Without any explanation, Riot has removed the normal draft queue playlist from SEA servers.
As League of Legends is one of the most-played games in the world, players are playing this game worldwide. Because of this, Riot has to set up servers internationally to keep up with the demand. Additionally, they own most of the servers for their games. But before and even now, in certain regions, Riot has partnered with certain 3rd party companies to host their servers for certain demographics. One of those companies is Garena.
Before this year, Garena used to publish League of Legends for the SEA market. Moreover, They had servers across Taiwan, Singapore/Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, etc.
Although they were publishing League of Legends on their own, players didn’t enjoy staying with Garena as they removed or didn’t release many features in the SEA server. Like Clash, a Draft mode for normals, various events, etc. Furthermore, many other aspects were different from the Riot-owned version. For example, if you wanted to play the Garena version, you had to download their launcher, which was terrible. Additionally, in some Garena regions, the RP prices were also different, and they weren’t consistent.
So players were excited when Riot announced in November that their partnership with Garena was ending in 2023. They were also excited since they could migrate to Riot-owned servers and have the same benefits as the regular League players.
Read more: Riot Removing Refund Tokens In Patch 13.11.
Riot Disables Normal Draft Queue For SEA Servers
Players were very excited when Riot finally launched the SEA server on 6 January 2023. Besides ping instability, the launch was very smooth. Players found various features in the Riot client that they couldn’t find in Garena, like a draft queue for normals.
Afterward, after the release of the ranked queue in patch 13.1, Riot suddenly removed the draft queue without any notice.
That is not currently the only issue with the new SEA servers. Although Riot mentioned that your Garena friend list would also migrate alongside your account, you won’t find any of your Garena friends in your friend list.
Regardless, Riot will give away almost all of the League champions and free skins, including an ultimate skin for free to SEA players in the upcoming SEA event. This event will still be an exciting start for the launch of the new server.
