, especially with the new ranked season about to begin.
We’ve still got a bit more to cover with Legends of Runeterra as well as some short info about Teamfight Tactics, so if you want to check that out, click the link here to go straight to that article!
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