League of Legends’ latest summer event debuts July 14

Announcement from LoL’s official twitter

Stunning visuals, disappointing content?

This year’s LoL summer event will be anime-themed, and on the visual front Riot absolutely delivered. All upcoming Star Guardian skins were teased:

• Star Guardian Akali
• Star Guardian Kai’Sa
• Star Guardian Taliyah
• Star Guardian Sona
• Star Guardian Ekko
• Star Guardian Nilah
• Star Guardian Senna (Wild Rift only)
• Star Guardian Orianna (Wild Rift only)
• Star Guardian Seraphine (Wild Rift only)
• Redeemed Star Guardian Rakan (Wild Rift only)
• Redeemed Star Guardian Xayah (Wild Rift only)

Those Taliyah, Akali and Xayah shots were amazing, but dancing Fiddlestick takes the cake for me!

The song used for the teaser was on point as well. An anime-esque track with heavy Shelter vibe, unsurprisingly as Porter Robinson himself is on board in this project, the quality is sure to satisfy LoL anime fans.

Sadly the same cannot be said about the event’s actual gameplay. Teased images suggest an event similar to Ultimate Spellbook in addition to some visual novel gameplay that had not been particularly popular with the player base in the past.

It’s too soon to form a conclusion about this year’s event. Riot might have polished the actual content this time around. But the fact that they are rehashing past contents instead of creating new game modes for this year will probably dull even avid LoL players’ enthusiasm.

On the bright side, if you’re an anime and LoL fan, this timeline is as good as it gets!

Riot has been on a L’s streak recently and I personally will go into this event with low expectations.

What’s a ‘Garena’?

No it’s not a female Garen. Garena is a game publishing and developing company founded in 2009 and based in Singapore. They originally published free PC games like HoN, FIFA Online, LoL, … but has since moved on to primarily publishing Mobile games such as Free Fire, Call of Duty Mobile, Arena of Valour.

What does Garena have to do with League of Legends?

Riot started out as a small studio and needed Garena to help publish LoL in South East Asia. They signed a 10-year contract in 2010 and renewed it in 2020. However Riot stated that they would not publish other future titles on Garena for SEA market if they could afford to while keeping the partnership with Garena in LoL.

Garena vs other Riot servers

• Updates are delayed by at least 1 day. If the Riot update is on Thursday, Garena will update on the next Tuesday
• Lacks a lot of features like Draft, Clash
• Separated servers for countries (Vietnam, Taiwan, …) which makes queue time absurd on smaller servers like SG (3-10 mins for new players)
• More free skins through Garena events/gacha
• More unstable servers and pings

Most notably, there was an incident in 2015 where crypto mining malware was installed in Garena LoL clients. Yikes.

Why does Riot still work with Garena?

The fact that Riot won’t be publishing their other titles through Garena does say something. But it’s a hassle to set up new SEA servers, migrate all the data and maintain, staff, etc.

Garena is also owned by Tencent and making a lot of money through their gacha system, so why bother? Just let SEA players suffer.

There will probably be a patch tomorrow as it’s Tuesday. But there sure won’t be any fixes to Garena any time soon.

Earlier this week, on July 13, the League of Legend community in general, and the TFT game mode in particular, were overjoyed when a new game was launched, however, it was a Chinese-exclusive version, and it appears that the players are only playable on LPL regional servers. It should be noted that this game style is quite similar to LOL Teamfight Tactics. Tencent is the official publisher of this game.

This new game is called “Battle Of Golden Spatula,” according to Daniel Ahmad, a specialist in the Asian game industry. The game has been approved for release by Chinese authorities, and registration has begun.

Not long after that, Daniel Ahmad also answered some questions in the comments.

In addition, when a netizen complained about Tencent continuing to find ways to “making money” from gamers, Daniel Ahmad had to remind that “… Tencent owns Riot Games”.

The gamer community also has a lot of opinions. Some think that the new game is quite similar to season 1, some realize that there are skins that have never appeared, for example, Graves’s skin is quite similar to Warring Kingdoms’ skin line, or Gnar in a sand-related skin…

However, besides curiosity and eagerness from gamers before this game, some others expressed quite negative opinions. Most of these opinions are still confused about the similarities between the new game and the familiar League of Legends TFT.

It’s not compatible with the existing game, I won’t play it. Tencent is really doing too bad

First, this version of the game will not be compatible with the PC version. You have to buy the stage, champion and skin separately. Second, the lineup will not be the same as on the PC version. You can like it or hate it depending on how you feel, but iOS users won’t have a chance to play the beta because it only has an Android version, even users using Hongmeng (Huawei’s operating system)

Currently, if the new game is an exclusive version of China, then most likely, gamers can only play it when they login to the LPL region. This may make the game not really receive too much attention when regions like EU, NA, or LCK also have a large number of League’s TFT players.        

The number of players who download and play LoL: Wild Rift is high and they can easily log in the game.

Method 1: Use Tap Tap

Step 1: Download LoL: Wild Rift on Taptap here! (Players have to install Taptap on Android devices, it works best on smartphone)

Step 2: After downloaded, Taptap will auto install LoL: Wild Rift

Step 3: Log in by Riot account. Gamers can also use Riot accounts that used for TFT Mobile and Legends of Runeterra to log in LoL: Wild Rift.

In case players haven’t create Riot account, you need to change your IP into the countries can get access to game to create your account on the first time you log in the game. Then gamers don’t have to change the IP for the next time.

Step 4: Select server Southeast Asia.

Method 2: Install APK and OBB

Step 1: Download APK of Wild Rift and OBB ( Click Here )

Step 2: Install APK

Step 3: Open Wild Rift to establish the folder and quit

Step 4: Copy Obb into File => Android => Obb => Com.riotgames.league.wildrift => Drag Obb into that

And you get into the Game

How to create Riot Games account

Method 1

Step 1: Use Hola VPN to Fake IP

Step 2: Get access to Sign up of Riot Games with Fake IP of Korea, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand

Step 3: Create the account.

Method 2: Fake IP Japan (or Korea, Singapore…) and get into Wild Rift, login with Email and sign up, you will be able to play Wild Rift

That’s all, now you got your account to play Wild Rift.

The current situation

Although the game industry is not being affected too much before, it is slowly getting entangled in an economic war between the United States and China. TikTok was the first victim when the US Government investigated the behavior of sending the personal data of millions of Americans to China. Yes, they are paying the price, a heavy price. Yet, this platform is under control in the US while an agreement about a restructuring of TikTok (changing the interface, how it is managed, operated, etc.) is still in consideration in this country.

The dispute between these two big companies might last longer. The US Government is currently assessing many game companies including Riot Games (League of Legends, VALORANT) and Epic Games (Fortnite).

Tencent now owns 100% of Riot Games and 40% of Epic Games. According to Bloomberg, these two organizations will likely be forced to provide the Americans with specific information about its online data security protocols. After a great amount of data is leaked, it’s understandable that the US need to dispel fears of data leakage to China once and forever.

“Tencent’s U.S. gaming investments, including Riot Games, Epic Games and Activision. Blizzard may be at risk of forced divestment similar to ByteDance’s TikTok with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. launching an inquiry on national security grounds. We estimate Tencent’s U.S. assets could be worth at least $22 billion, and account for 6-7% of its sales and profits.” – Vey-Sern Ling and Tiffany Tam, analysts

Aimen Mir, former CFIUS president, previously told Bloomberg as he expressed his concern towards this problem:

“When you’re talking about massive amounts of data, there’s probably something for the committee to look at.”
“The question then becomes is the risk high enough that it actually warrants forcing deals apart.”

More details can be found in this video, published by Bloomberg: