'League of Legends' Update: Warwick rework, character changes and everything new

Competitive video gaming — known colloquially as eSports — is enormous right now. It's been building momentum for a few years now. Mark Cuban has invested in it and Blizzard is even starting its own league.  League of Legends is the biggest name in town right now, with an astronomical player base which only grows with time.

Just like with Overwatch, regular updates come to each of the 123 playable characters in League of Legends. Next in line is Warwick, the wolfman Blood Hunter.

League of Legends Warwick rework: All the changes coming to the character

Warwick is next on the update schedule, and while there isn't specific info out yet, a developer blog post from a few months ago can give us an idea of what to expect. 

Currently Warwick is very beginner friendly. We actually want to embrace that and push it even further than it is now. We want Warwick's gameplay to actually teach new junglers how to be an effective jungler. Right now Warwick can't gank until level 6, but what if Warwick's kit actually encouraged players to gank often and early? We also have heard loud and clear that player think Warwick's kit is kind of boring and outdated. While we don't want to raise Warwick's skill floor, we do want to increase his skill ceiling a bit and add more depth to his gameplay. We also want to bring Warwick's art and thematics up to modern Riot standards by giving him a proper place in our world. We think violence is an important theme for Warwick and we want to see how far we can push that thematic.

Let's walk through that a little bit. A "jungler" is a character who specializes in stalking the area between the lanes, where the primary action takes place, to kill neutral monsters for various benefits. Since they occupy a part of the map covered by "fog of war," junglers can make effective surprise attacks on the enemy team, otherwise called "ganking." 

The problem, as far as Riot Games is concerned, is that Warwick's accessibility means his effectiveness in high-level play is lessened. They want to encourage Warwick players to gank earlier in matches than they are now and add complexity without removing accessibility. Riot also wants to update Warwick's look to fit the League of Legends universe more than he does now.

It remains to be seen what quantifiable changes will be made to Warwick, but look forward to more depth and ganking ability in the future.