EU, NA and Everyone Else: Do Western teams stand a chance at Worlds 2022?

August 16, 2022

EU, NA and Everyone Else: Do Western teams stand a chance at Worlds 2022?

Hello lovely readers, today we’re looking towards Worlds 2022, easily the highlight of my year, Worlds is a great way to look at how everyone measures up on the international stage, but if you’ve been watching the last few years of Worlds – the Eastern teams (I’m looking at you LPL and LCK specifically) have been absolutely dominating the competition. We could speculate all day as to why these teams are so good – and we know a fair few orgs took their teams to Korea during MSI to bootcamp – but that isn’t what we are talking about today. We talk a lot about the narrative of EU vs NA and the ’friendly’ competition between the regions but let’s talk international stage, the last time we saw an EU and NA team in the top 10 was 2021 but top 10 isn’t finals. So, let’s look to Worlds 2022, are Western teams in a good enough place to be making finals again?

Firstly, I’d like to preface this blog with some context, the last time a western team came close to finals was G2 Esports 2020, no it’s not that long ago but consider the fact G2 wasn’t actually at Worlds 2021 (the first time they missed Worlds in since 2015). It would be fair to say that when a lot of people think of peak EU talent, it is G2 who come to mind and as many news sites stated ahead of Worlds 2021 without G2 at Worlds, EU was fighting an uphill battle. LEC 2022 Summer is now heading towards Playoffs and G2 have confirmed their place in Playoffs, however Fnatic have only recently locked in the final super week where prior to locking playoffs, they were in a third way tie for the final playoffs spot against Astralis and Excel (who broke their playoffs curse! And locked playoffs for the second time to play lower bracket against Fnatic) by no means am I trying to blog-curse EU, I want to see EU show up on the international stage again and make it to finals once more.

But it would be unrealistic to say it isn’t an uphill battle for EU and NA to compete against the LPL and LCK who have been on top form and dominating the international stage. For anyone who has been living under a rock for the past year or two, the LCK Damwon Gaming Kia won Worlds 2020 against the LPL team Suning, MSI 2021 saw DWG Kia pushed to second by LPL team RNG. RNG then went on to Worlds 2021 and came in 6^th. Only for the Worlds 2021 title to be picked up by fellow LPL team Edward Gaming, and what about MSI 2022 I imagine you’re wondering? Get your notepad out and take notes, RNG won 2022 MSI over LCK T1. Are we seeing a running theme yet? MSI 2019 was won by G2 Esports, but that was the last time for a while that a western team would take an international title.

I’ve spent a lot of time going back through League’s international tournament records, Worlds 2017 no western team made top four, Worlds 2018 three western teams made top four, Worlds 2019 one western team made top four, Worlds 2020 one western team made up top four, Worlds 2021 no western team made top four. I'm not writing this to depress anyone or accuse western teams of not doing enough – like I said, I want to see western teams doing well on the international stage – but having read a few articles and taken a look at the normal seasons of LCK and LPL I’ve noticed what other people have noticed. LCK and LPL specifically play a lot more matches than LEC and LCS – so do we need to reform western competitive seasons? Include more matches, play more round robins? Add more teams to make more matches possible? Scrim other regions outside of international events to see what is being played abroad so the Eastern teams aren’t drastically ahead? Could a new pro server be created for challenger level players to vs each other irrespective of region?

Realistically, there isn’t a quick fix to the problem of Western teams falling short to Eastern teams on the international stage, short of sending a western team to play in the LPL/LCK for a split or an entire season, there isn’t a way we can see what they do to be so much better, and there isn’t a quick fix, but I do want to discuss the above mentioned suggestions more out of interest if the solutions are in any way plausible to increase the level of competition in the West to be able to challenge and beat Eastern teams. Especially when I think back to the heartbreak that must have been felt by Fnatic at Worlds 2020 at being reverse swept (for the first time in history) by the LPL team Top Esports (who at time of writing – 16^th August 2022 – finished in first place of the LPL’s regular season).

Firstly, I want to preface these suggestions by saying I don’t have the most in depth knowledge on each of these areas, but I'm going to attempt to give my opinion on each of the options suggested above. Let’s begin by discussing reforming the western competitive season, the LPL has 17 teams – which is obviously higher than the LEC’s 10 so yes the format is different too. But while an LEC team will only play 18 matches in the group stage in a double round robin, an LPL team will play a single round robin; however crucially, all matches within this single round robin are best of 3. Meaning before play-offs even starts (wherein only the top ten teams play) for the LPL, an LPL team will already have played over 40 games – which is quite clearly a considerably larger number than an LEC team which shows two things, they play a lot of onstage matches obviously, but this is also must mean they are scrimming a lot as well. Is it really any wonder a team would be at the top of their play if they’re playing that constantly?

So, this begs the question on how a Western league could level up to compete; there is the option of scrimming more, but there are only so many hours in a day and other than more practice, playing an additional few hours of scrims could leave less room for down time – which is obviously important to mental and physical wellbeing of players. There is also what feels like annual debate on Twitter and Reddit about whether to add more teams into Western leagues – which is usually countered by the lack of space, how this could make the region more cut and dry in terms of how teams rank with a clearer difference between those at the top and bottom of the scoreboard, and how this would fit with the schedule as the leagues would likely need to start the season earlier to account for matches. And this need to start earlier was discussed at this year’s MSI due to the LPL representative RNG being unlikely to make it back in time to have the same amount of scrim time as the rest of the LPL because of how early the season started to account for the number of teams. RNG won MSI 2022 which concluded with finals of the 29^th May and even though they were playing remotely, the LPL season began June 10^th, leaving the LPL MSI representative less time to scrim than the other teams had had (although RNG still finished in fourth position during the LPL regular season).

If the policy of more teams was added into Western league wherein both of the splits and season as a whole had to start earlier, there could be clashes with international events such as MSI wherein the MSI representative has less time to scrim than other teams. Yes that possibility only affects one team, but does it put said team in question at an unfair advantage that they have to deal with by having won the previous split? That’s no more of a solution than increasing the size of the region or creating longer scrimming days. This same argument applies to the idea of playing best of three matches, yes more on stage matches, but also means the season schedule has to be re-done to fit it in, and some have argued that best of three matches don’t really do anything – but best of one is arguably the same. There is no easy fix to create a reality where Western teams are playing the same amount of matches as Eastern teams – there is of course the point of whether Western teams want to be like Eastern times but that’s a different point altogether.

Okie onwards! Onto the next point of discussion which arguably are quite similar, but I think are worth discussing, we of course have a lot of regions to play in through League, but the leader boards especially in larger regions are heavily saturated. I remember seeing on Twitter the suggestion of people who dodge games to have a queue specifically for them to annoy each other and let everyone else play the game – so I want to suggest something sort of similar. My suggestions could be two separate things, but servers or at the very least a queue where pro players from across the world could queue up against each other irrespective of region and play against and with each other to learn from each other outside of regular season or specific international events. This could push up the level Western players are playing it by being forced to play with teammates from the Eastern teams. The reason I say this could be separate is because there could be a whole Western team/Wildcard region teams on a (non-regional) server or a whole server exclusively for pro players (I have no idea how you would verify who is a pro but I am merely suggesting a potential solution) which is all irrespective of regions. This may be a complex solution that is not entirely viable however it may put Western teams specifically in a better position to compete within their own regions as well as on the international stage – especially before they arrive at bootcamp. As only one team going to a different region during an international event for bootcamp (outside of being a region rep) doesn’t improve the region as a whole or even guarantee success of that team.

By no means do I think there is a perfect solution to the problem of EU, NA and everyone else especially when it comes to vs the Eastern regions of LCK and LPL (as well as PCS and VCS), there isn’t an immediate major and perfect solution that can be implemented. Even if there was, how easy would it be? It could mean the potential upheaval of whole regions to put in the new changes. But I think a lot of people are getting disheartened of seeing the West near the top within touching distance and just missing out or not reaching as high as they have been known to. Writing this made me wonder if there was a need for EU and NA to be more collaborative in the effort to secure an international title for the West, the constant banter is obviously great, it’s fun to have a rivalry between teams (within limits of course) but when it comes to the strength of the East, does the EU/NA rivalry need to quieten down in favour of a title for the West? I'm going to be honest, that’s a question I don’t really have an answer to, especially as in so many of the last Worlds competitions, Western teams have come so close and been pipped to the post.

So, let’s get into looking forward, Worlds 2022 is being hosted in North America and will be travelling across several cities before the final location of New York – cool, I for one am excited to see this as I joined the community in Worlds 2020 and haven’t seen the city hopping that Worlds could do, so this will be exciting to watch. But with the LEC having reportedly four seeds this year (G2 having locked as the first Worlds 2022 team and 1^st LEC seed), and NA having three, is this finally, finally the year we see a Western team scoop the title? Only time will tell as we are of course waiting on play-offs to start, but one thing is for sure, it’ll be another year of EU, NA and everyone else vs the Eastern teams and if nothing else, it’s one heck of a good story line.

Thanks for reading this blog, it was one I was a bit unsure about while writing and had to come back to several times but I think it gets the point across fairly well. Do you think a non-Eastern team will scoop the World Champion title this year?

See you on the next blog ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

Notable Sources of Information –

LoL Esports –

https://lolesports.com/

LoL Fandom –

https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/LEC/2022_Season/Summer_Season

https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/LPL/2022_Season/Spring_Season

https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2021_Season_World_Championship

https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2020_Season_World_Championship

https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2019_Season_World_Championship

https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2018_Season_World_Championship

Liquipedia –