By Andi Nuruljihad for Gamesforum

For years, Riot Games appeared to have little interest in creating a mobile version of LoL. This in spite of the proven success of two huge mobile games based around the League of Legends formula (Arena of Valor and Mobile Legends, which together have grossed over $8 billion). In fact, until last year -- when League of Legends: Wild Rift was announced -- the closest they had been associated with a mobile MOBA was their very public 2017 lawsuit against Mobile Legends developer Moonton.

League of Legends: Wild Rift isn’t actually out yet -- the regional open beta is open for players in non-China Asia, Korea, and Japan, but Europe and North America won’t be getting access until December at the earliest. I’m lucky enough to come from one of the countries where the Wild Rift regional open beta is available, and from what I’ve played, it’s poised to force a shift in the hierarchy of mobile MOBAs. After years of LoL copycats dominating the mobile space, Wild Rift feels a bit like the arrival of an old gunslinger here to show the newbloods how it’s done.

Leage of Legends: Wild Rift - Similar but Not the Same

It should come as no surprise that Wild Rift plays and feels a lot like both Arena of Valor and Mobile Legends. You move your Champion with the virtual joystick and use skills by tapping buttons on the right-hand side of your screen. Many of the heroes also fall into traditional RPG archetypes -- tanky brawlers, glass cannon mages, and high DPS assassins -- with hero mechanics that can be traced back to the original DOTA.

Where Wild Rift wins out is in the small, quality-of-life interface elements. Things like holding your attack button so you can drag and lock onto specific units, targeting a unit by tapping their hero icon, and clear attack and skill indicators to make targeting and dodging skills much more intuitive. As a regular Mobile Legends player, the more I played Wild Rift, the more I missed having the ability to quickly pick out a target whenever I went back to ML.

Visually, Wild Rift is flowing over with style. Everything from the animations to the character designs are impressive, and they’re all unified by an stylistic consistency that I didn’t even recognize was missing in Mobile Legends and Arena of Valor. Although it has definitely improved over the years, Mobile Legends was once notorious for how wildly inconsistent the quality of its character models and animations was.

Similar but Smaller

Wild Rift is definitely a mobile version of League of Legends, but it’s not a direct port of Summoner’s Rift. Match length in Wild Rift sits in the middle ground between AoV/ML and Summoner’s Rift -- a game in Mobile Legends might last 20 minutes at most, while a match of the current open beta version of Wild Rift averages around 18-25 minutes. Towers and the map’s layout have been adjusted for quicker play, with no plates and some obstacles removed to allow for more fluid transitions between lanes.

Rune and Build setup is significantly simplified for Wild Rift. Choosing and tweaking all of those options before a match would be unmanageable on mobile, so Wild Rift employs a preset system. Before a match, players can create their own presets containing their preferred item progression and their four Runes of choice (one Keystone, one Domination, one Resolve, one Inspiration). Once you’ve entered the pre-match screen and selected your Champion, you have some time to pick a preset before the game starts.

It’s important to note that while not owning the right Runes can put you at a disadvantage in the PC version of LoL, the Runes in Wild Rift become available as you level up your account. This means with enough play, you’ll eventually gain access to all the available Runes. This streamlined interpretation of the Rune system might make for less flexibility in Champion builds, but it does help keep matchups mostly fair.

We’re also not getting all of the LoL Champions out of the gate. All of the most popular Champions will be here, with the first six becoming available after completing the in-game tutorial. Of the nearly 150 different Champions in Summoner’s Rift, only around 40 are available in the current version of Wild Rift but expect that number to grow quickly after the game releases in Europe and North America.

Performance

One aspect that might affect Wild Rift’s adoption rate, especially in developing regions like Southeast Asia, is how it performs on low- to mid-tier smartphones. This is anecdotal, but one of the most common reasons I’ve heard for why Indonesian gamers prefer Mobile Legends over Arena of Valor is the performance difference: Mobile Legends just runs better on their phones.

Tencent appears to have learned from the mistakes of Arena of Valor and has included several performance options in Wild Rift menu. Everything from the resolution to the shadows and cel-shading effect can be tweaked or disabled in the menu. My old Xiaomi Note 7 went from struggling to hit 50FPS at the highest settings to consistently above 60FPS after adjusting a few options, and those few frames-per-second completely change how the game feels and plays.

Monetisation Model

The monetisation model in League of Legends is similar to that in Summoner’s Rift. There are three currencies in League of Legends: Wild Rift: Wild Cores, Blue Motes, and Poro Coins.

Blue Motes are Wild Rift’s free in-game currency and are earned through regular play. Currently, they can only be used to purchase new Champions.

Poro Coins are another free currency obtained by playing the game. They can be spent to purchase items from the Poro Store, which is a sub-shop within the in-game store with a rotating list of Champions that refreshes every 24 hours.

Wild Cores are the premium currency obtained by spending real-world money. Like Blue Motes, you can spend Wild Cores on Champions. Wild Cores are the only currency used for purchasing Skins, Bundles, Baubles, Emotes, and Custom Recalls.

Both Mobile Legends and Arena of Valor employ similar monetisation models. Both also allow for the purchase of Runes which provide small buffs or minor effects to your heroes. The skins in Wild Rift and Arena of Valor are purely cosmetic, unlike skins in Mobile Legends which come with stat upgrades.

Challenging the Kings of Mobile MOBAs

Mobile Legends is winning big in Southeast Asia where it has generated more than $300 million since its release. The advent of mobile devices took core video games, like MOBAs, from grimy game centers and rich kids’ living rooms to the pockets of every man, woman, and child. In countries like Indonesia, Mobile Legends has reached unprecedented mainstream success for a video game -- political candidates hold Mobile Legends tournaments to sway young voters, students and office workers will try to get a round in during breaks, and there’s even a Presidential Cup.

Yet, that $300 million pales in comparison to Tencent’s Honor of Kings (or Arena of Valor to the rest of the world). Last yearit made a cool $1.9 billion and is on track to make more than $2 billion by the end of 2020. Of course, it helps that its biggest competitor, Mobile Legends, is banned in China where 95% of Arena of Valor’s revenue comes from.

Making Space for League of Legends: Wild Rift

Despite their successes, neither Mobile Legends nor Arena of Valor has made much impact outside of Asia. Tencent pushed hard to establish Arena of Valor as an esports title, even recruiting former DOTA2 professional players to help promote the title, but their efforts haven’t panned out.

It’s important to remember that Tencent is backing both Arena of Valor and League of Legends. After Arena of Valor failed to gain traction in the west, Tencent pulled support for the title in Europe and North America in 2019, clearing room for their announcement of League of Legends: Wild Rift a few months later. They’re very much betting on Wild Rift to capture the western market and challenge Mobile Legends in non-China Asia, both regions where Arena of Valor has underperformed.