On November 8, 2013, Riot Games announced that the company would relocate to a new building in West Los Angeles in 2015. On December 16, 2015, Riot Games sold its remaining equity to Tencent Holdings.
What is happening now? Tencent is “in it to win it” the effort they put into their new mobile MOBA game “Arena of Valor” at Twitchcon 2017 is second to none, literally. How serious are they? Lets take a look.
12800? Most definitely over 9000! We were able to get a direct interview with the head honchos of Tencent on the “Arena of Valor” but there was a press embargo on video this is what they had to say…. (We tested this on 190 latency on EU servers and it was smooth as butter)
Tencent : We are not trying to create a brand new experience or a totally new game, we are just trying to introduce a authentic MOBA to mobile. We want MOBA players to be able to play an authentic MOBA anytime anywhere, as of now the only option is a PC.
GamingLyfe.com : How do you translate the authentic MOBA movements onto a small size cell phone?
Tencent : That is the kind of innovation we have for our final production phase, we maximize what we can do with a small screen. We use graphics to control the movement instead of tapping you have a circular attacking area it will attack the lowest health target to you, but you can still choose which enemy you want to attack with a selection.
GamingLyfe.com : Vainglory decided to stick to a 3v3 originally, Arena of Valor intends to stay on the 5v5 format?
Tencent : 100% we believe is authentic to the MOBA experience. In a 5v5 match you have more of a deep strategy that you can not reach wit ha 3v3.
GamingLyfe.com : Heroes can get kind of ridiculous you look at some of the other MOBA’s and there are hundreds of heroes. What is the base starting plan for heroes in Arena of Valor?
Tencent : We do not have exact numbers yet but the first batch should be a little bit less then 20. Coming soon we are working with DC Comics to bring name brand characters into the game.
GamingLyfe.com : So lets talk about the builds of the characters, items, skills, passives?
Tencent : Each character has automatic skills which you can pre-build before you enter the game you can use these builds to play different roles but the choices are the same for all characters. You can set it on auto build which will recommend the best skills for you.
GamingLyfe.com : So what is the timeline for game?
Tencent : The game is very matured its very popular is southeast Asia,we have already soft launched in Europe with a ton of positive feedback but we want to be 100% sure befoer we launch in the US market. No official launch date yet but first quarter 2018 at the latest.
GamingLyfe.com : Is there anything you think that you consider important you want to share with the GamingLyfe.com audience right now?
Tencent : Its an authentic MOBA this is the main attraction. we want to bring the authentic MOBA experience to mobile and this game will be the game to do it.
