LPL Team Will Play Remotely at MSI 2022
The LPL representative will play the 2022 Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) from China, due to the Covid-19 related travel restrictions.
One of the most important protagonists for the upcoming 2022 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational will not play from the studios in South Korea. The Riot Games’ head of global esports Naz Aletaha announced in an official update that the LPL team will participate in the tournament online, due to the Covid-19 travel restrictions imposed.
“After extensive diligence performed by our technology, events, and competitive operations teams, we are able to allow the qualifying LPL team to compete remotely from China,” Naz Aletaha said. “The team will play from either their team training facility or from the LPL Arena in Shanghai, in accordance with local health and safety protocols.”
The LPL Champions Will Not Fly to Korea for MSI 2022
While the LPL Spring Playoffs are still in progress, the decision was taken in order to allow both the organizers and the potential LPL representative to quickly adjust and make logistic preparations for the first international tournament of the season. This means that one team between the two finalists Top Esports and Royal Never Give Up, which are set to play in the LPL Spring Split Finals on April 23, will not fly to Busan, South Korea.
Despite the decision of playing remotely, Riot Games will try to guarantee competitive integrity by using a special network latency tool that should keep the ping between China and Korea at a reasonable level. This same tool was used to maintain ping between China and Korea for the LPL vs. LCK Showdown during the 2020 Mid-Season Cup.
“To ensure the competitive integrity of the competition, all MSI teams will be able to practice and scrim at this ping, and we will deploy referee support and monitoring throughout the tournament in both Korea and China,” the head of global esports also stated in their announcement.
In the studios, teams usually find themselves playing at around 7 ms ping. The ping that the LPL Representative should be playing at should be around 35 ms, which is still good considering the distance between the two countries.
What will it mean for the rest of the competition at MSI?
All the other representatives from the other regions will likely be able to play normally in Busan. When playing against the Chinese team, the opponents should still be able to play directly from the studio. All in all, Riot Games should be able to successfully pull off the hybrid format.
Last year, Vietnam’s VCS team had to forfeit from the esports tournament when the MSI took place in Reykjavík, Iceland, making this year’s edition a good adaptation and allowing all teams to play normally. With that being said, the tournament will still only host 11 teams, as the LCL representative won’t take part.
With less than 3 weeks from the start of MSI, only four leagues – LPL, VCS, Brazil’s CBLOL, and North America’s LCS – have yet to determine a representative. If you want to watch the action from the best 11 teams around the world, make sure to tune in on May 10 for the first day of MSI 2022.
