Riot Games unveils its preseason 2023 plan to “lessen [the] barrier to entry” for prospective League of Legends junglers by adding pets, according to a since deleted post on the LoL Garena website.
Originally reported by Dot Esports, this blog post titled “LoL Pls: Preseason 2023 Jungle Changes” highlights the development team’s issues with the state of jungling in League of Legends. The main concern is: jungling is way too overwhelming that people are scared off from the role; nobody wants to be the jungler that everyone is flaming. In the lengthy blog, Riot introduces potential changes to make the role more appealing to new players. The most notable changes are the introduction, er-, I guess re-introduction to League jungle pets.
“Some of you might remember the old days of Spirit of the Elder Lizard or Wriggle’s Lanter–back when jungle items felt more meaningful and impactful,” the League blog reads. “Let’s be honest though, those were problematic in their own ways. We want to capture some of that fantasy with a bit of a twist this time… pets.”
This wouldn’t be the first time that League of Legends pets have been tested out, in previous seasons there were items like the Devourer enchantment which summoned a loveable ghost dog. The new pets will work similarly to that ghost puppy, and players will be able to “slowly raise and feed” their pets until they eventually grant the power an intense buff.
It’s still not clear how exactly these League of Legends pets will aid junglers, but it’s good to see Riot thinking more and more about making League easier for newcomers. We won’t know how drastic these changes are until preseason hits in its usual time of late November, but we can only hope that the jungle pets are cute. Oh, yeah, it would also be great if they meaningfully help out junglers, but honestly that can take a back seat to the aesthetics.
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[Disclaimer: Both Riot Games and Fanbyte are owned by the same parent company, Tencent. We don’t often, like, chill together or anything, though.]
