The schedule for new League of Legends champions and reworks for existing characters will likely be more of a 50/50 split in 2019, Riot Games said.
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League of Legends gameplay producer Ryan “Reav3” Mireles commented on the pattern of releases players can expect next year within a post on the game’s boards. While replying to a post about reworks for Jax, Blitzcrank, and Kennen coming later on after Ezreal’s, something that the Rioter said isn’t exactly true, he responded to another comment about the 2019 release scheduled to say that the champion releases will be split with the updates.
“Next year will likely be more of a 50/50 split like 2017,” Riot Reav3 said. “We have done surveys ourselves and found that it is about 50/50 from players in wanting VGUs or New Champs. VGUs are of course good because it brings older champions up to modern standards, but they also incur a cost, that not [sic] matter how good of a job we do some people will quit. We have to balance all of this when we decide what to prioritize.”
The “VGUs” Riot Reav3 mentioned stand for “Visual and Gameplay Update,” the larger of the two updates with the other one being just a Visual Update that improves a champ’s visuals and effects. A VGU is what Nunu received in his update with Ezreal’s being a minor version of the full VGU, according to the champion update schedule.
It’s been said earlier in the year that Riot Games would focus more on updates this year as opposed to new champions, something that’s held true looking back at the release schedule. Two new champions have been released so far in 2018, those being Kai’Sa and then Pyke, while Swain, Irelia, Aatrox, Akali, and Nunu were all updated in that order with the newly-named Nunu & Willump expected to release in the next patch.
Outside of the champions that are already on the list for updates, those being Nunu, Ezreal, Kayle, and Morgana, Riot Reav3 discussed many more update possibilities within the thread. Some champions like Fiddlesticks are high on the priority list for updates, Riot Reav3 said, alongside others like Nocturne. As for Ezreal’s update, he reiterated that the champion will be rebuilt from the ground up but said that his anime boy theme will be kept intact.
“Like I have mentioned before, we don’t plan on changing his overall theme, just modernizing it a bit and polishing it up,” he said. “Being a animesque pretty boy is kind of a core thing about Ezreal, so of course we want to preserve that.”
