League of Legends: Wild Rift

League of Legends: Wild Rift (abbreviated LoL: WR or simply Wild Rift) is a multiplayer online battle arena mobile game developed and published by Riot Games for Android and iOS. The free-to-play game is a modified version of the PC game League of Legends.

As in League of Legends, players control a character ("champion") with unique abilities and battle against a team of players or AI-controlled units, with the goal of destroying the opposing team's "Nexus". Each League of Legends: Wild Rift match is discrete, with all champions starting off relatively weak but increasing in strength by accumulating items and experience over the course of the game. The champions are influenced by a variety of genres, including high fantasy, steampunk, and Lovecraftian horror.

Gameplay
Wild Rift is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game in which the player controls a character ("champion") with a set of unique abilities from an isometric perspective. As of April 2021, there are 84 champions available to play. Over the course of a match, champions gain levels by accruing experience points (XP) through killing enemies. Items can be acquired to increase champions' strength, and are bought with gold, which players accrue passively over time and earn actively by defeating the opposing team's minions, champions, or defensive structures. In the main game mode, Wild Rift, items are purchased through a shop menu available to players only when their champion is in the team's base. Each match is discrete; levels and items do not transfer from one match to another.

Wild Rift
The game's main map. It is a square, with the team bases on the top right and bottom right corners. There are three pathways to each base: one diagonally across the centre, and the others going up and turning at the top left and bottom right corners. A simplified representation of Summoner's Rift. The yellow paths are the "lanes" down which minions march; blue and red dots represent turrets. The fountains are the dark areas within each base, and are beside each Nexus. The dotted black line indicates the river.

Wild Rift is the flagship game mode of League of Legends and the most prominent in professional-level play. The mode has a ranked competitive ladder; a matchmaking system determines a player's skill level and generates a starting rank from which they can climb. There are nine tiers; Iron, Bronze, and Silver, Gold, Platinum, Emerald, Diamond, Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger.

Two teams of five players compete to destroy the opposing team's "Nexus", which is guarded by the enemy champions and defensive structures known as "turrets". Each team's Nexus is located in their base, where players start the game and reappear after death. Non-player characters known as minions are generated from each team's Nexus and advance towards the enemy base along three lanes guarded by turrets: top, middle, and bottom. Destroying one of the enemy team's final turrets in a lane, known as inhibitor turrets, causes stronger allied minions to spawn in that lane, and allows the attacking team to damage the enemy Nexus. The regions in between the lanes are collectively known as the "jungle", which is inhabited by "monsters" that, like minions, respawn at regular intervals. Like minions, monsters provide gold and XP when killed. Another, more powerful class of monster resides within the river that separates each team's jungle. These monsters require multiple players to defeat and grant special abilities to their slayers' team. For example, teams can gain a powerful allied unit after killing the Rift Herald, permanent strength boosts by killing dragons, and stronger, more durable minions by killing Baron Nashor.

Wild Rift matches can last from as little as 10 minutes to over an half an hour. Although the game does not enforce where players may go, conventions have arisen over the game's lifetime: typically one player goes in the top lane, one in the middle lane, one in the jungle, and two in the bottom lane. Players in a lane kill minions to accumulate gold and XP (termed "farming") and try to prevent their opponent from doing the same. A fifth champion, known as a "jungler", farms the jungle monsters and, when powerful enough, assists their teammates in a lane.

Other modes
Besides Wild Rift, League of Legends: Wild Rift has another permanent game mode. ARAM ("All Random, All Mid") is a five-versus-five mode like Summoner's Rift, but on a map called Howling Abyss with only one long lane, no jungle area, and with champions randomly chosen for players. Given the small size of the map, players must be vigilant in avoiding enemy abilities.

Other game modes have been made available temporarily, typically aligning with in-game events. In Ultra Rapid Fire (URF), champion abilities have no resource cost, significantly reduced cooldown timers, increased movement speed, reduced healing, and faster attacks.

Pre-release
After fully acquiring Riot Games in 2015, Tencent asked them to turn League of Legends into a mobile title. However, Riot declined and claimed that the game could not be replicated on smartphones. Tencent then created their own mobile MOBA, Honor of Kings (with its international adaptation known as Arena of Valor). The aforementioned games was then reportedly straining their business relationship, and the relationship between the two firms became further strained when Tencent used notable League of Legends players to promote Arena of Valor and its esports tournaments.

Riot Games's complaints initiated a two-month marketing freeze for Arena of Valor and demands that that Riot Games would be given the option to review all marketing plans, including a veto for use of select celebrity gamers. Nonetheless, Riot Games implied that their relationship with Tencent is still strong, and the conflict between them and their games is only "a bump in the road".

Riot Games eventually acknowledged the potential of the mobile market for the MOBA genre, and agreed to develop a mobile title for League of Legends. Tencent then temporarily pulled marketing plans for Arena of Valor in Europe and North America in 2019, clearing room for Riot Games's announcement of League of Legends: Wild Rift a few months later.

League of Legends: Wild Rift was announced on 15 October 2019, on the 10th anniversary of League of Legends.

Release
League of Legends: Wild Rift was set to be released on 27 October 2020, with a limited alpha launch in Brazil and Philippines in June 2020. Along with the release, a cinematic trailer was posted by the official League of Legends: Wild Rift channel on YouTube.

On 16 September 2020, Wild Rift was released in closed beta in Southeast Asia via Google Play and Apple's TestFlight, with more regions to be added at a later date. On 8 October 2020, the closed beta returned, adding South Korea and Japan.

The regional open beta for Southeast Asia began on 27 October 2020. On 7 December 2020, the beta was expanded to include Vietnam, Oceania, and Taiwan. On 10 December 2020, the open beta was expanded ahead of schedule to include the Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, Middle East, and Turkey.

The open beta launched in the Americas on 29 March 2021.

For China, Wild Rift has received game approval from China's National Press and Publication Administration in early 2021. On 8 October 2021, the game went out of open beta and was officially released by Tencent.

Post-release
Similar to League of Legends, Wild Rift also receives updates in the form of patches. Smaller balance updates happen once every two or three weeks, with a patch cycle usually consisting of three or four of these.

As of April 2022, there are currently 84 champions in the game.

Revenue model
League of Legends: Wild Rift uses a free-to-play business model. "Skins", used as purely cosmetic customization of champions can be acquired after buying and using an in-game currency called Wild Cores. New skins are debuting in Wild Rift, such as the "Stargazer" skin line, and other standalone skins. A new feature currently exclusive to Wild Rift is "champion poses", changing the pose of the selected champion just before the game begins and right after the game ends. These are unlocked through chests in events. Similar to "battle passes", a system called Wild Passes have been introduced as a way to get skins, currency, player icons, emotes, and other cosmetic upgrades. Upon purchasing a pass, players will be given an exclusive skin (the "Hexplorer" skin line), and reaching the maximum level will grant a pose for that exclusive skin. Passes can be leveled up through in-game missions, or buying levels for certain amounts of Wild Cores.

Reception
League of Legends: Wild Rift was well received by video game critics. On the review aggregator website Metacritic, the game received a score of 89 out of 100 based on 7 reviews. Cass Marshall, from Polygon, said Wild Rift provides "a great alternative for those intimidated by the PC version of League". Jordan Minor from PCMag gave Wild Rift 4 out of 5 stars and called it "a surprisingly capable mobile edition" of League of Legends. The editor praised the art style of the game and also its capacity to function on weak hardware devices. The Washington Post's Shannon Liao said the game was "a much more beginner-friendly" than League of Legends, but felt that its tutorial could be more comprehensive. Andrew Webster with The Verge wrote that despite the complexity of League of Legends's gameplay, Wild Rift, in contrast, "does an excellent job of easing in new players by explaining the basics in simple terms".

Regarding game control, while the touchscreen controls used for attacks were praised as "perfectly playable" and "intuitive", the virtual joystick utilized for movement was described as "serviceable, but like all virtual joysticks, it can be unresponsive at times". Still about it, Minor wrote that command "don't always keep up with the action".

Player behavior
Wild Rift's player base in the United States has reportedly been "way less toxic" than League of Legends's, which Liao and Steven Messner with PC Gamer attributed to the amount of effort required to type on a smartphone. Liao observed that despite rare occurrences of bickering she encountered over "taking a role someone else wanted", "Wild Rift seems to be injecting new life into a community that has grown pretty insular."