With 2024 wrapping up, League of Legends (LOL) will soon go through a huge change for season 15 of ranked solo queue and professional play. This new season’s theme is League of Legends Lore. There is a lot to get through here so let’s get right into it.
After the huge success of the LOL Netflix series, Arcane season two, Riot Games is tripling down its emphasis on the LOL Universe and Lore. Although Arcane is officially complete, it has already been announced that three more LOL TV series are in production – one about of Demacia, another about Ionia, and the last about Noxus – all of which are territories/ countries with LOL world of Runeterra. Season 15 of LOLis embracing this lore with open arms. Therefore, season 15 of LOLwill be broken into three different seasons for the first time, and each season will have two acts within it. To kick off 2025, the season one, act one of season 15 of LOL called “Welcome to Noxus” will be released on January 8th, 2025.
This new season, just like past season, will heavily affect the gameplay of League of Legends. The first major change is the addition of new neutral objective like the Baron or Dragon, called Atakhan, Bringer of Ruin. Atakhan spawns at the 20-minute mark of any given Summoner’s Rift game and can spawn on the top or bottom of the map, depending on which side of the map had the most kills prior to Atakhan’s spawn. This new objective is as tough as the Baron to kill but does give experience and a permanent buff for the team that kills it. The buff spawns black roses around the map and players that collect them are given a stacking stats buff.
The second part of these huge changes is that entire map. Although, terrain is not changing much, the turrets, objectives, minions, and items will all be changed to be Noxus themed, which is a metallic exterior with a red glow. With this change, small changes are also coming to Minion and Turret damage.
Third, items are also receiving changes. Namely, boots are getting a third tier that give some additional stat buffs for purchasing in-game. Other non-boot items are receiving small buffs and nerfs as well. Notable, outside of the new tier three boots, there will be no new items that players have to worry about learning and playing around. There will also be several champion and summoner spell buffs and nerfs, but none of them are noteworthy enough to mention.
Lastly, the rewards and events systems are getting an overhaul, both for free-to-play players and people who are willing to pay for more rewards through battle passes. LOL battle passes will now act like traditional ones in other games. Instead of having several one-time complete tasks and one that can be completed over and over again, there will now be daily, weekly, and one-time complete quests that players can complete. Completing these quests gives a small reward up front and experience toward leveling up the battle pass to earn better rewards after completing multiple quests. Overall, the new rewards and events system will net players more rewards than before, whether or not a player paid for the battle pass. Outside of events, champion mastery will also reward masterwork chests and keys so that players can continue to earn prizes even when there are no events active.
All in all, these changes are big, but not as comprehensive as players have seen in past season starts; it is still very exciting, nonetheless. That being said, we could be seeing more substantial patches like this within season 15 given there will be three different seasons within this single year of LOL. See you on Summoner’s Rift!
