League of Legends 2017 World Championship/MSI Changes Released

Riot Games has announced the details for this year’s Mid-Season Invitational and the World Championship, slated down further in the year. Included with the announcement were major changes to these events, with alterations to formats and seeding.

Mid-Season Invitational

The 2017 Mid-Season Invitational has been set to occur in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and will take place from April 28 to May 21, 2017.

Unlike previous years, Riot have decided to include every region (including wildcard regions) in this year’s MSI. The following regions competing at MSI will be:

• Brazil (BR)
• China (CN)
• Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
• Europe (EU)
• Japan (JPN)
• Korea (KR)
• Latin America – North (LAN)
• Latin America – South (LAS)
• North America (NA)
• Oceania (OCE)
• Southeast Asia (SEA)
• Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau (LMS)
• Turkey (TUR)

Each region will be sending their respective league’s champion in similar fashion to previous MSI events. To accommodate for all of these teams, Riot has divided this year’s MSI into two parts. Alongside the normal group stage the community is used to, Riot has added a new “play-in” stage, that act like a qualifier for the group stage.

Due to Riot’s seeding system (based on international results over the past two years), KR, CN and EU will automatically qualify for the group stage. The other 10 teams will all be playing in the play-in stage.

The play-in stage will be divided into three rounds: a two group stage, round of four, and losers stage. Both the NA and LMS teams auto qualify for the round of four. The remaining eight teams will be divided into two groups, where they will play a best-of-one double round robin. The winners of Group “A” and “B” will move onto the second round to face the NA and LMS teams respectively in a best-of-five. The two winners of round two advance into the actual MSI group stage, joining the KR, CN and EU teams. The two teams who lost in round two will play a losers match, and the winner also advances to the group stage.

Like the previous year’s tournament, this year’s MSI results will have implications for the 2017 World Championship. The teams that finish 1st-4th will receive a top seed for their region in the upcoming world championship. If a previously labelled “wildcard” region like the CIS or BR finish in 5th-6th, they will automatically gain a group stage spot at worlds, as well as an additional seed in the “worlds play-in,” which will be discussed later.

The full rundown for this year’s MSI can be read here.

World Championship

This year’s world championship will take place from Sept. 23 to Nov. 4 and will occur across China, including Wuhan, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. Like MSI, this year’s world championship has quite a few changes.

In what seems to be a long time coming, the LMS has finally received a third seed for the world championship. With solid international results over the past few years, the LMS has finally received the same number of seeds as the other major regions.

Similar to MSI, Riot has invited every region to participate in this year’s world championship. To accommodate all of these teams, the world championship will also be divided into a play-in stage in addition to the normal group stage. Riot has recognized Korea’s overwhelming success in past international tournaments, and has awarded the region a pass from having to participate in the play-in format, having all three KR seeds sent directly to the group stage.

The third seeds from CN, EU, LMS and NA will join the other eight regions’ teams in the play-in stage. The play-in stage is divided into two parts. The first part will be a group stage consisting of four groups of three, who will play a double round robin best-of-one.

The top two teams of the four groups will advance to a round of eight. In this second round, the eight teams will be randomly paired off to play a best-of-five series. The four teams to win their respective series will advance to the group stage of the world championship.

The full rundown for this year’s world championship can be read here.

What are your thoughts on these changes? Let us know by tweeting us @GAMURScom.

Article by Malcolm Abbas. Follow him on Twitter @SmashhLoL.