MSI 2022 Group Stage Recap: T1, G2, and RNG Blaze Through Without Dropping Games

The seventh edition of the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) has gotten off to a great start in Busan, Korea where 11 teams battled it out in the Group Stage of the competition to make it to the Rumble Stage. After six days of intense League of Legends actions, the top two teams from all the three groups have been decided. With the Rumble Stage starting on 20th May, let us have a quick recap of what transpired at the MSI 2022 Group Stage that took place between 10th and 15th May.

RNG plays remotely

Riot Games announced that the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) representative – Royal Never Give Up (RNG) – would be participating in the tournament remotely from China because of COVID-19 restrictions. To uphold the competitive integrity of the MSI 2022, Riot stated that it will use a network latency tool to maintain a ping as close to 35 ms as possible for all teams throughout the competition. As a result, all the teams have been playing on an inflated ping at the MSI 2022. This move by Riot was met with criticism since it was a LAN and the tournament was being modified to accommodate one team playing remotely. However, it was only fair to include the LPL representative in the MSI 2022 since it is the defending champion.

But Riot made an announcement on 13th May stating that it discovered that there was a discrepancy in the latency in all of the game logs. Simply put, Riot stated that the teams playing from Busan at the LAN were playing on a ping that was higher than what was intended but RNG continued to play on 35 ms. Since this was an inadvertent disadvantage for the teams in Group B – PSG Talon, RED Canids, and Istanbul Wildcats – the company decided to have RNG replay its first three games against these teams, only this time on the correct latency, to keep the tournament fair.

Additionally, just a couple of days before this, on 11th May, Riot explained the situation around RNG’s remote play and talked about the measures it has undertaken to keep the MSI 2022 fair and square.

T1, G2 Esports, and RNG sweep their opponents

Going into MSI 2022, it was pretty evident that Korea’s T1, Europe’s G2 Esports, and LPL’s RNG are the three teams that are in the running to become the champion. The Group Stage resonated just this as all the three teams made it out of their respective groups without dropping a single game. In fact, RNG has played nine games in total at the MSI Group Stage, since it had to replay three games and still managed to wipe house in Group B.

T1, too, had a pretty straightforward group which made the matches very predictable. The Korean super team was up against Vietnam’s Saigon Buffalo, Japan’s DetonatioN FocusMe, and Team Aze from Latin America.

The only group which had somewhat of a close competition was Group C with three teams where it was a quadruple round-robin setup. North American team Evil Geniuses came very close to ruining G2’s perfect run a couple of times in the Group Stage of MSI 2022 but it was not successful.

Saigon Buffalo, PSG Talon, and Evil Geniuses make it out

Saigon Buffalo (SGB) managed to shock everyone watching MSI 2022. The youngest team at the tournament, SGB played spoilsport in DetonatioN FocusMe’s run to the Rumble Stage, as the Vietnamese roster made it out of Group A, second only to T1. SGB showed incredible promise at the Group Stage and even went toe-to-toe with the world’s best bot-lane – Lee "Gumayusi" Min-hyeong and Ryu "Keria" Min-seok – and came out on top in their first mano a mano.

In Group B, PSG Talon dropped matches to RNG twice and once to RED Canids and locked in its Rumble Stage spot comfortably.

Evil Geniuses, in Group C, failed to best G2 Esports in the Group Stage of MSI 2022 and will be looking to turn the tides in the Rumble Stage. After exchanging a lot of spicy words before the start of the tournament, the North American squad got completely silenced by G2 Esports, thanks to the outplays by first blood king Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski and Rasmus “caPs” Borregaard Winther.

Notably, ORDER from the League of Legends Circuit Oceania (LCO) was the only team that failed to pick up a win at MSI 2022 since Team Aze, Istanbul Wildcats, DetonatioN FocusMe, and RED Canids picked up wins.

The Rumble Stage of the MSI 2022 will resume on 20th May and all the six remaining teams will play a best-of-one in a double round-robin setup.