League of Legends splits European servers into two regions

Riot Games made the decision this week to split up its European server into two separate platforms in order to help out with lag and other issues. The company is now running both "EU West" and "EU Nordic and East" servers on the Old Continent, each offering League of Legends matches and services to their various regions.

Feedback on the official forums is mostly positive (and the split should provide faster games to those on either of the new servers), though a lot of players seem concerned that there's another division between the two regions. You can read the full press release after the jump -- Riot says each server is designed to support "hundreds of thousands of concurrent players." Just between us, though, if they could send a little extra lag to Evelyn players, there'd be no problems with that.

Show full PR text

Riot Games Supports Rapid Growth of League of Legends European Community with Second EU Platform

Regional 'EU West'and 'EU Nordic & East' Platforms Launching to Improve Game Experience for Hundreds of Thousands of Concurrent Players

DUBLIN – July 1, 2011 – This past Wednesday, Riot Games announced plans to launch a second platform in Europe to support the rapidly growing League of Legends player base in the continent. Beginning soon, service in Europe will be allocated between two regional game platforms: 'EU Nordic & East' and 'EU West.'

"League of Legends first came to Europe just over a year ago, and the growth of our community there has been astonishing," said Marc Merrill, president of Riot Games. "Our number one goal is to provide an exceptional player experience for League of Legends worldwide, and the addition of a second platform in Europe will enable even more players to enjoy just such an experience."

"Unlike traditional game servers for a massively multiplayer game, League of Legends environments support hundreds of thousands of concurrent players," said Scott Gelb, vice president of technology for Riot Games. "The introduction of a second platform in the region is intended to expand support for our rapidly growing crowd of European players."

League of Legends, Riot Games' debut title, celebrated its first anniversary on Oct. 27, 2010. Since its launch in North America and Europe, millions of players have downloaded the game to engage in session-based, multiplayer battles against rival teams. Built by a veteran development team, League of Legends combines elements of both strategy and competitive action genres.

About Riot Games, Inc.
Riot Games is a direct-to-consumer video game developer and publisher of premium, competitive online games. The company was established in 2006 and has quickly become a leading global developer and publisher of premium free-to-play online video games for hardcore gamers, launching their debut title, League of Legends, in October 2009. To date, more than one million gamers play League of Legends every day. For more information, please visit www.riotgames.com.

###

Reader Comments (20)

Haven't seen eve around much after they got rid of her stun

@SteveoftheGods
You're right. Also i mostly play as tanks and i could endure her attack and easily kill her.

@SteveoftheGods

Joystiq writers are pretty much out of the loop completely I would say.. lol
Prob played one game and got owned by an Eve and used this experience to help them write this article.
The response to this split has been about 95% negative... NOT mostly positive Joystiq.

In the forum post you linked its seems to be much more blatant outrage than positive feedback.

Of course not being in europe I can't comment on their situation but i think this would lead to having one overpopulated server and one deserted server.

Great and since the Netherlands is in "West" probably I can't play with my buddies in Sweden and Denmark. But I get alot of Frenchie poos that refuse to speak English in my ears. Thanks alot jerks...

@Dehnus For peoples information, I'm a Danish bloke that happens to live in the Netherlands for the moment. This way this is split is total idiocy. Austria is further east then Denmark yet they are also doomed to play with the "Frenchy Poo me no know English" crowd. Furthermore as they base your characters on where you log in the first time, the next time I will log in in Denmark I will still be placed with teh Frenchy Poos.

Fecking crap, and where does this news get that most on the Forums are loving the decision. Most of the Forums are outraged, especially the Nordic Countries!

@Dehnus Hey something just struck me... can't we just put the Frenchy poos in their own Server? That would solve the queing and then you can put the Canadian Frenchy Poos in there too together with those Belgian ones.... and they can have an all out Frenchy pooing in ears contest together. They love each other company more then other Europeans anyway (Anybody who ever has been to France on a vacation knows this to be true). So they can be all smug and amongst their peers :). Everybody happy :).

@Dehnus I'd of rather they put all the countries where the majority of people can speak english on one server, and those who can't on another. Now that the Scandinavian's aren't gonna be on the same server as me theres only really your country and maybe germany left who will speak english.

@bitcrusherrr Well I'm slightly tongue in cheek in my responses, but I do think it is really idiotic. Culture wise the Dutch, English, Scandinavians, etc are very similair (in Gaming Culture and speaking English to eachother).

The Russians, French, German, Spanish often tend to just speak their native tongue, not that that is a problem perse but it does make this split really illogical. Ontop of that it angers me a bit, as I will be moving back to Denmark sometime, then I will not be able to play with either Dutch Friends or Danish Friends depending on where they first logged in or if they moved server. This whole strategy is idiotic, they could as well have added more servers instead.

@Dehnus It has more to do with regional server populations than geography I am sure.

Hope they keep the US on one big server.

@Fire Walk With Me hardly, it is more to do with a total misunderstanding of Europe and thinking us Nordic folk belong to the Commies rather then to Western Europe. This mistake has been made on several occasions before.

Mostly positive? Do you know what the number below Pendragon's post means? Yes, that -669. There is a Minus in front of 669, you know.

Regarding their decision... personally I don't understand it. The US has no such problems and I believe they have a lot more players than EU. So why can't they make one single working server for another region is beyond my understanding. Mind boggling.

@etefleosc They've mentioned on numerous occasions that EU is MUCH much, larger than the US in terms of players.

They have to do something about it, every day there are problems.
Everyday we have got to sit in the queue for 20 minutes - 1 hour even then that doesn't guarentee that i will play a game.
I bought a skin on tuesday, I didn't get to use it until friday with all the problems.

@den69 Then you add more servers, or make it so people can choose what server they want to join. Like multiple European Servers With the amount of people signed in shown, so people know that if they join a crowded server there might be waiting times. You do not start splitting people up and preventing people to play together when they always did play together. That is just wrong.

@Dehnus

I agree, Riot are easily the worst company I have played an online multiplayer game by. Their support for the EU servers has been terrible consistently.
The entire month of June has had problems. I am sick of it.

This is bringing so much hate, it´s incredible. Just look into the forums.

In the end I think most people will join West anyways and stability issues will start all over again.

I don't play LoL but whenever an MMO or something of the sort starts talking about separating east and west Europe i worry about languages. I want to play games communicate with other players in English, but this kind of separation runs the risk of English becoming a minority language.

Didn't they learn anything from the cold war?

@Qehb
I don't think Riot games had an active part in the cold war.

League of Legends

League of Legends splits European servers into two regions

Reader Comments (20)

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 2:16AM SteveoftheGods said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 2:57AM Jhoalot said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 8:44AM den69 said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 2:25AM Nabudin said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 5:11AM Dehnus said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 5:19AM Dehnus said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 5:26AM Dehnus said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 7:55AM bitcrusherrr said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 8:03AM Dehnus said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 8:36AM Fire Walk With Me said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 8:40AM Dehnus said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 5:57AM etefleosc said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 11:57AM Hahke said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 6:32AM den69 said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 8:42AM Dehnus said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 9:27AM den69 said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 6:38AM Kiichi said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 2:26PM Dumac said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 4:05PM Qehb said

Posted: Jul 2nd 2011 7:39PM AntiVillian said

League of Legends Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Weekly Webcomic Wrapup is a stranger in a strange land

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW