League of Legends: Nexus Blitz to return in October, Preseason 2024 in November

Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends (LoL), have made some big announcements about the future of the game on Wednesday (29 August) that have made many players mostly excited about what’s to come.

These changes include some changes to Ranked games in Season 2024, Preseason changes including major changes in the item system, and arguably one of the biggest announcements yet: the return of the Nexus Blitz game mode.

Here are some of the upcoming updates for LoL that players can look forward to.

Nexus Blitz returns in late October 2023

One of the biggest highlights of the dev update was the return of the game mode that is most requested by the League community, Nexus Blitz.

Riot has promised to bring back this time-limited mode in 2022, but that year has come and gone with no sign of the mode appearing leaving many players disappointed.

Since that didn't materialise, Riot is currently trying to make amends by bringing the game mode to players this year.

According to the Head of League Studio, Andrei “Meddler” van Roon and Executive Producer of LoL, Jeremy “Brightmoon” Lee, the game will be returning in late October for a five-week run while the rest of the devs continue to tweak and improve the newest time-limited popular game mode, Arena in December.

According to Brightmoon, the gameplay is “as you remember it”, with a couple of tweaks “to account for changes since its last appearance, like updated jungle items”.

This time-limited game mode features a 5v5 on a brand-new map with two junglers and three laners. Mini-games would appear throughout the match and award bonuses to the winning team.

There were also other differences in the map, like Jungle Guardians that deter Jungle invades, a Frog Catapult, and Base Gate Turret, among others.

Game Producer Eduardo “Cadmus” Cortejoso set everyone’s expectations on the LoL subreddit’s post about the announced changes.

According to Cadmus, “gameplay will generally be pretty similar to its last release, outside of necessary changes that we needed to account for since its last release.”

While this may seem like bad news to many, the LoL Game Producer also offered an explanation of the decision made for the said game mode.

“Before this, the mode was completely broken due to various LoL-wide updates, so step one is to get it stable again, and step 2 will hopefully be to improve it.”

He also said that the team’s hope is “by virtue of getting ready for this release, we'll be set up to make some of the adjustments needed for the mode to improve as a future staple rotating mode for LoL.”

Nexus Blitz was first introduced in July 2018 and was made available until September of the same year, but it was made with the intention of becoming a permanent game mode.

However, players ended up disliking it once the event was over, and there were no more quests to grind.

The game mode was then reintroduced on public testing servers in 2020, with new visuals from the Ionian Spirit Blossom Forests known as the Nexus Blitz icon Temple of Lily and Lotus, where it became well-loved for its fresh visuals, revamped events and some tempting rewards.

The second iteration of Nexus Blitz was available from July through August 2020. Since then, players have been requesting for Riot to bring back the beloved game mode.

2023 Ranked Season will end in December while Season 2024 will include three splits

Some significant changes will also come to Season 2024’s Ranked mode.

First off, the current ranked season will be open for the entirety of the year until 3 January. rather than closing for the traditional "preseason" in November and December.

Big game changes that would have been made during the preseason phase of the ranked calendar will now be implemented in January.

Additionally, next year, there will be three ranked resets instead of two, spread out over the course of the season, each with its own set of ranked rewards.

“This should hopefully result in more impactful games and a faster climb for each split,” Game Director Pu “Pupulasers” Liu said in the video.

With each new split comes new rewards and Victorious skins, just like there were at the end of full seasons in the past. Pupulasers said that players will have the opportunity to earn three Ranked skins each year.

Here’s the Ranked Split schedule for 2024:

• Split 1: 9 January 2024

• Split 2: May 2024

• Split 3: September 2024

Preseason 2024 to launch on PBE in mid-November; will include removal of Mythic Items

According to Pupulasers, Preseason will now hit PBE in mid-November, instead of October, and will go live on the main servers in January 2024, aligning it to the launch of Ranked Games and the esports season.

There are also a lot of things that devs are working on for Preseason 2024. “We’re looking at terrain adjustments to parts of Summoner’s Rift, changes to map objectives and significant modifications to the item system,” he added.

More specifically, certain players have voiced concerns about the constraining effect of Mythic items on a champion's build options, while others expressed satisfaction with the simplified build choices for various champions.

Regardless of one's stance on this matter, there's a clear consensus: Riot is dissatisfied with how Mythic items have influenced the current meta and player base/

Particularly, in August 2023, League lead designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison admitted that the Mythic system isn’t working like they intended it to be.

The Mythic system forced many players to build one standard item based on their role because there was usually one meta item pick that was stronger than the other shop options.

Players rarely experimented with the system and were unhappy with the lack of build path options.

Pupulasers also said in the video that while Mythic items work pretty well for half the roster, “the other half is left with items that don’t feel right for them or have their creativity stifled.”

Devs have decided to remove the Mythic items from the game altogether starting January next year.

Some Mythics items that players really like will remain; however, these will be presented as options rather than “prescriptive centrepieces.”

Gameplay changes are expected to go live with patch 14.1 on 9 Jan 2024. You can read more about Ranked and pre-season changes so far in the dev blog found on the LoL website.

Anna is a freelance writer and photographer. She is a gamer who loves RPGs and platformers, and is a League of Legends geek. She's also a food enthusiast who loves a good cup of black coffee.

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