At the World Championship (Worlds) 2024, the representatives of the LEC region have constantly failed and had to leave the tournament early. The No. 3 seed Mad Lions Koi quickly overcame the play-in but soon received 3 defeats and became the first team to be eliminated from the Swiss.
LEC's No. 2 seed, Fnatic, has only won 1 victory over Esports, the rest lost 3 matches and left the tournament with 12-14 positions. Finally, the LEC G2 Esports champion constantly loses strong representatives such as Hanwha Life Esports, T1 or Bilibili Gaming, eliminated with a coefficient of 2-3.
This is also the second consecutive year, the LEC area has no representative to attend the Worlds Play-off round. Meanwhile, the No. 1 seed team of LCS enters the group of 8 strongest teams in the tournament. In 2023, NRG defeated G2 Esports to gain the right to continue with a coefficient of 3-1, and this year Flyquest defeated the Liquid team in the last match to enter the next round with a coefficient of 3-2.
However, the achievement of the LCS area still makes many fans question. In both tournaments, representatives like NRG and Flyquest meet teams that are not appreciated compared to the common ground. For example, last year, NRG defeated all three Western teams, Team Liquid, Mad Lions and G2 Esports to reach the quarterfinals. This year, Flyquest, despite losing to the two LCK teams, Dplus and Hanwha Life Esports, encountered three teams of Esports, PSG Talon and Team Liquid.
However, this achievement of LCS is still higher than LEC at Worlds. Earlier in the quarterfinals, Flyquest also showed impressive before Geng, dragging the LCK representative to game 5 new decisions can win the right to go on. At this time, many fans have begun to reconsider the power of these two Western regions in the biggest tournament of the year.
One of the most shared issues and discussion is the format of the two tournaments. Flyquest president mentioned this in a recent tweet on X: “The success of Flyquest and LCS teams is largely thanks to the switch to Best of 3 – so if I hear any information about the tournament will return to the Bo1 next year, I will consider it a clear step back.”
I have hear about any lcs/Americas format information, but I will say it now:
The success of flyest and the @LCsofficial Teams was in a large part from lcs moving to best of 3's – so if I hear of any return
– Chris Smith (@papasmithy) October 20, 2024
Meanwhile, former League of Legends players and Riot Games analyst, Wadid, also said that having to play Bo1 will make LEC more and more difficult to earn new talents for the tournament but have to change to Korean players. It can be seen that the transfer to the BO3 competition is bringing great benefits to the teams when they can prepare tactics and ban/choose diverse to be able to adapt to the situation.
This has been shown by Flyquest itself in the series with the recent Geng. The LCS champion has continuously used new tactics, the generals almost no player used in this tournament. For example, Bwipo used to use champions like Urgot, Sion, Darius in the top lane, Inspired has two notable options in the forest: Nunu and Fiddlestick, ….
Although these tactics could not help Flyquest in the semi -finals, the performance of this team left a great impression and many fans around the world expressed respect for Flyquest. From here, many people compared Flyquest's performance with LEC representatives, while European representatives showed unknown ways, Flyquest could be extremely flexible, can be very disciplined as a match against GAM or game 1 against Geng, sometimes ready to fight continuously like game 3.
Although Flyquest has shown very well, it is not possible to evaluate that LCS has surpassed LEC in international tournaments. In addition to the unfavorable draw for European representatives, tactical issues and forms also have a great impact on the performance of the teams. The issue of depending on other regional players is also a problem for both LEC and LCS, though LCS also has talents North Americans have proved their strength such as Massu (Flyquest), APA and Yeon (Team Liquid). With LEC, this area has talents, but is playing in the lower divisions, unable to verify the strength at the LEC stage.
Currently, it can be evaluated that the two areas are equal even though both areas do not confront directly at the World Championship. However, if Europe cannot improve the achievement when entering the 2025 season, it is likely that this area will be surpassed by LCS in the coming years.
