The start of the 2023 season of League of Legends brought with it a sea of content that will be coming to this title over the course of the year, such as new champions, skins, changes to the ranked system, and various large and medium scale updates.
Although this only covers the gameplay section, with the Season Start event we have had the opportunity to learn more about what Riot Games’ international competitions will be like for 2023, starting with the Mid-Season Invitational.
Looking ahead to the start of the split, the classic mid-season tournament is preparing its biggest series of changes since it was introduced, so its next edition will be something like we’ve never seen before, with more intensity and many more players looking for international glory.
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The Mid-Season Invitational returns to Europe
As revealed during the start of the Season Start, the Mid-Season Invitational will arrive for the first time in London in 2023, being in turn the return of this tournament to the European continent since that edition held in Iceland during 2021.
The capital of the United Kingdom will be in charge of receiving the 13 qualified teams from all over the world, who will debut a new format that has been requested by the entire community for years: the double elimination brackets.
“While MSI has been successful in creating more international competition, we have an opportunity to enhance the event and further showcase the power of regional leagues,” said the LoL Esports team. “To that end, we will be increasing the number of slots for some regions from 1 to 2 and completely revamping the format.”
For this MSI 2023, the competition will be divided into 2 stages: the traditional Play-In phase and the Bracket phase. Additionally, the introduction of this format will add more squads from the larger regions, with the aim of providing more opportunities for cross-regional play from now on.
The Play-In phase will feature 8 teams: the second places from the LEC, LCS and LPL, and the champions of the first split from the LLA, CBLOL, PCS, VCS and LJL. In turn, the LCK teams will be exempt from participating in this phase as it is the region of the current Worlds 2022 champions, DRX.
These 8 teams will be drawn into 2 groups of 4 to compete in best-of-3 series, in double-elimination full brackets similar to the one implemented in VALORANT Champions. The winners of each group and the best of the 2 teams that have fallen to the lower bracket will automatically advance to the next stage.
For the Bracket phase, we will have the 3 Play-In qualifiers along with the LEC, LCS and LPL champions, and both LCK finalist teams.
Here, the 8 participating teams will face each other from the beginning in best-of-5 matches, with the losers falling to the lower bracket in which they will seek to redeem themselves against other fallen in later rounds.
In the end, the squad that manages to survive this long journey will be able to be crowned the best of the split, taking home the MSI trophy and the pride of representing their league as number one in the world, on their way to the next World Championship. .
“We see MSI as an opportunity to offer more cross-region play and give fans a way to gauge the relative strength of the regional leagues at the midpoint of the season,” LoL Esports commented in a blog post explaining their changes in more detail. .
According to Riot’s statement, the objective of this renewal for the Mid-Season Invitational is to maintain the full representation of each region in competition. Along with this, they also focused on eliminating low-stakes games and creating more clashes between teams from other leagues, even at the risk of only being left with squads from major regions in the Bracket phase.
“MSI is an opportunity for fans to gauge the relative strength of teams and regions midway through the season. With this new competitive format, we hope to take better advantage of that opportunity, as well as bring you more exciting series and allow more narratives to develop between players,” Riot Games concluded.
Details about the venues as well as the seeds for each phase will be revealed in the coming months, as we get closer to the second largest tournament on the competitive calendar of League of Legends.
But tell us, are you ready to enjoy the new MSI format? Would you like to see any bigger changes for this event? Tell us in the comments.
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