TL;DW: WASD, Smurfing & More Dev Update

A short rundown of changes from today’s Dev Update.
Dev
Pabro, Meddler

Hey everyone, Pabro, Meddler, DashiJador, Riot Iksar, Phroxzon, and just a capybara here with a quick TL;DW of today’s Dev Update:

  • In Season 3, we’re pulling together characters’ storylines from Noxus and Spirit Blossom—LeBlanc, Yunara, Atakhan, and Xin Zhao will all play a vital role.

  • We’ll be celebrating 15 years of Worlds in China later this year.

  • We’re returning to base Summoner’s Rift map—don’t worry, we have more new maps planned for later.

  • Xin Zhao is getting a visual update to his base model and all skins.

  • All Vaulted skins will be unvaulted for patches 25.17 and 25.18.

  • Commando and Imperial Xin Zhao have gotten additional upgrades and will increase from 520 to 750 RP, but you can get them at the lower price until patch 25.17.

  • He’s also getting a new Epic skin later in Act 1.

  • Sylas and Mel will be getting Prestige skins in the Mythic Shop in Act 1 and Act 2, respectively.

  • The 2024 Worlds Winner skins will be coming out in September.

  • Jarvan IV and Zoe will be getting Prestige skins on the Battle Passes in Act 1 and Act 2, respectively.

  • Exalted Viego will be delayed until next year so we can spend more time on him.

  • Dearest Viktor Nation; Machine Herald Viktor will be released in patch 25.19. As an ode to your love for the machine man, all true Viktor lovers will get the skin for free as long as you had Mastery 5 or above on him as of August 4th.

  • Battle Passes are being tweaked and will have 48 levels instead of 50—the amount of experience between levels stays the same, and none of the rewards are being removed.

  • We’re adding some emotes and icons to the Mythic Shop that were previously only earnable by completing TFT Passes.

  • Doom Bots is back in patch 25.17 with new bots, a new boss, a new difficulty, new curses, and new missions... and more doom, of course.

  • Each patch there will be a unique challenge called “Trials of Doom” that will add a new, unique obstacle to overcome.

  • Check out the dev blog to learn more about the changes.

  • In order for League to be a healthy, thriving game we have to continue to improve the experience for not just all of you playing now, but for returning or new players.

  • To that end, we’re adding WASD as a new, optional control scheme to League.

  • WASD is coming to PBE in a few patches and we need your help to find every bug or weird interaction that exists.

  • It’ll stay on PBE until it’s ready to roll out to non-Ranked queues and eventually to Ranked.

  • WASD is totally optional, and we have some balance levers to pull so WASD and Point & Click are both competitively viable without either being a “better” way to play League.

  • Learn more about WASD in the dev blog that’s out now.

  • Patch 25.18 will introduce stricter actions against smurfing, specifically boosting (someone else playing on your account) and hitchhiking (a higher-skilled player using a fraudulent account to duo with a lower-skilled player).

  • We’ll be taking action against both accounts in these situations—both the booster and boostee.

  • We’re going to be doubling down on banning accounts that are being bought, sold, or shared—regardless of whether or not they’re used in Ranked smurfing.

  • True Skill 2 testing began in North America in March (normal SR, ARAM), then expanded to all un-Ranked queues in Korea last month after fixes. Players are placed correctly within 5-10 games, 3-5 times faster than the current system.

  • That said, we won’t be adding True Skill 2 to Ranked until we’ve done much more testing with it.

  • Worlds will kick off with the 2025 Anthem on October 10th, which will honor and celebrate all of the legends of the sport from over the years.

  • Games will kick off in Beijing on October 14th with Finals in Chengdu on November 9th.

  • We’d especially love to get all of your takes on WASD as that hits PBE soon. We’re working on a number of things we think are really important for the long term future of League. WASD’s the first one up and the one’s that’s ready to talk about right now, we’ll share more about the other efforts in a bit.