League of Legends: NA Champions Queue Returns for Summer Season With MMR System

The Champions Queue (CQ) in League of Legends was introduced by Riot Games to help the North American (NA) Solo Queue environment. This invite-only super server provides top NA talent and teams with the tools to play quality games on very low ping with proper voice comms. Additionally, this system has also incentivized Solo Queue, giving players another solid reason to climb their way to the top.

The Champions Queue consists of League of Legends Championship Series players, Academy players, amateurs, players from Liga Latinoamérica (LLA), and the alumni of the LCS. Riot Games has also promised an application system that allows for top players from the Solo Queue to eventually make their way into the system without actually being affiliated with a pro team.

The Champions Queue system is run on Los Angeles ping and only has specific hours of operation to allow for pros to practice both scrims and Solo Queue. It also has a prize pool that gets distributed at the end of each split which runs for one month. The players who fall below a certain LP are removed from the system.

The biggest drawbacks of the Champions Queue was the lack of a proper matchmaking rating system (MMS), which led to sub-par quality matches since players would sometimes have to play fill roles due to not many pros playing on the server, and also the flat +10 LP (for wins) and -5 LP (for losses) for matches.

League of Legends Champions Queue Spring Split 3 skipped

The Champions Queue Spring Split 3 was skipped by Riot Games since it was to address some of these crucial issues with the super server. Riot wrote in a blog post, “Behind the scenes, we’ve been talking with the LCS Players Association, the Amateur & Academy Committee (made up of owners and GMs from LCS teams), and our internal teams on how to best address the feedback in order to continue to improve CQ.”

Riot decided to skip Split 3 of the Champion’s Queue Spring Season since it overlapped with the “off-season” between the LCS Spring and LCS Summer splits. Additionally, Riot adjusted the Summer Season dates to start on 31st May running through 21st August, to better align with the start and end of the LCS Summer Split.

What are the new additions to Champions Queue?

Project lead for Champions Queue and LCS Academy Director Zack “Whoopley” Elliot announced on Twitter that the super server resumes action tomorrow.

According to him, the following features have been incorporated:

• MMR (Matchmaking Rating) is now implemented in Champions Queue as per everyone’s suggestions. Elliot added that 100 Thieves’ Esports Analytics Director Tim Sevenhuysen helped with the design and thanked him.

• Now that an MMR system is existent, LP gains and losses will be tied to it instead of Riot offering flat values.

• The top ten players of each season will be rewarded with a new in-game Champions Queue icon.