NA Has Hit Rock Bottom 

My boss asked if I could fill in for a shift at work. I replied N/A but for some reason he thought that meant I was free.

As the saying goes : Our expectations were low, but holy shit.

Don't lose hope ... NA can get the 0-18 next year

Nonsense, the 0-18 dream is still around a year away from happening

Some teams just had to ruin the 0-18 run smh.

I Love NA league, they make me think i too could be a pro as long as I work hard and keep losing

l think if we pitted the best 4 Na teams against the last 4 LCK teams l think that would be a better show to watch

Its gotten to the point where riot games has given up on the LCS and prioritising valorant for NA.

Me, a long time NA fan: Oh shit, we got three wins. Nice.

NA is doing a service to the rest of the world. We just out there helping teams warmup for the big games.

Crazy how the regions that play the least amount of games during the year tend to do the worst at international tournaments.

i thought the reason NA was so bad because of the environment and coaching, but after seeing that 90 percent of pros barely even use champions que, a perfect place for pratice with high level opponents, no Randoms being toxic, perfect ping, ive realized they just really dont give a damn about winning, i cant think of one logical reason why NA pros wouldnt play champions que but ever since its introduction the player base has gotten smaller and smaller for. no one to lame but themselves for how bad they did at worlds

when the most hype moments fans got were destroying tier 2 turrets and Blaber killing crabs

Riot wondered why LCS viewership goes low every year.

Last year : NA has hit rock bottom This year, NA: Nah, you underestimated my potential

The 0-18 dream will be ours by next year baby

man way back worlds 2018 when C9 made that superb run I was hopeful that NA would actually be a threat from now on. I thought that western teams now has a chance at Worlds (seeing that in the Top 4, there are three western teams)

For me, the main problem is that a lot of players in LCS dont play a lot of ranked to the extend that people in other regions do.. Ive heard from various pros, that they dont like playing SoloQ which for me sounds like playing soccer professionally but never going to practice...

Please. The reason NA is awful is because riot and NA prioritizes rewarding bad players. People can have 40% winrates in ranked and go 0-13 for 50 games in a row and still get ranked rewards. However, if you point that out, your entire team will turn on you for being toxic. Theres such a fear of holding people accountable in NA league so why should anyone strive to improve?

There's a lot to be said, but I do think the region's attitude toward League is a factor. For basically every other esport NA has a foot in, we have something to hang onto. In League, it's hoping we don't get absolutely dumpstered in Quarterfinals again (or even just hoping we make it that far). The problem is that a lot of this goes to systemic issues within the region that could take years to meaningfully address, and that process should have started back in, like, 2014. Server ping, regional amateur leagues (Academy clearly isn't doing much), improving the Ranked experience, etc. There's a lot and everyone has different ideas. Personally I do think NA really needs to scale back player pay, shake up the format, and invest in long-term fixes on a systemic level. I would also like it if we stopped taking ourselves so damn seriously. Yeah sure, the players are professionals, but esports isn't ESPN, it never has been, and it never will be. You wanna pump viewership up? Having some fun is a great place to start. Maybe not having champ select take 20 goddamn minutes (smaller issue imo). Sorry, a lot of thoughts. I'm also thinking of the fact that the average NA fan probably won't watch much more that we're out of Worlds. That's another issue, of course.

I highkey enjoy watching LCS, it feels refreshing, relives stress and even makes some good giggles sometimes.

The problem is that the LCS is treating the pro scene like a basketball or football season and their academy league is their shitty version of the NBA’s G-League. They need to treat league more like international football, like what the LEC is doing: 1 major league and a bunch of minor/regional leagues that develop and foster young talent while also having a scene for “bad” LCS players to improve. Cause holy shit I am so tired of washed up players like DARSHAN waste an academy spot on cloud 9.

Proud moment for Na. Today, In Dota the International EG topped group stages and got eliminated with a straight 0-4 losses on the main stage. Seems to be a common trend over here.

I saw it worded on twitter as "Na plays to not lose, everyone else is playing to win" and I think that sums up a lot of why I dont like watching Na league anymore. 2 Chess players both trying the best they can tow in is interesting. 1 Chess player trying to win and another just sacrificing piece after piece to gain nothing put a few pawns here or there, all in a desperate attempt not to claim the enemy king but to keep his alive, isnt

SAYING THIS IS NAs rock bottom shows yall are very new to Worlds and league of legends as a whole. NA has been a meme for well over a decade. Only the very beginning and a few teams in the last couple years. Basically before they started trying to buy talent and stuck with mostly NA players

More tourneys would be great, but I dont know how logistics work with the regular season

The goofiest thing is that our best bot lane was an academy ADC and a Canadian support… imports lmao

i think the biggest issue is that the NA teams dont bother to nurture the NA rookie scene like EU teams does with its own region( regional amateur leagues ). Not to mention the negative culture that exists around e-sports.

just saw this after NRG qualified for quarter finals. Too bad wbg knocked them out but they were the only western team to make it.

NA also Skyrocketed out of Dota TI11 with all 3 of their teams. 2 from groupstage, 1 in main event with 0 wins on mainstage vs 2nd tier teams. P.S. The only team that wasn t eliminated in groups (EG) in think has 5/5 outnof NA players.

NA‘s roster building is just a joke. They get top tier EU-players and a few good LCK imports every year, put them together with the few NA stars and just assume 5 good individuals make a good team. No thats a waste of money. Thats why 369, breathe etc are always on elite teams, teams need supportive no-stars and weaksiders. Selfmade is the best example, he is a beast with resources in the jungle so he performed well with supportive roaming mids, but he always looked shit with laning carry champ midlaners. you cant put brokenblade on tsm as weakside and expect him to perform at his peak

NA needs to be limited to 2 teams cuz its so ungodly awful that the third spot is a waste of a space

Just one thing to add: The format created by Riot is designed inherently to do just this. Isolate good regions from bad ones and prevent the ascendency from bad regions. If you can't play regularly against high tier teams, how exactly are you supposed to understand/improve? There's only so much you can learn by watching their VODs.

you know it's bad when the crowd is cheering for a 2nd turret

As an NA CS fan ive experienced this pain far too many times lol

right now, like LS said, there is literally no western team that can beat a LCK/LPL team in a bo5 and that is sadly ruining my viewer experience of worlds over the past few years. I just know way too often how a game will end.

I think it was an interview with peanut before quarter finals where he was asked about NA failing at worlds and from what I remember, he told the interviewer that it was because of NA's work ethic compared to Korea's work ethic both in terms of practice and scrims plus we could also factor in solo queue game quality. Honestly, in my opinion If NA wants to succeed you can't just bring in imports to play on NA, NA needs to either make the players train in Korea, expose the players in an environment that majority of their games is gonna make them try hard for them to actually learn something and improve.

Currently on TI good lord WEU is a monster.

I rather play arams now but I'm older in my 30s. I noticed that most of the coaching staff are guys that were fired from one team and picked up to another. Then the teams have the same issue on why those coaches were fired. The samething happens in nfl and nba. Getting "proven" coaches instead of taking chances on others is the issue

It is time to consider NA a wildcard region, the less teams that you send to worlds, the less pain you may feel

All NA teams should play the preview event to qualify to worlds with the oceanic, south america and other less competitive regions for the spots on the main event till they grew their lvl

Tell me a joke NA teams in worlds😂😂😂

To be fair. Doublelift literally get destroyed bot every worlds lol

I think it’s pretty easy to see it’s a difference in culture and there’s not as much drive to win in NA as other regions especially when we have the highest payed players and don’t expect them to perform to the amount there payed lol

I think maybe one reason is they thinking importing like 2 players would instantly make them good. If they build up challengers players instead of signing old pros to their challengers team then they might be similiar to korea, china, and europe, then they wouldnt have to spend money importing players from other regions as much. I mean dont get me wrong i dont think they are awful by any means but if u stack them against eastern teams they are just outclassed. I can also understand that modes like aram urf are more fun so theres really no incentive to play ranked especially with the toxic randoms every now and then except to get the icon and skin for the season.

Whew, I thought it was a video about csgo or smth but turns out it doesn’t matter

It's been 10 years, NA has moved on with this game.

The only thing that bothers me about NA performance is that they are still labeled as a major region by riot. They should be a minor region with 2 spots at most. The region will not get better as this is a culture issue, and support for the league is only going down on all sides (viewership, investment, interest, quality of gameplay). I would rather have NA competition where worlds matters less (because we would be a minor region with few spots and as such much less expectations) and have worlds have more korean/chinese team delivering insane matches like the ones we saw last week. Focus on making the LCS crown being the most important thing for an NA team so the league can be enjoyable again.

More International Tournaments would be great.... For the fans 😂 ( NA is more like Not Available)

Like every year, I didn't expect much from NA, and yet they still managed to disappoint.

Just make NA a wildcard at this point, there are more exciting teams can take advantage of the aditional space. GAM was 1-5 aswell but they definitely seemed more competitive than the NA teams. The NA fans can enjoy the league like the French League. 3 slots for NA at Worlds just feels disrespectful, they are just too relaxed about it. Korea and China are both extremely competitive to the point where sometimes every team can beat every team. NA imported a lot of stars and feels more like "Hey EU/KR player, have this money and play a bit of league, don't stress out too much, it's just marketing". I think the regions get the results based on the effort that they put, I'm sure that NA teams put time and effort into getting better and I don't think they are lazy, they just seem lazy because of all the extra effort the teams in the east put.

NA also has 5 representative in DoTA 2 TI11 and no one come through..

I stopped watching na LOL for about over 3 years or more I lost count, to avoid the heartbreak year after year, I was hoping I’d randomly see a video of an NA league team winning worlds but then I saw this

You want to get better? You have to play against better talent. Solo queue is still a big source of practice and NA solo queue is a joke. Its an entertainment industry where streamers often 1-5 in the lead because fuck it, I want the hype youtube clip that is going to make me money. And they're not on internet cafes playing in limited time frames so they don't have to take every game seriously. When you can do dumb shit and still win, it makes you lazy as a player. Theres a reason these teams often go to other countries to boot camp. Because NA talent overall is bad. But a few weeks of good competition isn't gonna raise you to the level of people who play there all the time. NALCS is barely watchable anymore.

NA in League 🤣🤣 NA in Dota 2 😂😂 NA 😭😭😭😭😭😭

NA shouldnt have 3 seeds by this point, better to give it to other regions that might have actual interesting teams to watch

LCS needs to 1. Improve NA amateur scene. 2. Allow one or two non franchised team to join. (Creating an incentive for franchised team to perform) 3. Change formats from bo1 of bo3 4. Personify players not companies into the league scene

I'm an American, but I watch and cheer for the Korean teams. They have always been more interesting and exciting to watch, even when they play super-safe, as is typical for them. I don't see anything wrong with that.

My suggestion for Worlds would be as following: LCK & LPL get 3 solid spots straight into Group Stage as they are the clear stronger regions LEC & LCS get 2 solid spots straight into Group Stage and 1 placed in Play-in Stage PCS & VCS get 1 solid spot straight into Group Stage and 1 placed in Play-in Stage This ends you with 12 teams pre-placed into Group Stages with 4 spots left to fight for The Play-in Stage would have the 2 groups of 5 setup with 2 making it out of each group 1 LEC, 1 LCS, 1 PCS, 1 VCS, and the 6 minor regions LCL, LJL, LCO, TCL, LLA, CBLOL It should be the easiest tweak around the current standing system to ensure the most regions can have a horse in the race, yes ofcourse this will benefit LEC, LCS, PCS and VCS, it also increases the odds a minor region team like Loud makes it into Group Stages. Once into Group Stages there are 3 Chinese and 3 Korean seeds for 4 groups so that makes sure that the other regions can enjoy some meaningful fights to see who will make Quarter Finals. All in all i think it would positively effect viewership as it includes all mid and minor regions giving them better odds to last longer into the tournament.

oce fans watching the chiefs get a nearly perfect streak in lco and then losing everything in worlds:

2:28 cast is savage :"D

Imagine being the team who got the first t2 turret destroyed by na Gotta be an awkward feeling

NA Fans are like Ryzemains. Just a little longer and they'll lose it

Yeah it's painful to be an LCS fan but can we please just give credit to how insanely unreasonably talented LCK and LPL is? They make the west seem worse than they really are.

when taking down a turret is more hyped than winging

Fast foward to 2023 and NA still has 3 teams at worlds while all the other wildcards have only 1 :)

I honestly dont get this. NA was rock bottom from the start! Nothing really changed. I know this is negative, and I really don't want to be but... seriously NA is the only region that is actively flashing cash to buy talent, and every season it ends the same way, You buy major names or rising stars, you overspend. Half your roster is unusable whether due to Visa issues or some other crap, and then your team literally turns into an ego trip and they simply don't work well together. You shuffle half your Academy roster because they're ACTUALLY TRYING TO BE SOMETHING, only for them to have like, 2-3 good weeks of performance and then relegated onto the bench again. Legitimately the most exciting part of NA's league history was probably the Liquid movie-making production! And that's saying A LOT! Your major names are now just looking for easy paychecks, and you are still, overspending your entire talent pool on big names. When are you actually going to grind out a season and build your talent pool instead of finding the next on-sale deal in EU or KR? The reason why NA sucks is so painfully simple its embarrassing. YOU DON'T ACTUALLY RESPECT YOUR REAL TALENT! 90% of your challenger pool can't even get into entry level academy starters and your wasting more money trying to build up new tournaments just to get them in somewhere and have them actually do something. Now your franchise budget is inflated and all hell is breaking loose! Nobody is going to invest a new team from the ground up because of how absurdly expensive it is. It's gotten so bad, that most of the top ranked players with REAL talent, are instead investing in trying to break into the content creator/streaming gig, because you would rather chase a brand-name from some random insufferable asshole, who popped off on twitch that one time and make a brand new, irrelevant tournament of popular streaming names, than actually LOOK at your talent and see who's actually good enough to make it! NA clearly doesn't care about worlds, of even competition at this point, and if you do, you clearly suck at demonstrating it! You relegated the remaining 10% who ACTUALLY WANTED to be a pro, as toxic or something so you don't have to deal with them. And despite the fact that KR and EU statistically have a bigger and worse issue than NA, nobody actualy knows any of this, because NA is the only region that makes a literal big deal about toxicity and the like. So half the time NA toxic players end up becoming notorious, and use that to push their streaming career, you literally looked at your talent, raw, unrefined talent, and let them slip out of your fingertips, then came to NA begging for players. Man, NA got scammed hardcore, I honestly wish this was an inside job because you lot deserve it! You need to respect your actual rising stars and give them the shots they decide, instead of thinking the solution is the spend more money and galvanize the 'academy' scene. Seriously, you know why you don't hear much about KR's academy scene? BECAUSE ITS AN ACADEMY SCENE! Its not supposed to be broadcasted everyday with its own timeslot and scheduling that, honestly, as a retired sports athelete, feels like a highschool outing trip! Its so relaxed, and there is zero pressure. You aren't cultivating your talent properly, put them under pressure, make them work for it and give them their due. Instead of making them look like bootleg celebrities on easy deadlines The only thing NA cares about is drama, and its the only thing you're good at. You will never win worlds, because you don't WANT to win worlds. You want to go straight to DVD & Blu-ray with the next expose of another player who hurt a coach's feelings, and so we need to film 3 hours worth of garbage so the whole world knows what he's like behind closed doors so no team will ever sign him again. That's your forte! You chose this... stay in your lane

This is just how it goes, NA preforms abysmally at worlds and then everyone rallies together to try and figure out how to solve this issue and to help the overall skill level of NA improve And as usual, either temporary solutions or completely nothing happens and we go back to this same cycle. Cheering for any NA team at worlds is such a sad experience, the last time I was semi hopeful was when LS set the standards for C9 to at LEAST reach semi finals, that was the last time I was somewhat optimistic about NA See yall next year when we do even worse and try to fix every problem to no avail

NA is a mid tier region in a tournament for high-top tier regions and the gap between mid and high keeps widening.

2:29 I never thought prople could get so excited over tier 2 turrent, which I found hilarious

At this point we should allow at least one team with 100% import just to see whether it can make a difference for NA.

Average NA game looked like my platinum EU promos.

having 4 teams from each major region (not counting NA) was a big slap in the face for all minor regions.

True rock bottom imo is 1-17, because at least if you go winless you can say you went a clean 0-18.

Ablazeolive's logic is not sound: if x/15 players gets you a x-15 record, 15/15 gets you a 15-15 record, not 15-0. 15-0 isn't even possible since you know, 3 teams placed in different groups would play a total of 18 games. In order to achieve a 15-15 record, the following would need to happen: each team goes 5-2 in groups (either 4-2 and a win in the tiebreaker, or 5-1 and a loss in the tiebreaker) and proceeds to be swept in the quarterfinals.

I haven't tuned in for a few years. When I did it was usually to root for a minor region cinderella story rather than NA.

I still don't know why Riot doesn't organize majors like every other important eSport, Like I know about franchises model but what is the whole freaking point of looking at LCS or LEC compete between themselves when we all know the best games are on LCK and LPL it feels so pointless to watch or analize. I guess is too much to ask to an Indie company for regular International eSport events.

Here in Brazil there's a meme where people nickname the NA LCS as "CBDOL", because it's just CBLOL but with dollar.

the meta and game in general is very different from region to region. hate me on this but... NA Plat = KR Bronze/Silver... outlier Challenger in NA would be like Dia (at best) on KR or being like a minion on Chinese Super Servers

NA "retirement region" is real

Ever since franchising, NA had only 1 team go to worlds playoffs, and that was C9 2021 which started 0-3

This is why I gave up on becoming pro and making League a career. Our region never makes finals and it pisses me off at times to where this region shouldn’t even matter anymore. 1. We Have No Talent: NA buys out imports and recycles washed up pros to build a team. They do this because the NA talent pool is worthless. Who the fuck wants Tyler1, Pokimane, or Lilypichu on Cloud9 or EG? It makes absolutely no sense and it pisses me the fuck off. I tried going pro myself, but all I did was peak P3 and even with the skills of a Diamond player I still failed to hit challenger. Why is this the case? Why does NA not try harder to do better? People want to play casual in rank, but that is nonsense. 2. NA Is A Soft Region: NA is softer than a newborns skull and that’s a fact. Our coaches are no where near as good as the one in LPL or LCK. Those coaches will literally criticize their players and tell them to do better, but in NA we don’t do that. Instead, we brush it off, ignorantly state that we’ll do better next year, and guess what? We shit the fucking bed! Quit making excuses and actually kick these bum ass players off the teams and find some fresh new talent!! Recycling and Putting washed up players on a team makes zero sense. 3. NA High Elo Is Gated: I’ve had forty-six accounts and not one of them has made anything higher than Platinum3. I’ve never been Diamond, Master, or Challenger. Our community for some reason gates people away from high elo, as if we give a shit about the people within those Elos. NA high elo is full of one trick clowns and mindless garbage. Nobody wants to see Lilypichu and her dogshit Lux, so why the fuck would I care about some lame ass streamers? 4. NA Community Is Trash: Trolls, Feeders, AFKs, you name it! This community doesn’t give room for people to improve or climb, if anything this community is one of the reasons why NA will never win worlds. These same people preferred to watch C9 Sneaky cosplay instead of watching him train his ass off and improve. Why are we trying to promote someone’s lame ass cosplay ideas and not their improvement at a game? NA is ass backwards and their so stupid they can’t even see it 🤦🏻‍♂️ I don’t even care anymore, NA is a dead region and doesn’t deserve to be in the LCS. We have no business playing this game and that’s a fact.

The big issue is that a lot of the NA teams win their local tournament by getting good talent from other regions. The problem with that is that while Berserker is a god here, he was the third choice for T1

honestly i was at least hoping that we would go 2-16 or worse, which would have been the worst record of any region at Worlds of all time, but we can't even be good at being spectacularly bad

Folks complaining that Worlds is too important and focal lol In soccer the FIFA World Cup is the premier international competition and nothing comes even close, it happens ONCE every 4 years and is a SINGLE ROUND ROBIN Group Stage.

Gotta admit, the League of Clowns Series is actually one of a kind entertainment. You don't get clowns like these in any other region.

Riot decide to set final in NA because they are tired of Near Airport copy pasta, but some how they forgot NA also stand for Never Advance

At the end of the day we should recognize that we just have less skilled players which already puts us at a disadvantage. Now throw in the amount of time those players put in (for example, let's say the average NA player does 8 hours of practice with the team a day, and the avg Korean player does 12 hours). That extra 4 hours a day equates to over 1,000 extra hours of gameplay by the time we get to Worlds. So not only are the players worse skill wise, they also are not putting in the work needed to overcome that. They aren't even matching the effort of Eastern teams. So it's never going to change unless it's a particularly down year for a region like 2018 was when C9 made semifinals.

As long as there is one more potential game to lose, we will not stop trying.

when ur getting a 7 figure contract and cant even get more than a single win at worlds is insane as NA

NA is also out of TI11 Dota 2 today

There's literally no reason to watch LCS. I used to be a fan of NA, but some time around g2 getting stomped by fpx in worlds 2019, I realized that western teams as is will never compete with the talent abroad. It isn't just a skill gap, but a fundamental deeper understanding of the game and how to win it as a team. Sure the individual players may be comparable in a solo q environment, but as 5: the eastern teams own a colossal gap, and have for a decade. As an owner, I'm not even sure why you'd be motivated to spend money on a western team anymore. Win LCS/LEC and then go 0-6/1-5 in groups...boy what a return on investment!

_Near Airport_ teams even had gone harder

Least NA still have Tundra Esport in Dota. Evil Geniuses, you ask? Well, got kicked out from your neighbouring continent, South American team. Twice, In Total, 4 games were played by EG with 2 SA teams.

4:58 korea doesnt have draft queue. Its literally ranked or actual normals. It actually sucks making a new account because you have to play norms for 30 lvls until you get to play any type of draft system (ranked or flex).

Dont watch league much but if imports cant fix the problem it has to be the coaching staff and culture

I personally want the LCS to make less money so they eventually send all the imports home and we can see NA teams actually be NA. Why spend so much money to bring in all these people from other regions to still do shit at worlds and not even do that well domestically. I would rather see NA teams be full of NA players and go 0-18 than rosters full of a bunch of different regions go 3-15 at worlds.

No different then watching football. You win some you lose some. Take the good with the bad.

Imports being "localized" is part of how America works. The idea of how immigration should work, and the general/cultural sentiment around immigration in Canada and the United States is extremely unique; they countries that were, for the most part, built by immigrants. It's inherently a political issue, and considering you're British... it's not your fault for not understanding. I'm not sure any European who lives within Europe could really understand how Americans see race & immigration

To me the major problem for the LCS is its reliance on imports. LCS teams look at imports simply as a way to boost their regional standing. At face value, that would seem like a good thing. Play better within the LCS and surely international success will follow, right? Except it's been shown that's not the case. Yes, brining in international talent that have a higher level play than native players will give a LCS team a boost within the region, but even if a LCS team were to import a whole team, they don't have the support structure that made them a powerhouse in their home region. Not to mention that there's likely to be a large amount of friction when imports come to the LCS from living in a different culture that will affect the imports. As for the LCS dying, I know the region is terrible, but I would still watch it if there were more native players. At least I could connect with players instead of rolling my eyes at the end of the season knowing that half of a team is going to be gutted and replaced with imports I've only heard of in passing. It's like my old high school football team. Everyone knew they were terrible. Everyone knew our cross-town rivals were terrible. Someone still found money to redo the the football field. And everyone was still excited to watch or hear about the outcome between our two terrible football teams, even though we all knew that it meant nothing in the grander scale.