As we know, in recent years, alongside developing their game, Riot has also focused on community activities to enhance their outreach and global influence. Notable actions include acquiring VCS from Garena and supporting the organization of viewing parties for matches in the VCS, MSI, and Worlds; as well as assisting smaller regions in boosting the appeal of LoL (notably CBLOL)… Additionally, at Worlds 2023, Riot has also applied many activities in conjunction with important in-game elements.
Accordingly, as viewers following the tournaments may have noticed, there occasionally runs a notification across the screen stating: “For every Water Dragon defeated, Riot will donate to raise awareness of the global water crisis and efforts to address the issue.” According to the explanations from the commentators as well as from the announcement on the official page of Riot, after Worlds 2023 concludes, Riot and Amazon Web Services will donate the funds raised to the organization Water.org to support 70,000 people in poverty, helping them gain long-term access to clean water and sanitation.
However, a rather unfortunate coincidence is that, the Water Dragon is the entity defeated… the least at Worlds 2023, with only 46 Water Dragons defeated throughout all matches from the Play-In stage to after the Semi-Final match between JD Gaming and T1. Meanwhile, the Water Dragon was the most frequently defeated buff during Worlds 2022, with 74 Dragon buffs claimed by teams. In Worlds 2023, the two most frequently defeated Dragon buffs were the Earth Dragon and Fire Dragon.
Of course, Riot has faced considerable mockery from the community regarding this issue. However, in this case, it may be that Riot has been “unfairly accused.” Because they cannot influence the spawn rate of Dragons in each match. Secondly, the Water Dragon is one of the very strong buffs in this tournament. Therefore, teams must play extremely cautiously whenever the Water Dragon soul buff appears.
Finally, with many matchups having a significant disparity in power, which leaves one team with almost no chance to engage with the Dragons. Thus, the number of Dragons at Worlds 2023, regardless of the element, has been much lower than last year. Notably, in the T1 – LNG Esports match, throughout 3 games, the LPL representative was unable to secure any Dragon buffs.
Moreover, with the implementation of such policies, it can be believed that Riot will find a reasonable solution. And the low spawn rate of the Water Dragon may not significantly impact the publisher’s plans.