Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc around the world. Naturally, esports tournaments, especially League of Legends, are no exception. Among these, the most severely affected are probably LCK and LPL. In the recent LCK Spring Split, although teams competed offline, each team gradually discovered cases of infection. Even Faker’s T1 was infected during the finals of the LCK Spring 2022.
In the LPL region, the situation is even more serious. With this region still implementing strict regulations for disease prevention, all teams must comply. As soon as there were signs of new cases, LPL Spring 2022 immediately switched to online competition. Moreover, many matches had to be postponed for the organizers to adjust the schedule in accordance with disease prevention efforts. This is why, even at this moment, LPL Spring 2022 has not yet concluded while LCK Spring has finished over half a month ago.
Recently, Riot has officially announced that the LPL representative will not be able to attend MSI 2022 in Busan offline. Instead, this region will be granted the opportunity to compete online. Teams will play right from their gaming houses or at the LPL stadium in Shanghai. Riot and LPL organizers will ensure everything, from preparing equipment to personnel, to support the team representing China at MSI 2022 this time. Network equipment will be mobilized to ensure LPL representatives can play with a ping of 35, equivalent to offline ping levels.
However, it can be said that LPL will face countless difficulties in their quest to defend the championship this time, whether the representative of Chinese League of Legends is Royal Never Give Up or Top Esports. First, the issue will still be the network connection. Although Riot has assured they will strive to maintain a stable ping, this is something that both Riot and LPL organizers cannot guarantee 100%. With the tournament being very quick (only lasting about 17 days), the results of each match will be extremely important and can impact the entire journey. Therefore, teams will certainly want to avoid any issues related to the network connection.
Next, this season, T1 is the representative that is incredibly strong. Faker and his teammates are demonstrating excellent form. Moreover, a significant advantage for T1 is that MSI 2022 will be played right on their “home turf”. It can be said that even before the tournament starts, T1 already holds two factors: geographical advantage and team synergy.
With Riot ensuring that the connection for the LPL region will not be affected even while playing online, the chances of victory for the Chinese League of Legends representative against T1 remain a big question. Because none of the representatives among the two names in the LPL Spring 2022 finals have shown truly impressive form like T1. Both RNG and TES have occasionally demonstrated inconsistent performance. And in the upcoming MSI 2022, even without the pressure of playing away from home, it is certain that participating players will also carry invisible burdens from the responsibility of retaining the championship for LPL.
It can be said that Riot has given maximum favor to this region, which has one of the strongest League of Legends scenes in the world. However, both RNG and TES, regardless of which name it is among these two teams, will truly need to show a better performance than what they have demonstrated so far. T1 is not a team that gives opponents a chance for a comeback. And even if it is not T1, just one mistake against any team could mean that all efforts to “bring MSI 2022 to LPL” will only serve as an excuse for the failure of Chinese League of Legends.