Riot Games just announced that the format for the Mid-Season Invitationals and World Championships will be changed in the coming 13th season of the esports scene. These LoL esports changes will provide a fresh new format for the teams to compete in and will hopefully draw in more fans to enjoy the positive adjustments that the tournament organizers are trying to implement.
LoL Esports Changes for the 2023 Season
The LoL Esports changes in the tournament format comes as a pleasant surprise for fans. Many people from the League of Legends community have been saying that League of Legends has the worst tournament format among all of the esports out there. The changes that Riot Games plans to introduce aims to make the tournament more competitive as well as provide more high-quality games the viewers.
The MSI and Worlds formats definitely introduce some great changes. Riot Games announced these changes in advance so there’s no guarantee that they’ll stick to these changes by the time the tournaments actually arrive. However, the changes are already looking promising and we hope that the LoL esports changes stick around or change with more positive additions that’ll introduce more stuff that the fans have been asking for in a long time.
The Mid-Season Invitational Changes
The Mid-Season Invitationals is League of Legends’ mid year major tournament where only ONE team from each region will represent their league against the best competitors from around the world. The participation format will be the first major change with more teams from the major regions getting an invite to compete in the MSI tournament. Unfortunately, Turkey’s TCL, CIS’ LCL, and Oceania’s LCO will no longer be invited to the tournament.
The Mid-Season Invitational 2023 tournament will be held in London. It will include 13 participating teams which is an upgrade from the previous number which is 11. This time around, MSI will take two representatives from the LCK, LPL, LCS, and LEC. In addition, the top seed from the LCK, LPL, LEC, and LCK will skip the Play-In stage and be seeded into the Bracket Stage immediately. The LCK’s 2nd seed will also be seeded directly into the Bracket Stage since the region won the 2022 World Championships.
In this format, the Mid-Season Invitationals will have the 2nd seeds from LPL, LEC, and LCS as well as the top seed from LLA (Latin American), CBLOL (Brazil), LJL (Japan), PCS (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau), and VCS (Vietnam) competing for a spot to compete in the Bracket Stage through the Play-Ins. The top 3 teams will be seeded into the bracket stage and be paired against the top seed of a different region.
The biggest and most welcome change coming for the Mid-Season Invitationals is the fact that the Bracket Stage will now feature a double-elimination stage. This is something that a lot of people in the community have been asking for to elevate the experience of watching esports. It definitely delivers on the what people want when watching professional League of Legends matches, especially now that matches are no longer won by “flukes“.
The 2023 World Championship Changes
The World Championships are the biggest esports event in League of Legends and it’s understandable that the standards for this tournament need to meet the expectations of millions of players around the world who will be viewing it from different time zones. Luckily, Riot Games has upped the competitiveness of this tournament as well by introducing a new format that fans will definitely appreciate.
The biggest complaint about Worlds is that the Play-in stage feels like an absolute waste of time because fans don’t want to watch major regions crush minor regions in Bo1 matches. In this year’s Play-in stage, teams will compete in a Bracket-style double elimination stage where winners will compete against winners and losers against losers. This means that you don’t have to watch the LPL or LCK reps compete against all the minor regions.
The Group Stage will be receiving the biggest change at Worlds. The LoL esports changes for Worlds will introduce a Swiss-style bracket stage that will let teams play each other until they either get 3 wins (qualify) or 3 losses (eliminated). The first four teams to get 3 wins will qualify for the Knockout Stage. More importantly, the promotion or elimination chances will have a best-of-3 format to make the stakes higher and will make the tournament more interesting.
The most important part about the Group Stage is that the Swiss format will not remove the barrier between regions. All teams has a chance to compete against each other, regardless of whether or not they’re from the same region. Unfortunately for fans, the bad news is that the Knockout Stage will remain as the previous years with a single-elimination best-of-5 bracket tournament. This is the only sour spot of the entire tournament for a lot of fans.
How The LoL Esports Changes Will Affect Viewers
The tournament format changes are a positive update on the outdated style that Riot Games has been sticking to for years. This has given fans a lot to be happy about since they’ll be able to watch more relevant games without the downside of having to wait for a series of bad games just to get to the highlight of the day. It’s definitely an upgrade not just for the viewers but also for the competitors who will travel from long distances just to experience the international stage.
There are only a few negatives about these changes with the major one being that the World Championship’s Knockout Stage still isn’t double eliminations. However, the fact that the Group Stage only leaves the best teams in the tournament will mean that we will only get the best quality matches. The best-of-5 format also justifies not having a lower-bracket (to an extent). The only downside to this is that we’ll probably spend more time watching since the number of matches are increased.
