Amidst continuing league shutdowns and venues without audiences, China's LoL Pro League is an odd beacon of survival, set to return on March 9 as a fully online league.
The LPL was the first League of Legends league to shut down due to the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), which originated in Wuhan in Hubei Province. During the Lunar New Year break, LPL players traveled back home to their families, only to be hit with travel bans to contain the spread of the virus and a league that was postponed indefinitely on Jan. 25.
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Prior to announcing their return, the LPL held an unofficial scrim league that began on Feb. 26 with five teams: Suning, eStar, JD Gaming, Top Esports, and Victory Five. These scrims were held in the typical best-of-three format and streamed on the official LPL site with all of the trappings of the Chinese broadcast minus the audience and LAN environment.
Here are four questions following these scrims before the league starts back up in its new online format.
How good were the scrims?
To an LPL fan starved for any type of action, these scrim matches were an oasis in the desert. The debut scrim Game 1 between eStar and JDG ended at about 21 minutes with 38 kills. As JDG were fountain-diving eStar in eStar's base, English-language LPL caster Clement Chu said that since these were scrims, teams could go a bit crazy. To which fellow English-language LPL caster Jake "Hysterics" Osypenko said that LPL teams still did this all the time in stage games anyway. The excitement and high-kill score of the LPL was back, a welcome addition to the much slower-paced LoL Champions Korea and League of Legends Championship Series. By this definition, the scrims were good.
Yet, in terms of gameplay, it's difficult to take these results, or many of the drafts, very seriously. We'll find out next week if the LPL's odd Sylas priority in these games holds true once the league returns to official matches on presumably a new patch, although patch timing does vary in the LPL, so they could still potentially be on 10.3. LPL teams typically play faster and looser than other regions on stage, but these scrims were even more wild at times -- a reminder that LPL teams used to completely troll each other in scrims not all that long ago. They were fun, and there is a bit of information to be gleaned, but ultimately they're still a bit looser than what we'll see come March 9.
Is eStar doomed?
eStar kicked off their inaugural LPL split with a surprising 2-0 start with victories over Rogue Warriors and reigning world champions FunPlus Phoenix, before the league went on hiatus. During the unofficial scrim league, they were crushed by JDG and TES but beat a winless Victory Five.
In a vacuum, eStar's Week 1 win over FunPlus is impressive. Yet, in the context of how FunPlus were struggling to integrate a more resource-heavy top laner in Kim "Khan" Dong-ha onto a lineup that was already a well-oiled machine, Week 1 was the time for eStar to play spoiler. TES and JDG are looking like the two best teams in the league alongside Invictus Gaming, who drafted and performed very well in Week 1, but did not play in the scrim league. eStar aren't doomed, but they're likely mediocre and will course-correct over the next few weeks, dropping from the top of the standings to somewhere in the middle.
Just how good is Kanavi?
This isn't a shock to anyone who watched JD Gaming last year, but there weren't nearly as many eyes on jungler Seo "Kanavi" Jin-hyeok as there are now. Kanavi became a household name in the League of Legends 2019-20 offseason due to the unfair contract he was given by Griffin, who loaned him to JDG for the 2019 LPL summer split.
This year, he's back on JDG with a full contract from the team and is doing his best to ensure that he'll be known more for his excellent performances rather than the unfortunate circumstances of 2019. Kanavi was indubitably the star of the scrim league, winning five of the six total Man of the Match titles available to a JDG player. JDG and Kanavi have an important match against FunPlus on the first day of matches. Given his overwhelming success in scrims and strong Week 1 performances back in January, it's difficult to see Kanavi and JDG losing, even to the current world champions.
With these scrims as a blueprint, how successful will a fully online LPL be?
Any long time LPL fan has multiple stories of online League of Legends events in China going awry.
There was the time that Zhanqi bought streaming rights from Huya mid-NEST tournament and the stream cut. There was the time that the internet was so bad at one Demacia Cup in 2015 that players couldn't load in and when one player was able to, Bae "Dade" Eo-jin, then of Masters 3, he was erroneously told to push the wave so the game would end. This ended up forfeiting the game and awarding the victory to Masters 3's opponent, EDward Gaming. There have been multiple delays, particularly at Team WE's home venue in Xi'an, due to internet problems. China is a large country and, much like the United States, internet availability varies depending on location.
While the LPL will do its best to ensure that games happen as smoothly and as fairly as possible, any seasoned viewer should be prepared for what will likely be inevitable delays due to potential internet problems. That being said, any seasoned LPL viewer is also glad to see the LPL recovering, despite the ongoing pandemic, and is looking forward to its March 9 return.