While it’s a core pillar of so many PC games, MOBAs like League of Legends have never got on board with WASD movement controls. The strategic traversal of the Summoner’s Rift has always lent itself to the classic point-and-click method, and using your mouse to move in the heat of complex and intense skirmishes is a skill all of its own. However, a new datamine appears to show that Riot is ready to add the option to play LoL with WASD controls in what would be a pretty major change to the status quo.
League of Legends has dabbled with WASD movement once before, but this was resigned only to its 2024 limited-time mode, Swarm. However, this never really seemed like Riot seriously experimenting and testing it for its application in the main game. Swarm was a PvE mode that played more like a bullet heaven, rewriting the gameplay of the MOBA and featuring a small group of playable champions such as Jinx, Seraphine, and Yasuo.
Now though, it seems that there’s scope for WASD controls to make their way into LoL at a much wider scale. According to a datamine yesterday of the latest PBE patch by ‘SkinSpotlights,’ there was a line of code hinting at the addition of WASD options. But today, after diving in even deeper, they’ve uncovered more details, including actual menu screens.
In the images shared by SkinSpotlights, you can see presets for ‘Classic Controls’ which still use your mouse for movement and ‘Modern Controls’ for WASD movement. It’s worth noting that even if you enable WASD, you’ll still be able to use your mouse for movement as well. SkinSpotlights has also found that “Flash has 3 settings, ‘Cursor,’ ‘WASD with Cursor Enhanced,’ [and] ‘WASD with Cursor Fallback.'” There are also two tick-box ‘advanced’ options that read: ‘Bind auto attack move to left click’ and ‘Instant cast spells use the character move direction.’
A shift to WASD movement controls could genuinely be one of the biggest gameplay changes Riot has ever made to League of Legends, but it may also prove divisive if it turns out to be an easier or more effective way to play the game – those that have been mastering mouse movement for many years may have to retrain if WASD becomes the new norm.
Some have wondered whether this is actually a universal setting for LoL or whether WASD movement is simply being added for new spinoff game modes, like we saw in Swarm. All I’ll say is this – I don’t think there’d be full-blown options menus being built for it if it was just for a limited-time mode. However, Riot hasn’t officially revealed this feature or mentioned that it plans to change movement in a significant way. Even though this datamine is very strong evidence that it’ll hit the game in the future, it’s still worth taking with a grain of salt.
If you’re diving into the new patch, check out our LoL tier list to see which champions are ruling the Rift right now. If you’re in need of a break from League, check out some of our favorite free PC games instead.
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