Earlier this year, League of Legends players were surprised to hear a prominent developer behind the game tease that new champions in the ongoing MOBA might one day come to an end. Ever since LoL first release, Riot Games has continued to add new playable characters on a pretty regular basis. And while that cadence of releases might end up slowing down in the future, one producer in charge of the game doesn’t think that new champions will ever stop arriving.
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In a new conversation with ComicBook.com, League of Legends executive producer Jeremy Lee said that it’s unlikely the game will ever stop adding new characters. Although the pace in which champions have come to the MOBA in recent years might end up getting dialed back, Lee explained that there are just still so many ideas that those at Riot have when it comes to new champs.
“The reality is that we keep finding things that the game needs and that we think players will love. When that stops then we’ll stop making champions. I can’t really see that that would ever happen,” Lee said. “I think what we might do instead is change the cadence of new champion releases. We used to release multiple champions every two weeks and we’ve tried different sorts of release cadences in the past, but League is an always evolving and changing game. Champions are a great part of that. Will we ever get to the point where there are just no new champions being introduced? I can’t really imagine it, but we might get to a point where champion releases are slower.”
Within the past couple of years, Riot has reached a point where it releases about four to five new characters in League of Legends each year. Whether or not this amount will be diminished in 2023 isn’t something that Lee indicated, but it seems likely that champion release timings could slow at some point.
Even if new champs did stop coming to League as often, this also doesn’t mean that Riot would stop tinkering with characters as a whole. Outside of releasing completely new champs, Riot has also been reworking existing characters that already exist within LoL. In all likelihood, the pattern in which past champs are reworked won’t end up slowing down at all, and in fact, might only become more prominent further down the line.
Would you like to see Riot completely end the process of bringing new champions to League of Legends? And how would you feel about the studio slowing down these releases? Let me know either down in the comments or message me on Twitter at @MooreMan12.
