Riot Games implies League of Legends Classic could become a permanent mode

League of Legends Classic is only days away from its official launch. Riot Games' new game mode, designed to recapture the nostalgia of League of Legends' early years, will become available with Patch 26.15 on July 29.

Ahead of its release, David "Phreak" Turley, a member of the League of Legends balance team, shared additional details about the mode's first patch in a video published on his YouTube channel. The video offers further insight into Riot Games' long-term vision for League of Legends Classic.

The first major takeaway from Phreak's video is that League of Legends Classic is not intended to be a short-lived game mode. Rather than serving as a purely nostalgic event, Riot plans to continue supporting it over time, including the addition of new champions while remaining faithful to the philosophy behind Classic. The mode is therefore not designed to be an exact recreation of any previous season.

Instead, Riot's goal is to recreate the feeling of older mechanics, champion kits, and item builds without bringing back many of the frustrations and design shortcomings that existed at the time. The developer also stressed that the objective is not to reproduce an exact copy of the original League of Legends, but rather to preserve what made those earlier versions enjoyable while delivering the best possible gameplay experience. Phreak further explained that Riot wants to "preserve this game as a live service. We do not want to follow the footsteps of Modern League of Legends and move towards being more of an action game."

Unlike modern League of Legends, where players can easily identify the strongest champions and optimal builds through publicly available statistics, Phreak revealed that Riot will not publish this data for Classic. Instead, players will be encouraged to discover the metagame for themselves.

It is also worth noting that champions will use their pre-rework versions, complete with their original abilities and kits.