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‘League of Legends: Wild Rift’ Open Beta Expanding to the Americas in March

After years of speculation Riot Games finally officially announced a League of Legends game for mobile during its 10th anniversary celebration back in October of 2019. This wouldn’t just be a port of the PC game, but instead a special version called League of Legends: Wild Rift that would take the PC version and rework it in certain areas to be more conducive to mobile and console play. Riot announced that they’d be running an open beta for League of Legends: Wild Rift in limited territories, and that kicked off in a number of Asian countries this past October before expanding to Europe, the Middle East, and Russia in December. Obviously, being based in North America, I’ve frequently wondered “When me?" in regards to getting access to the Wild Rift open beta, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

Well just this morning Riot held a big livestream event laying out the plans for all of their League of Legends games in 2021, including Wild Rift, and as of now they’re shooting for releasing the open beta to the Americas this coming March. They also discuss the many, MANY things they have in the works for Wild Rift including new events, new Champions, new features, and plenty more, and you can check out the section of the livestream relevant to Wild Rift in the video below.

But wait, there’s more! A lot more. Riot also gave an update on their 2021 plans for Legends of Runeterra, their League of Legends card battler spin-off which Apple chose as their iPad Game of the Year for 2020. Legends of Runeterra was announced alongside Wild Rift at that same 10th anniversary event in 2019, and after a brief soft launch period arrived on iOS and Android worldwide back in April. The team behind it has been updating it multiple times a month ever since, and they have a lot in store for 2021 which you can see them break down in detail in the following video.

Of course there’s another mobile Riot game out there called Teamfight Tactics, and it too got a full overview of its plans for the new year. Teamfight Tactics originally launched as a special mode in League of Legends on PC, and is an autochess-style game modeled after the incredibly popular Dota 2 mod that basically created the autochess genre. During that same League of Legends 10th anniversary event, Riot announced that Teamfight Tactics would be spun off into its own standalone game across a number of platforms, including mobile, with full cross-platform multiplayer support. Teamfight Tactics launched in March of last year, and while initially rough around the edges, much like Legends of Runeterra Riot has been updating the game multiple times per month ever since. The following excerpt from today’s livestream breaks down all the details relevant to Teamfight Tactics in 2021.

And there you have it. The roadmap for 2021 for all things mobile-related coming from Riot Games and the League of Legends universe. Of course, if you’re also a fan of League of Legends proper on PC then that is naturally what made up the bulk of today’s livestream event, and you can check out the full archive video which runs for nearly an hour for all the nitty gritty details related to the PC game. As someone who is not too interested in the Teamfight Tactics or Legends of Runeterra worlds, but who IS very anxious to play Wild Rift without jumping through a bunch of VPN hoops, I’m really looking forward to the beta expansion to the Americas this coming March.