Examining Why Some Wildcard Regions Fail While Others Succeed

Part 1  

As Worlds 2016 has begun nobody was expecting the two Wildcard contenders – Albus Nox Luna and INTZ – to pull up any roots in the competition. This mindset stems not only from their in-game play, but also historical insignificance on the part of Wildcard teams. Gaming Gear (CIS), Mineski (SEA), Dark Passage (Turkey), KaBuM! e-Sports (Brazil), Bangkok Titans (SEA), paiN Gaming (Brazil) -- none of these teams have had a positive win-loss record in the group stage.

Despite differences in rosters and regions, the end result remains. Wildcard teams are just not on the level of other regions.

But is there more to the weakness of Wildcard regions beyond in-game deficiencies and lack of funding?

Server populations: do they have an effect in Wildcard regions?

In League of Legends, server population has a high correlation with regional strength. Korea has the highest ranked server population of all regions, and accordingly has performed admirably in international competition. Its ranked queue is feted as the most competitive globally due to its high number of ranked players; teams and aspiring pros alike flock to Korea just to train in this hyperbolic time chamber, announcing an increased level in mechanical ability after bootcamps.

What of Wildcards though?

Just looking at Wildcard regions alone, here are the ranked server populations sorted from most to least (numbers taken from op.gg and UnrankedSmurfs.com), followed by the amount of times they have qualified for Worlds:

1.      Brazil: 8.1% (1,084,330), 3 times

2.      Turkey: 5.1% (692,181), 1 time

3.      South East Asia (unknown, possibly 300,000-500,000), 2 times

4.      Latin America (South): 3.68% (484,094), 0

5.      Latin America (North): 3.60% (476,333), 0

6.      Oceania: 1.71% (218,610), 0

7.      CIS: 1.27% (179,183), 2 times

8.      Japan: 0.67% (89,501), 0

As South East Asia’s servers are run by Garena and have not released their server populations, we are unfortunately unable to get an accurate gauge. However, a guess would put the SEA servers somewhere in the range of 300,000-500,000 players, most of whom are concentrated in Vietnam which has the largest player base.

Now let us look at the two most recent International Wildcard group stage tables (taken from esportswikis):

IWCI in April 2016:

IWCQ in Aug-Sept 2016:

Observations relative to results and server populations

Firstly, Brazil have historically done well against Wildcard opposition; INTZ will be the third Brazilian team to qualify for Worlds, although the region has had its fair share of hiccups.

(Credit: INTZ Facebook page)

Their server population is the highest out of the wildcards and have relied less and less on imports over the years. INTZ has also boot-camped in Europe, which gives them yet another advantage.

CIS is a clear over-achiever, being sixth in server population yet posting 2nd and 4th placements. Russia’s server population may not explain their strength on the international stage, but it does explain why ANX’s competition in the LCL is much poorer in comparison. ANX may be punching above their own weight thanks to being close to the EUW server, but the fear is that they will not progress as much if the server remains lowly-populated. Regardless, CIS fortunes have improved massively since the implementation of the LCL in 2016, and it has potential for growth as a new league. 

Turkey has the luxury of both having a decent ranked population as well as being close enough to EU West to play and scrim there. It is therefore a surprise that they have not made it to Worlds this year, but this can be chalked up to another problem specific to the team who represented Turkey: their players were ineligible to compete internationally due to not being of age.

LAN too, has the benefit of being close to NA, which allows their players to play there. However, NA only has 1,850,355 or 14.63% of players playing ranked, compared to EUW which houses 23.56%, or 2,999,863 players. As a result, being close to NA does not hold as much significance as being close to EUW does, and this is reflected in Lyon’s historically poor results until IWCQ when they brought in WhiteLotus and optimised their own roster.

As for SEA, their issues have been discussed at length in this article, but even though Vietnam has the largest player pool in SEA, players had been leaving or retiring en-masse since Spring and this contributed to their decline at both IWC events.

Regardless, due to Vietnam’s larger server population, they had accordingly dominated GPL since the split with Taiwanese teams in 2013, spearheaded by the sister teams of Saigon Jokers and Saigon Fantastic Five.

Bangkok Titans deserve a special mention as they exceeded all expectations in 2015, coming from a league where they utterly dominated as well as having a smaller pool to draw from than their regional rivals in Vietnam.

Other regions do not quite have the same luxury as the above. Japan has been competing since before they even got a server, but only pros in the LJL get to play on the neighbouring Korean server. The Japanese server does not even exceed 100,000 ranked players, but this is natural as the server is still new.

However, it does mean that Japan will likely be playing catch-up for the next few years. So will Oceania, as their location means that they cannot play optimally on other servers unlike Russia who can make up for their small server size by playing on EU. Their poor results internationally reflects their location’s flaws.

(Credit: Riot OCE)

Meanwhile, LAS does not lack in players; it has roughly the same ranked population as their northern cousins. However, LAS has also historically done poorly in international competition and their imports are of sub-standard quality.

Conclusion: server population does matter in the long run

A server population advantage has ensured that both Brazil and Turkey remain at the forefront of Wildcard regions, with some even clamouring for Brazil to have their own spot at Worlds. However, in terms of raw numbers Brazil is still a distance away from being considered a major region in LoL.

Until they can produce actual results (i.e. getting out of the group stage at Worlds), Brazil will remain a Wildcard region, albeit a formidable contender. Other regions are less likely to be able to overcome this population deficit unless they have access to a larger region’s ranked queue - namely Russia and SEA to an extent, possibly Japan in the future – or if investors bankroll the local leagues, allowing more pros to dedicate themselves to the game.

In the next article, I will go over a popular solution to a lack of population: imports. How do imports affect wildcard regions, and do they actually help elevate the level of the teams they are in?

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Continue to Part 2