League Of Legends & Wild Rift's Biggest Differences Explained
The global phenomenon that is League of Legends has made its debut in the mobile gaming world with the release of League of Legends: Wild Rift. Now that Wild Rift’s beta has launched in North America, League of Legends veterans and neophytes will be scrambling to figure out how to adjust to the new portable version of Summoner’s Rift. Wild Rift is just similar enough to its predecessor to be familiar, but filled with huge changes that make it feel like a brand-new experience.
Like its big brother League of Legends, Wild Rift is a 5v5 competitive MOBA focused on strategic gameplay. Designed for mobile and controller based audiences, Wild Rift compresses the standard 20-30 League game into an accelerated 5-15 minute brawl. Players still have a plethora of League of Legends champions to choose from, but with slight changes to make them easier to use on a touch screen.
Each lane has a specific setup in League of Legends: Wild Rift - the top lane has tanky bruisers duking it out, the middle lane is still home of the mages, and the duo lane keeps asking the jungler for ganks. Where Wild Rift differs is in the small details that affect how each game plays out.
Wild Rift is a turbo version of the regular League of Legends experience. The draft phase, ending screen, and everything in between is shortened or streamlined. The map is shrunk to incentivize junglers to gank and laners to roam. Combining a smaller map with stronger neutral objective bonuses leads to games being closed out much faster.
The item shop is one of the more daunting aspects of League of Legends. Wild Rift embraces older removed items and combines them with some of the new additions from the last pre-season patch to make a new, much easier-to-use item shop. A lot of the active elements were removed for usability reasons, but some brand-new Wild Rift exclusives can be acquired. New gear like the Awakened Soulstealer have new unique passives that let high-impact ultimates be cast more. Some of the retired fan-favorites make a reappearance as well, and Hextech Gunblade makes a triumphant return to help Akali mains dominate the middle lane once more. The act of buying items is straightforward, with icon popups showing exactly when something can be bought, and what should be purchased next.
The pool of champions available in Wild Rift is much smaller than in League of Legends. As of April 6th, only 62 out of the total 154 champions can be played. Recent fan-favorites like Samira are missing from mobile. The smaller champion pool can make games feel a bit same-y, but also makes it easier to learn, as less champions equals less abilities to memorize. Slowly introducing the rest of the champion pool has the potential to reduce the knowledge gap between novices and pros, which will help stop new players from being dominated by ten-year League of Legends veterans.
Riot’s foray into portable gaming has been an interesting experiment. Seeing how the game design team at Riot has tweaked the MOBA formula to fit a smaller form factor has been a treat. The mobile market is only the first step for Riot; plans are still in motion to bring the game to consoles once the phone version is fully released. The differences between the the phone and desktop experience are already immense, and even more changes might be in store for League of Legends: Wild Rift's inevitable console release.