As 2023 draws to a close, we will soon be heading into Spring 2024, with multiple regions already announcing their start dates. Many teams have already started training for the new season after confirming their starting lineups, but they are not able to practice in their official uniforms. Because League of Legends does not have a preseason at the end of this year, the S14 preseason is postponed to January 14 next yearVersion 1 was launched, and Riot Games wanted to give players a sense of freshness and bring the preseason content directly to the new season, but the old maps were a problem for professional players.
For the past decade, pros have been experimenting with new versions of the game in the end-of-year live server to see what tactics players have developed. However, the current official service of 1324 versions and 14Version 1 is completely different, the designers made a huge number of systematic changes, and the first week of the spring season used 14Version 1 as a match suit version. In order to solve the problem of professional players not having a place to train, Riot Games launched a new version in advance on the Champion Queue server, allowing professional players to practice with each other14Version 1, this server is only accessible to a few people.
From recent interviews with LCK and LEC players, we know that Riot Games has opened the championship queue server for players in these two regions, and players have already started to play against 141 version of gameplay exploration. And on the evening of December 28th, PSG mid-laner Maple opened the live broadcast to play the champion queue server, and publicly broadcast the content of the S14 season to players. Due to the relatively small number of people on the server, Maple lined up 4 former Lightning Wolves teammates, including Karsa, Swordart, Hanabi and Betty, and the Lightning Wolves were together for the first time in seven years.
Instead of using a traditional matchmaking system, the Champion Queue server pulls players into a room through a custom room feature. In the server where Maple logs in, players basically use their team abbreviations and nicknames, and play just like the official match. Maple met a lot of players from the Pacific PCS region, but he also met players from two other regions, Sty1E from the VCS division of Vietnam and Dasher from the LJL division of Japan, and the players from three different divisions met in the same championship queue.
According to the information shared by Japanese players, Riot Games has opened a super server for the Championship Queue of Champions in the Pacific Rim, allowing players from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and Oceania to practice on the same server. Since the championship queue is made up of professionals, retired players, and academy players, the quality of the matches is much higher than that of regular qualifying, and the fact that this cross-regional super server can cover such a large area shows that Riot Games has made a technological breakthrough in terms of network connectivity, as Vietnamese players have previously played hanbok with 100 delays.
Judging from the effect of Maple's live broadcast, his network is very smooth, with a latency of about 40 milliseconds, and the other players do not feel very stuck, and the Japanese and Vietnamese players are able to play normally. In fact, Riot's 2024 Championship Queue servers will allow North and South American players to go head-to-head, with European Champion Queues covering multiple regions of Europe. Many players hope that this cross-regional battle technique will be more stable, allowing players from all over the world to practice more online, and players from both the East and West will be able to play practice matches.