UPDATE (November 18th 2020): Riot Games has revealed today that the League of Legends mobile game – Wild Rift – will be launching in Europe on Thursday December 10th 2020 (Pacific Time).
The regional open beta will also hit the Middle East and North Africa, Russia & CIS and Turkey on the same day.
Prior to that, Wild Rift will go live in Oceania, Taiwan and Vietnam on December 7th (Pacific Time).
All players in those locations will have full access to Wild Rift on Android or iOS.
This follows a regional open beta in Southeast Asia, South Korea and Japan, where Wild Rift topped the charts in all local app marketplaces.
A new content patch, featuring several new champions and skins, player-requested features, balance adjustments and bugfixes, will roll out to players worldwide, with more info coming on December 21st.
Wild Rift is set to arrive in the Americas in 2021.
Riot also released a trailer announcing the new dates:
Original article (published October 19th 2020):
League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced that the mobile version of the game, Wild Rift, will enter its first regional open beta this month.
The open beta starts on October 27th in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand, with more regions to follow.
Europe, Taiwan, Oceania and Vietnam are due to get the game in December, with North America gaining access in spring 2021.
Wild Rift previously had a loose release window of 2020. Some fans responded negatively to the news, especially those based in North America. The dev update video below currently has 20,000 likes and 15,000 dislikes, and some fans took to Twitter and Reddit to complain.
It’s been a tough few weeks for NA LoL fans, what with the region putting in a disappointing performance at Worlds.
Michael ‘Riot Paladin’ Chow, Wild Rift’s executive producer, also announced a number of other Wild Rift updates.
In a new patch, hitting later this month, Wild Rift will release Lee Sin, the Blind Monk. Other champions are also being tested including Kai’sa, Evelynn, Akali, Darius, Draven and new champion Seraphine. KD/A skins will be available in the game too.
In South Korea and Japan, players can log in using their existing Riot Games accounts and earn rewards based on their time and monetary investment in League of Legends on PC.
For the Southeast Asian regions in the closed beta, players can create and link a Riot Account and earn rewards like champs and skins later in the year.
Riot will also release locally tailored content every day on the road to open beta, including influencer spotlights, guides and community highlights.
Riot recently released an advert for Wild Rift featuring huge esports names Faker and Teddy.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
