The Clash mode in League of Legends offers amateurs the opportunity to get a taste of Esport in a small tournament. But recurring problems are causing a bad mood among the community.
On 23 and 24 July, the League of Legends Clash Shadow Island Cup entered its second round. Players of all ranks could once again compete against each other in tournament format and fight for the Shadow Island trophy. At least in theory, because in practice a lot of things went wrong during the last Clash weekend.
Riot now promises to compensate the affected players. The community, on the other hand, is getting fed up.
What is Clash?
In Clash, five players can form a team together and take part in a League of Legends tournament. All you have to do is complete your placement games in one of the ranking queues and verify your account via SMS. In this way, players from all ranks can play a tournament adapted to them.
Depending on how well you do at the end of the tournament, you can receive various rewards.
What went wrong?
The Shadow Island Cup was held last weekend (23rd and 24th July). Unfortunately, this tournament did not go as planned at all.
Numerous players complained that they could not form teams because it was incorrectly indicated that the players were already in another team.
yeah lets clash! @LeagueOfLegends pic.twitter.com/C1W6nKz14T
– Fabi (@captaindaeun) July 24, 2022
Other players were stuck in the queue for ages or reported constant connection problems and client crashes.
Anyone else having issues with Clash?
I am glad I didn’t start my twitch stream yet. LMAO@riotgames @RiotCreatorSupp @RiotSupport LeagueOfLegends Clash tournament
Good luck to anyone able to play clash tonight! pic.twitter.com/pNNFaGjc1i
– Flaccid4u (@flaccid4u) July 24, 2022
Even when some teams managed to find a game, the bugs and problems did not stop. Many were able to play the tournament but did not receive rewards after completing their brackets.
How did Riot Games respond?
The Riot Developer “Brightmoon” commented on the problems and promised “Clash refunds”. However, those affected took this news less positively, as teams that won the Cup in particular fear that they will only be refunded the Clash Ticket, but not the hard-won Skin Rewards.
I know some of you had issues with Clash yesterday – we are looking at addressing the root cause and will provide Clash refunds for those impacted.
– Riot Brightmoon (@RiotBrightmoon) July 24, 2022
Normally, technical difficulties in server-wide tournaments are certainly excusable from time to time. However, the problem and the reason why many LoL players are getting fed up lies in the history of the Clash system.
Time and again it happens that the servers are overloaded when a Clash is scheduled. Sometimes the problems are so serious that, in addition to the Clash system, both normal games and ranked matches are completely paralysed for hours. It seems that neither the servers of Riot Games nor the game client are designed for this.
200 years of experience and @riotgames cant run a clash server lmaoooo LeagueOfLegends Clash
– Manu Singh (@Memesainity) July 24, 2022
A familiar problem
Although many players welcome the principle of Clash and are happy to have the opportunity to get a taste of the professional air in the tournament mode as amateurs, the mood is very mixed every time there are server problems.
Since the mode has been recurring for over two years, one might expect that the technical problems would slowly but surely be under control after so many test runs. But what was already announced in 2020 with the postponed release of the Clash system due to server crashes continues to this day.
The next tournament on the EUW server, the Zhaun Cup, is scheduled for 06 and 07 August. You can already put together your team for the cup from 01 August.
Whether Riot learns from its mistakes and Clash will run better in the future remains to be seen. Nevertheless, a large part of the players enjoy competing alongside their friends in Clash with the motivation of competition. So let’s continue to hope that Riot takes the players’ criticism to heart and stabilises the performance of their servers and client.
