September 24, 2020.

The 10th League of Legends World Championship has finally officially started at the Wuhan Sports Center Gymnasium in China, and China, as the organizer of the League of Legends Series S Series World Championship this year, has also made great efforts to finally decide on the venue for each part of the finals after considering many aspects in the selection of venues.

- Play-in stage

City: Wuhan

Venue: Wuhan Sports Center

When: September 24 - September 28

- Group stage

City: Wuhan

Venue: Wuhan Sports Center

When: October 5 - October 8, October 12 - October 15

- Quarter-finals

City: Guangzhou

Venue: Guangzhou Stadium

When: October 19 - October 22

- Semi-finals

City: Shanghai

Venue: Shanghai Oriental Sports Center

When: October 28 - October 29

- Finals

City: Beijing

Venue: National Stadium Bird's Nest

When: November 4

This war without gunpowder has attracted the attention of LOLER all over the world since it began, and this year's teams are 24 teams from 13 League of Legends professional regions around the world.

These 24 teams are from Chinese mainland LPL region, South Korea LCK region, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan LMS region, North America NA LCS region, European EU LCS region, Southeast Asia GPL region, Turkey TCL region, Brazil CBLOL region, South Latin America CLS region, CIS LCL region, Japan LJL region, North Latin America LLN region, Oceania OPL region 13 major regions.

In the past, the third seeds in the LPL, LMS, and the two LCS regions were able to advance directly to the group stage, while the two wildcard spots were determined by the IIC region of the wild card alone.

In the new format, the IIC concept has been removed, and all wildcard regions will become separate regions, and they will play a total of 12 teams from the LPL, LMS, and two LCS regions to compete in the play-in tournament to determine four spots to advance to the group stage.

To put it simply, the Play-In Tournament means that the No. 3 seed in the original LPL, LMS, and two LCS regions will have an additional elimination with the Wild Card Division to officially enter the Series S World Championship.

Due to the addition of the Play-in Tournament format, the number of participating teams in the World Finals has been expanded to 24 teams, with 8 teams of the 12 teams participating in the Play-In Tournament and the other 4 teams continuing to participate in the group stage with the remaining 12 teams.

In the past, eight wild-card regions formed an ICI league, with the first of each region competing for MSI, World Finals and All-Star qualification. After the format change, each major region will become a separate region, and even the concept of wild cards will be eliminated.

The best wildcard teams in the Mid-Season Championship will qualify directly to the group stage, and all eight regions will qualify for the Play-In Tournament, which will eventually mean that the World Finals will be longer due to the addition of teams and the establishment of Play-In Tournaments.

This year's World Championship will start on September 24 and end on November 4, lasting 41 days, and players will be able to see more teams from all over the world on the world stage.

At the same time, the entry of wild card teams from all over the world into the play-in tournament will also have a great impact on the coaching teams of each major region.

In the past, they only had to keep an eye on the shortlisted wildcard teams, but now they need to know enough about all eight wildcard regions, and even more and more cross-regional training events in the world's major regions, after all, the level of wild cards is now capable of challenging for the status of the five major regions.

And because last year's World Finals underwent a format change, the No. 1 seed pool will be determined by the top four MSI, and Europe lost their World Finals No. 1 seed qualification and was replaced by LMS. This means that the status of the original four major regions in the world competition is getting lower and lower, and the rights of each major region are becoming more equitable.

Of course, the LCK was excluded because they were so strong that the third seed team in the LCK didn't need to play the play-in tournament to advance directly to the group stage, while the third seed in the LPL needed to go through the play-in tournament and the risk of being eliminated outright.

However, this is not without reason, as early as the 2014 season after the World Finals when SS defeated BF to win the championship title, Riot has forcibly weakened the increasingly powerful Korean division, and the single-team system has led to a phenomenal exodus of elite professional players from South Korea.

Most of them were invited to come to LPL to make money, of course, a considerable part of them are very competitive, even in the face of their old club, they can do their best without changing their faces, so that they were later scolded as traitors by Korean audiences.

After this format change, the status of the wild card has risen across the board, but the pros and cons all depend on their own ability.

There are certainly drawbacks to the fact that the two fixed spots have been reduced to one and the other has become uncertain for the wildcard environment as a whole, and Riot's current format change seems to want the wildcard region to be separated.

Take the LJL in the CIS region where the Japanese GR team (Ghost Rider Chinese translated as Ghost Rider in Chinese) who broke through the top four is located, assuming they qualify for the group stage of the World Finals in the mid-season championship, then there will be another team in the LJL region participating in the play-in round, and assuming that this team successfully enters the group stage, then there will be 2 teams from the LJL region in the group stage.

For the weaker wildcard regions, it may be a luxury to make it to the group stage, but under this format, Riot ensures that each wildcard region has the opportunity to participate in the World Championship at least once a year, which is crucial for the development of each major region.

What's more, the S10 World Championship in China has been hailed as a major event in the esports industry, with the prize pool reaching a staggering number due to the increasing revenue from paid items (Champion Skins and Champion Guards), and all of them will be included in the World Championship prize pool.

In addition, every time you buy a team logo, you will also share a certain percentage of the team's profits, which can be regarded as allowing fans of each team to dedicate a little bit of their ability to their favorite team.

And its popularity has made all the sponsors who were previously pessimistic about the future trend of the e-sports industry red-eyed, according to the words of a brick family called the beast: We have calculated that the Glory of Kings is more profitable than drug trafficking, but there is no risk of drug trafficking.

In this regard, the profits of League of Legends are undoubtedly much higher than that of Honor of Kings, after all, its popularity and the degree of holding and publicity of related events cannot be compared, but the same fact is that the cost of the esports industry is low, and the returns are so high that it is unimaginable for everyone.

A skin that does not affect the balance of the game can often be sold for dozens or even hundreds, which does not seem to be a high price, but if the audience is included, tens of millions of players around the world will more or less buy skins, most of which will not only buy one, but even dozens or hundreds, not to mention those local tyrants who have a collecting penchant, hundreds of skins is quite a normal thing.

The benefits of e-sports are undoubtedly quite terrifying, coupled with the derivative peripherals and a large influx of traffic, the value behind it is undoubtedly astronomical, and this phenomenon is still growing at an alarming rate every year.

The success of the e-sports bid for the Olympics is like the icing on the cake, making e-sports no longer a despised industry, but a new and hot industry, constantly attracting newcomers and the attention of most young audiences.

SPORT1 (German Sports One), Germany's largest sports station, officially announced on September 10 this year that they will broadcast the semi-finals and finals of the 2020 World Championship on television, SPORT1 claimed that they have partnered with Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, and invited the best League of Legends analysts and guests in Germany to participate in the broadcast, and all program content will be free and public.

And recently, Coca-Cola E-sports also announced that it will broadcast the 2020 World Finals finals in major theaters with partnerships in Europe and the United States, you read that right, watch the S10 Global Finals in cinemas! This kind of treatment was really unimaginable before.

In order to make the finals even more spectacular, Coca-Cola Esports has established partnerships with many movie theaters across Europe and North America to provide the best viewing environment for esports audiences. The partnership between Riot and Coca-Cola Esports is a bold attempt, and it is the first time ever that an esports game has been broadcast into cinemas.

As early as August 18, "League of Legends" officially announced the list of partners for the 2020 World Finals, and Mercedes-Benz became the chief partner of the World Finals in China; Yili-Grains and L'Oréal Men are the special partners of the World Finals in China; Logitech and Intel are the official partners of the World Finals in China.

In recent years, the e-sports industry has developed rapidly, and more and more big brands in the real economy have begun to pay attention to and get involved in e-sports.

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Let's focus on the competition that has already started the play-in tournament, China has a total of three teams qualified for the S10 World Finals, namely BF (BloodFgs Chinese translated as Blood Color Flag) team, EBF (Ever Burning Fme Chinese translated as "Never Extinguished Flame" team), MD (MyDream Chinese translated as my dream) team.

Among them, the champion of the LPL Summer Tournament, Team BF, will directly guarantee the World Finals as the No. 1 seed in the LPL region, while the team with the highest points in the year, Team EBF (formerly IC), will advance to the World Finals as the No. 2 seed, and Team MD will participate in the World Finals as the No. 3 seed team in the LPL.

As for the other thirteen LPL teams, they are already destined to miss this year's S competition, but during the training camp, LPL will also draw elite players from the major teams that are not eligible to participate in the S10 Global Finals to form a training team to cooperate with the three teams participating in the finals to train and study tactics.

There are two stages in the Play-In Tournament, the first of which is the Group Points Stage.

The 12 teams are divided into 4 groups through group drawing, with 3 teams in each group, for the BO1 double round-robin group points competition, this stage uses the last elimination system: the top two teams advance to the second stage of the play-in round, and the teams at the bottom of the points are directly eliminated and bid farewell to S7, at this stage, each team will play 4 BO1 games, eliminate 4 teams, and a total of 8 teams can advance to the second stage.

The second stage is a single-elimination tournament.

The 8 teams that will be promoted will be randomly matched into 4 groups in the form of group first VS group 2 for BO5 single elimination round, the winner will advance to the group stage, and the loser will be eliminated directly, bidding farewell to the S10 finals, each team will play 1 BO5 game at this stage, knocking out 4 teams, and a total of 4 teams can advance to the group stage.

Therefore, 8 of the 12 teams in the play-in stage will be eliminated, and only 4 teams will have a chance to successfully advance to the group stage, which means that the team that successfully advances to the group stage will need to play 4 BO1 round-robin matches and win 1 BO5 knockout game in the play-in stage.

This is undoubtedly quite cruel, twelve teams can only advance to four teams, that is, one-third of the promotion rate, which seems not low, but for those wild cards who are not strong enough, the possibility of them being eliminated is too great, although there are occasional dark horses, but after all, it is a minority.

Most wildcard teams have to settle for a miserable defeat in the Play-In Tournament and end up withdrawing from the tournament to pack up their belongings and disappear into the rest of the tournament, meaning that their year's hard work has been wasted once again.

Maybe they are the real losers, after all, the team that can still be comforted or insulted after defeat is at least still watched, and they are always obscure, only struggling year after year, but they are fleeting and forgotten in the minds of the audience.

It's a pity that the reality is like this, everyone will understand the most basic truth when they grow up, kindness is never a mistake, only the weak are, only strong enough people can implement the "justice" they firmly believe in, and the weak can only go with the flow and lose everything.

When you are famous, gossip will not hurt you, and when you are powerless and powerless, in fact, let alone comfort, I am afraid that you are not even qualified to be abused, because even keyboard warriors can't see their existence, and their failures are taken for granted.

In short, the winner has everything, and the loser loses everything!