LoL Worlds 2023: Fans Excited For New Format "Without Meaningless Games"

The League of Legends World Championship in Korea and its new format are feeding the anticipation within the esport's community. In this article we will present you this new format and the reasons behind the fans excitement.

• LoL Blue Essence Emporium: All Available Chromas
• League of Legends Player Count: This Many Gamers Are Playing LoL
  

LoL Worlds 2023: New Format Gets Rid Of Meaningless Games

We're only a few weeks removed from the start of one of the biggest and most important esport event of the calendar year - the League of Legends World Championship. Many teams are already qualified, but in some big regions, like EU and Korea, the qualification process is still going on.

Normally these regions and their teams are gaining the most attention from the fan base, since the community wants to see a clash of the biggest names. But not this year, because in 2023 the new tournament format is going to be introduced and so not just the big games are going to matter.

And the community is apparently pretty happy about this fact, at least according to many fans' reactions in the popular League of Legends Subreddit. The user "Jozoz" created this thread to present his opinion on the new format and why it excites him.

Make sure to sign up for our giveaway to try and earn a spot at the 2023 LEC Finals in Montpellier courtesy of Kia and EarlyGame!

It makes me very happy that Worlds 2023 will have exactly 0 meaningless games as well as no need for strange tiebreaker rules based on game time.
by u/Jozoz in leagueoflegends

So if you live under a rock, the new Worlds format did away with groups and replaced it with Swiss. This is a great change for the following reasons (imo):
Every match matters.
There will be no examples like 100T beating a top team when they are already eliminated so no one cares or remembers that they did
Even better: There will be no games where the outcome only matters for one team playing
We avoid dumb tiebreaker rules based on game time. We saw in previous Worlds that 3-way ties were decided by game time where the team with shortest game time in wins got to advance to "final boss" of the 3-way tie. Obviously totally arbitrary way to determine that.
There are some issues:
Luck of the draw will matter a ton in Swiss - especially for Western teams (it also did in Groups in the old format though)
I don't like how there are so many BO1s. I kinda wish more parts of the Swiss would be BO3
Overall, going from groups to Swiss is a big upgrade if you ask me.

As stated above, according to the reaction of the Reddit community, many members are sharing similar thoughts about the upcoming tournament. Apparently the only down sight for many is the fact that the format depends on many Best of 1 games in the Swiss Rounds. But at least every game that could lead to an elimination is going to be a best of 3.

But at least the Best of 1 format should allow some upsets against big teams. So more hopium for the smaller regions and western teams.

• LoL Dev Hints At Future For Arena Game Mode

Community Reactions: Excitement vs. Concerns

But as you can imagine, not every reaction was positive towards these changes. The user "Heroes3randomxlhg1v1" phrased his thoughts,

Is it? The old system was bad but I think the new worlds format also has a ton of flaws for the sake of being "fresh". First 2 games (3 for 1-1 teams) being BO1, basically allowing most teams to qualify by only winning one single BO3 can lead to super unfair results compared to the teams that go 0-2 in the first 2 games and then need to win 3(!) BO3s.
Depending on who you draw first 2 games combined with the very high luck factor of BO1 compared to a BO5 or even a BO3, this can lead to otherwise similarly skilled teams having very different paths into the playoffs in terms of difficulty, not to mention it can possibly lead to having worse teams sent to playoffs and better teams sent home because they lost their BO1s. And of course there's the problem of single elimination playoffs. It's an improvement over the old system, I'm just saying they could do better if they'd just go with already proven systems by other games.

Especially the absence of a clear seeding process for the Swiss system is seen as a problem by some users. Community member "ahritina" uses an example to phrase her concerns bout the format,

This format only "works" if we have accurate seeding and Riot said we don't have seeding lol.
You could get a fucked draw where it's LPL vs LCK and LEC vs LCS/PCS in round 1, then LPL vs LCK and LEC vs LCS in round 2 and then have LPL vs LCK in round 3 where one of those get eliminated and one of the western teams go through because of "draw" diff, despite the very realistic scenario where the LPL/LCK team who gets knocked out is actually better than the LEC/LCS team who goes through.

And her concerns are viable to be honest. For example in CS:GO, where the Swiss format is used often in the biggest tournaments, it happened way too often, that a "worse" team gets through to the playoffs, because of luck in the draws. The user "FreshAd5241" described it that way,

I think swiss looks great on paper, but it is not a perfect system. One lucky run, and a team that isn't suppose to be in playoffs will appear there.
I think CSGO's blast paris major was one of the worst major's I've watched in recent memory. There were just these random ass t2-3 teams making deep runs because they face other bad teams. Making the finals a complete stomp

But don't let these rather negative comments distract you from the otherwise overwhelmingly positive reactions towards the new format. Even tho, I guess many people are just happy to witness something new in the rather stale gone Worlds Format of earlier years.

It will be interesting so see, if one of the "dark horse" teams or rosters from smaller regions are able to use this new format to make an upset run, or if the "normal" names are going to succeed nevertheless. But it's safe to say, that there will never be the perfect system for everybody.

For more LoL related content, read:

• LoL: Empty Promises – When Will Riot Actually Do Something About Smurfs?
• LoL: "This Schedule Is An Anti-Hype Machine" – Viewers Hate The LEC Season Finals Schedule