League of Legends Wild Rift is a separate LoL for mobile and consoles

With the popularity of battle royale games like PUBG and Fortnite, it's almost too easy to forget that Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas or MOBAs once ruled gaming industry news. Unlike PUBG and Fortnite, hits MOBA titles like Dota 2 and League of Legends missed the opportunity to jump on the mobile gravy train. LoL developer Riot Games is making up for lost time with League of Legends Wild Rift which is both LoL for mobile and consoles but also not LoL for mobile and consoles.

Wild Rift is described as League of Legends redone from the ground up, including new models, animations, and game systems. It promises the same Rift world and a starting set of 40 LoL heroes taken from the main PC version. The promise is that it takes the same spirit of the MOBA game to devices that use gamepads, either physical or virtual.

LoL Wild Rifts takes the spirit to mobile but not the game itself. Riot Games is making it clear that it isn't just a simple PC port of LoL. That more than just referring to the content, however. It also means that cross-platform play between the original League of Legends and League of Legends Wild Rift won't be possible.

Despite those differences, Riot is promising the world in terms of delivering a familiar LoL experience, except for shorter bursts of play. It's the same familiar Rift with the same familiar characters that will get expanded over time. You just won't be able to play it on just any device and expect things to carry over.

League of Legends Wild Rift will launch sometime near the end of 2020, which is still quite a good deal away. Then again, fans have been asking for a LoL Mobile for years, except they might not be getting all that they hoped for. While PC and mobile games won't intersect, Wild Rift players will still be able to use their main LoL account and even get rewards on mobile for playing on the PC.