LoR was announced in October during League of Legends’ 10th anniversary celebrations and has since launched two beta weekends where only a select few players had the chance to test it out. Despite that, LoR quickly became one of the most anticipated game releases of 2020.

A month after revealing the new card game, Riot Games released a Runeterra roadmap that unveiled four stages of game development – announcement, preview patch, closed beta and launch. It��s been barely two months since then and we are already in the third stage of the development, which will see a small twist. Instead of offering a closed beta, Riot decided to launch an open beta that will make LoR available for everyone.

The announcement of an open beta surfaced on Sunday via the Legends of Runeterra official YouTube channel. In the video, the design director Andrew Yip and executive producer Jeff Jew talked about the future of the game and their plans going forward.

The video highlighted plans to release Legends of Runeterra on both PC and mobile sometime in 2020, but it did not reveal the exact date of the official release.

Mr Jew said he and his colleagues were shocked by the number of people who pre-registered for the closed beta weekends. The demand far surpassed the number of invites they could hand out, which told the LoR developers they needed to “step on the gas” and work towards releasing the game as soon as possible.

The Legends of Runeterra open beta is scheduled to go live and public on Friday, January 24. However, players who were invited to previous testings and those who pre-register before 11:59pm PT on January 19 will have access to the open beta from Thursday, January 23.

The game will incorporate some features previously seen in League of Legends, such as the seven-tier ranking system where players earn LP in order to advance through the divisions from Iron to Masters.

What was changed compared to the LoL ranking system is that once a player reaches a certain rank, they cannot be demoted to a lower division. This feature was introduced so players can test out new cards and decks without harming their ranks, which should inspire the community to uncover new ways to play the game.

The ranked season will start with beta and last until launch, meaning anyone can get a head start and begin climbing the ladder as early as next week. Besides the ranked mode, the LoR beta will also feature a challenge-a-friend option where anyone will be able to invite their friends from the newly implemented Riot client into a 1v1 game.

What is perhaps the most welcoming feature to LoR is that it will be completely free to play, where no money spent will in any way increase your odds of winning or give you any advantage over other players. This means LoR will not have an option where players can spend money to purchase and open card packs, as is the case in Hearthstone.

Because Riot decided to remove the pay-to-win feature from the game, however, the company has doubled down on optional paid personal customization – i.e. customizable boards, guardians, emotes and more.

Throughout 2020, Riot will also release new sets of cards from each Runeterra region that will introduce new ways to play and fresh mechanics to the game with each update.

LoR will make its official launch sometime later this year on both mobile and PC. The game is said to be cross-platform compatible, meaning anyone will be able to play the game on the go with an iOS, Android, or Microsoft device.

As revealed last month, the game will dive deep into the universe of Runeterra, the home world of all 146 League of Legends champions that appear on the Summoner’s Rift.

The game is said to closely resemble the popular Blizzard-owned Hearthstone, which just recently crowned its first female champion.

Out of all the ongoing Riot projects, Legends of Runeterra was the first that players could try out during the first phase of public testing, which took place from October 15-20.

Fans will be glad to hear that an additional testing period for LoR will start on November 14 and run through to November 19.

SEE ALSO: LEAGUE OF LEGENDS BETTING SITES

Based off the LoR roadmap, Riot Games is also planning on releasing a closed beta in the first quarter of 2020, which is expected to make the game available to the public for a prolonged time. That said, the exact date for the official beta launch is yet to be announced.

The game’s official release date also remains shrouded in mystery, but we can expect it to come online sometime in late 2020.

Everyone who wishes to try out the new card game is welcome to create an account and sign up on the official Runeterra site or use their Riot account to do so.

While not everyone is guaranteed an invitation to the world of Runeterra, as places will be limited, anyone can increase their chances of selection by either playing League of Legends or watching Legends of Runeterra on Riot Games’ official Twitch channel.

Anyone eager to get their hands on an invitation will be also happy to hear Riot Games will increase the number of available slots compared to the first testing period in order to get more people in the game and receive more feedback from the community.

League of Legends: Wild Rift will feature dual analogue controls and will run similar to Dota2’s Turbo mode in terms of game length.

Alongside the announcement of Wild Rift, Riot Games also revealed they will introduce a mobile version of Teamfight Tactics in early 2020, finally meeting the public demand for a mobile version of the auto-battler title.

Riot decided to further excite their fans with additional announcements, revealing they are working on four new game titles as well as a completely new animated series.

Legends of Runeterra is a free-to-play strategy card game that will directly compete with Blizzard’s Hearthstone. The new game will use iconic champions from League of Legends in addition to some new characters from the world of Runeterra.

Legends of Runeterra is slated to launch early next year for both PC and mobile but is already open for pre-registration and testing on the official website (https://playruneterra.com/en-us/).

Riot Games also gave their fans an early glimpse of ‘Project A’ – a character-based tactical first-person shooter that draws comparisons to Overwatch and Paladins.

As it stands now, Project A is in the early stages of development, meaning any further information about the game itself is very scarce. More information will become available next year, with the expected release date being as early as in 2021.

And while a MOBA, auto battler and FPS genres would be enough to satisfy most of the gaming community, Riot Games reportedly took on the challenge to satisfy the fighting game community as well, with a fighting game, currently known simply as ‘Project L’.

Project L is a codename for Riot Games’ fighting game, which will feature characters from League of Legends, all with unique abilities, that will resemble those the characters use on the Summoner’s Rift. Just like Project A, however, Project L is still in very early stages of development, meaning that any further information about the project is hard to come by.

While we talk about Riot Games’ projects which are shrouded in mystery, their teaser for Project F provided us with very little information on what it may be, leaving many fans speculating what Riot Games have in store for us.

From the short video clip released by Riot Games developers, Project F seem to be an open-world co-op RPG game which in some ways resembles Diablo. However, there are still no official news about how the final version of the game will look like.

Last, and most likely not least, Riot announced the development of League of Legends Esports Manager game, which will closely resemble football manager titles, with the sole exception being LoLEM will take place in the LoL competitive scene. Just like many other projects, however, LoLEM is still in its early stages of development, meaning we are still far from getting a chance to try out or see Riot Games’ first simulation game in action.

Steering away from video games, but keeping in touch with the Runeterra universe, Riot Games released a teaser of Arcane, a new animated series about the origins of two iconic Lol champions and the power that will tear them apart.

With a huge announcement, including new games and a completely new animated series, Riot Games threw their fans a huge bone to chew on, making the 10th anniversary of League of Legends one that will not be easily forgotten.