For this year’s League of Legends World Championship, Riot Games took a massive risk by shaking up a format that had been in place for 10 seasons.
The longstanding group stage, which had prevailed as the highlight of the tournament’s main event since 2014, was replaced by a Swiss format, which pits teams with the same records against each other in each of its rounds until teams reach either three wins and qualify or three losses and get eliminated. This format change eliminated predetermined schedules and ensured that every match played during the first leg of the main event had weight to it.
The League community has been remarkably receptive to the new format, and in a thread posted to the official League subreddit, esports enthusiasts voiced their pleasure for the shakeup, mentioning factors like freshness, variance in matchups, and the introduction of best-of series earlier in the event.
“I absolutely loved this Swiss stage. Groups stage was absolutely boring as all hell … We’ve seen so many match ups in the Swiss stage and there’s still room for improvement,” the original poster of the thread, a user named Conflixx, said. “I think the format can still be better, but this was so much better than the previous one in terms of entertainment,” another League fan chimed in.
Worlds viewers, however, did also cite that the Swiss format lends itself to variance in unfortunate spots more so than the old group stage format ever did. This is particularly evident when certain teams have “easier” roads to the quarterfinals than others. LCS champions NRG Esports have been put under a microscope in particular, as the randomized draw kept them away from any necessity to beat Korean and Chinese teams.
All three of NRG’s wins came against teams from North America and EMEA, but their first quarterfinal matchup will come against Weibo Gaming out of the LPL, so if they want to prove they belong, they’ll have to run the Eastern gauntlet, starting with a match against the lone team to take a game off them during the Swiss stage. NRG, for what it’s worth, is the final Western team left at Worlds 2023.
Even though there’s definitely an argument to be made that teams like NRG did have a much easier road to the quarterfinals than some other teams in Worlds history have had, it’s still unfair to paint any team that reached the top eight at Worlds with a broad brush. That’s an unquestionable accomplishment, regardless of who you have to beat to get there.
Another Worlds viewer named JamlaJamla mentioned in the comments that the “pacing feels bad” when the format switches up from best-of-three play in the play-in stage to best-of-one play in the first two stages of the Swiss, only to return back to best-of-threes for the qualifying matches.
We tend to agree with this take, especially when you consider just how much time is being invested into Worlds this year. The tournament is longer than ever, and the grand finals won’t be played until Nov. 19, the latest wrap-up date for a professional League season in history. For reference, free agency begins the very next day, and the downtime between the 2023 and 2024 seasons will likely only last about five to six weeks, making for a potentially exhausting offseason.
Still, before we get to that point, there’s still a whole knockout stage to run through. The Worlds quarterfinals will begin on Thursday, Nov. 2 in Busan.
