Riot officially announces League of Legends Classic after leaks force its hand

Riot Games has confirmed League of Legends Classic is in development, jumping ahead of a wave of dataminer leaks that had already surfaced low-poly character models and artwork from the game's public test servers. A full reveal is set for July 11 during the MSI Finals in Daejeon, South Korea, at 11pm PDT.

The announcement came via a short live-action skit titled "200 Years of Experience," in which League of Legends executive producer Paul "Pabro" Bellezza plays out a Pepe Silvia-style nightmare trying to pin down exactly which era of the game Classic should recreate. Season one? Season four? The patch when Heart of Gold was still an item? The video deliberately leaves the question open. Leaks suggest the mode might not lock onto a single era but instead blend elements from multiple periods — though Riot hasn't confirmed that. Open questions include whether old currencies return for unlocking champions, whether the defunct Twisted Treeline 3v3 map comes back, and what happens to legacy rune pages and quintessences that were removed years ago.

League of Legends has changed dramatically since its 2009 launch — slower, more point-and-click gameplay with consequential mana costs has given way to a faster, highly mobile modern meta loaded with skillshots. That shift is exactly why nostalgia for an older version runs deep. The fanmade classic server Chronoshift was shut down after Riot intervened, with the studio promising at the time that "the Chrono break was coming" — a line that became a long-running meme. Classic modes have proven viable elsewhere: Blizzard brought back World of Warcraft Classic and added Classic modes to Overwatch 2, and RuneScape has run a legacy server for years. Whether MOBA nostalgia holds up the same way remains the real question.

The community is already debating which era deserves the spotlight, and the deliberately vague reveal has only stoked that conversation. All eyes are on July 11 for the full picture.