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Riot Games has confirmed format changes coming to Worlds and MSI next year in a press conference.
While details remain to be announced at start of 2023 season, it’s settled that knockout stage will maintain its controversial single elimination bracket.
Global Head of League of Legends Esports, Naz Aletaha: “Yes, format changes are coming. When we heard the feedback last year, we took this season to really dive into it and to start accessing what parts of the format we are working on, what parts we think could use improvements, working with our regional teams around the world to [figure] out what those formats can and should be.”
“I won’t go into [details] of what those should be or will be today, we will announce that by the start of the season. I’m excited to say that new formats are coming to both MSI and Worlds in 2023.”
Regarding single elimination format:
“A lot of the conversation between double and single elimination has been around and we do think that double-elimination is great for qualifying the best teams into our biggest tournaments. At the end of the day, Worlds is one of the biggest sporting events on the planet. All of the biggest sporting events on the planet have a single elimination as a core part of their tournament, and at least from knockouts and forward, we will be continuing with single elimination because that puts the stakes at the very highest level and we believe that’s important for a tournament as big as Worlds.”
Riot Games’ President of esports, John Needham
The news came with a collective sigh from LoL esports fans
League community has been asking for double elimination format changes for ages. Worlds 2022, the biggest LoL event of the year, has 7 Bo5s; MSI 3. That’s 10 international Bo5s for an entire year. Not to mention that the events are spread over a few weeks as if to sap the viewers of any possible hype they can build up for the Grand Finals.
For comparison, Dota’s The International 11 Main Event has 21 Bo3s and 1 Bo5 Grand Finals. Not to mention the same amount for its 3 DPC Majors a year.
And it’s not like Riot themselves are repulsed by Double elimination either. Their VALORANT franchise does it and it works as Caedrel and many other players point out. John Needham’s argument makes little sense, according to him VALORANT is not big enough to warrant the hype of single bracket elim? And the fallacious assumption that single elimination is somehow automatically more hype than a lower bracket underdog vs an upper bracket titan.
On the positive note, we do not know what the format changes will entail. Should we get a Round of 16 single bracket it should still be a vast improvement over the current Round of 8 (from 7 Bo5s to 15 Bo5s). There could be a lot of changes for the play-ins and group stage. But League fans will have to put up with another year of single bracket Worlds.
In other news, check out LoL Patch 12.21 notes